I Can Be Good!

A couple or three years ago I had something happen in my life which made me realize that my self-concept was wrong. All my life I had been a good kid, and I perceived myself as basically Godly, with just occasional lapses into sin.

Then this event happened, and I became aware that deep in the darkest parts of my being was a dark spot, full of sin and evil. I had no idea I had evil living within my body, but there it was. It was crushing.

Over the next few days/weeks, I learned to deal with it; I realized that the apostle Paul spoke of the same darkness within him (Romans 7). And I concluded that I must approach it the same way he did: hating the fact that sin was within me, but rejoicing in the fact that Yahshua would one day free me from that sin.

Last night I was reading Matthew 12, when I came across this passage:

Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for a tree is known by its fruit. Brood of vipers! How can you speak good things when you are evil? For the mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart. A good man produces good things from his storeroom of good, and an evil man produces evil things from his storeroom of evil. I tell you that on the day of judgment people will have to account for every careless word they speak. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.

And it struck me: I may have a darkness deep in my soul (which I was unaware of most of my life), but it doesn't matter what I have in me; what matters is what comes out of me. What matters is from which storeroom I pull produce. What matters is which room produces the overflow.

When I realized that, it was like a fresh wave of peace washing over me. It gave me confidence to realize that every person has two storerooms; the existence of a storeroom of evil does not make the person evil; the harvesting of that storeroom is what makes a person evil.

By the grace of God, I want to harvest from my storeroom of good! Sure, I'm not perfect; I have sin deep within the corpuscles of my body. But what I am, is not what I have within me; it's what I produce from what I have within me.

I want to be a good man. And by the grace of God, I can be. Not "good" as in "only God is Good" good, but you understand what I'm saying.

It was very nice to realize this.

I'm sure it doesn't mean that much to you, the reader; you probably don't fully comprehend it; but it means something to me. And I bless God for the gift He gave me last night through his Spirit's enlightening of my understanding of His word.