Running gives me a chance to think about things. It takes me outside, away from the television, away from the computer, and leaves me far too winded to talk on the phone (sweaty earpiece--- gross). It takes me to myself.

And myself wonders....

Why am I so complacent with my "cheap grace" life?

Buoyed by a book I'm reading and a sermon I recently listened to on my IPod, I'm certainly familiar with the term of "cheap grace," though I never would have named it that myself.

"Cheap grace" is telling Heaven to wait... I'm busy living the way I want to. It's not diving down deep into the eternity in my heart-- becoming a holy sanctuary of adoration, living a spirit-empowered life. It's going to the store for fruit instead of allowing God to cultivate fruits in me. It's changing how I act, instead of who I am being changed. It's seeing prayer as words, instead of as change.

I once heard a book described as "smelling of lust and prison."

Isn't that a great description?

It's also how a bunch of Bible men and women would be described...

They didn't just want more God, more time with God, more connection to God, more ways to say "I love you," -- they lusted (def: crave, intense desire or need) for it.

Death, jail time, fasting, crying, losing, loneliness, more and more and more followed them. They invited those things in... to get more God.

And it didn't matter what happened.

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my Savior.--- Habakkuk 3:17 (relativity of this verse was stolen from the Ipod sermon)

So, back to the question: Why am I content with living without that? Why am I not bothered that I don't hit the floor in desperation? Why am I not so shocked into action that I live that way all the time? Why are beliefs compartmentalized into "moral" and "unmoral"?

Why?

Why may not be the best question, so I'll stop asking it.

Here's a better one: How?

How do I live that way?

It's not through trying to act this way... because I've been trying. It's hard to constantly change the way I act and talk when my insides are the same.

The Bible says it's by throwing away what is mortal and allow myself to be swallowed by this life that I crave.

So, I get rid of me.

That's the definition of freedom if I've ever heard it.

Will I ever figure all this out?