The Gospel and Our Heart Attitudes

Imagine this scenario: You woke up early, got situated with your Bible, notebook, pen, and a cup of coffee in hand. For the first five minutes, you were eager to get settled in and have some time alone with God.

Squeak…you hear a door opening down the hall and two little feet scramble down the hall and into your arms on the couch, nearly spilling your coffee. You patiently put your coffee down and get your good-morning hug from your little one, then point to their Bible, notebook, and pen to have them come sit next to you to read.

Sigh…it’s so nice to have little ones join you as you sit quietly reading side by side in the early hours of the morning. Although the quiet time alone is nice, you know it’s a great chance to encourage these habits in your little ones.

But then…every other minute he has a question to ask. When is breakfast? Can we be done yet? What’s this word say? How much more are you going to read? What are we going to do today? When is my sister going to be awake so we can eat? Can you help me with this? Oops, I spilled your coffee!

Slowly but surely, that patient, tender heart toward your child becomes increasingly impatient, irritable, and annoyed. You quickly wish they were still sleeping and would stop talking. Your peaceful, quiet morning routine of meeting with the Lord was interrupted and you begin to get angry at the little interruption ruining your alone time with God. Your heart attitude of quietness before the Lord is interrupted with your desire for ease, comfort, and some “me-time,” so much so that you ignore all that God is actually teaching you in His Word.

Sound familiar?

This situation is all too familiar to us in our household. One second I’m worshipping God and spending time with Him and the next second I’m getting upset with my kids because they have interrupted what I wanted for my morning and time with God. My heart quickly shifts from worship of God to worship of my schedule, plan, and desires. And this is only the first of many examples that are about to happen throughout my day. It comes up again when I’m trying to get out the door and someone is messing with my timeliness, then it happens while I’m trying to get dinner ready and someone needs me to clean up a spilled mess. This is not just an every morning occurrence, it is an every hour occurrence.

So, how does the gospel speak into this area of our heart attitudes? How do we get past desiring everything to go exactly how we wanted in our day and not getting to this place of impatience, frustration, and selfishness?

How does the gospel speak to our heart attitudes?

For me, the starting point is looking at the gospel and where I’m putting my hope. Am I putting my hope in my schedule, circumstances, and the actions of others or am I putting my hope in Christ?

When we look at the gospel, we see where our true hope is. It starts when we look into the nature of the gospel. God created us to worship and adore Him. He is the only One worthy of our worship and praise but like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we have chosen to go our own way and choose the things we desire instead of worshipping and desiring God over all. We choose our own selfish ways, our impatience, our anger, and our own control over every part of our life and worship these things instead of our great Creator and the One True God.

Thankfully, the story doesn’t end there. This is exactly why Jesus came to die for us. It’s for our sinful moments like these of impatience, anger, selfishness, and pride where we think that we know best. It’s right in the middle of us rebelling against God that He loved us so much that He sent Christ to take the penalty we deserved for this sin. And it’s as we trust in Him for the forgiveness of our sins and as our life that HE is our victory over our sin. He not only erases the penalty we deserve for our sin, but He also is victorious over it because He is more powerful than sin and death. Jesus did what we couldn’t do- He lived a perfect, sinless life, overcame sin and death, and now lives victorious over it all.

This is incredible news as we look at the status of our hearts. As believers in Christ, we belong to Him and have the power of the Holy Spirit living in us. He is at work transforming us to be more like Christ. Romans 8:29 talks about how God’s purpose is to conform us to the image of Christ- to make us just like Him. This is the future He desires for us but we can’t make it there on our own efforts, it happens because of Christ in us.

He is our patience.

He is our joy.

He is in control of every detail of our day and has a plan for every minute of it.

He is our hope.

And He’s not only our hope for today and the circumstances and heart issues that we are dealing with, but He is our ultimate hope for all eternity.

The rest of the gospel story reminds us that we are living in the “already but not yet.” Christ has already defeated sin and death, but we are still waiting for the future hope of no more sin and no more hurt and no more pain. Although we have been made children of God and our sin has been dealt with in Christ, we are still dealing with the everyday struggle of our sinfulness. We can rest in the future hope we have that all sin will be wiped out and we won’t deal with these issues of our hearts each moment of everyday.

How do these great truths of the gospel help us?

So, how does this help us in the middle of our struggle to be patient and kind when little ones are trying our patience and kindness?

It is in the gospel that we find our hope to be patient and slow to anger and kind.

It is because of the work that God is doing in us through Christ that HE is making us more into the image of Christ and dealing with our heart attitudes.

It is when we look at the promises of God that we can find our hope in Him and not in our circumstances, and we will find an unwavering hope no matter what comes our way throughout the day that is a solid anchor for the attitudes of our hearts.

1 Peter 1 is a great encouragement to me in where I’m putting my hope and joy.

“According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…and (you) rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.” (v.3b, 8b)

It is only in Christ that no matter what irritations or annoyances come our way, we can rejoice with inexpressible joy in the One who is glorious and worthy of our praise- much more than the perfectly quiet morning or day going just how we wanted- He is gloriously at work in us to conform us to His image for His glory and praise!