gettin old

i can't believe i just turned 23. i mean, really?! my friends kept calling me old last night and i all could think was "if i'm old, what does that make you since your 4-12 years older than me?"

but i can't help reflecting on this magnificent thing called life. how blessed i am that God has given it to me that i might experience Him and tell others about His glorious name! how blessed am i that i am under this crazy thing called grace in the name of Jesus Christ because i have declared Him Lord.

let's take a tangent for a sec. grace. i so wish i understood it better. i can't even seem to wrap my brain around it! the God, the creator of all who has the write to crush mankind, you and me, in an instant because of our wicked nature, but He doesn't. that alone shows so much grace. the fact that i am still alive after 23 years of so much wickedness must prove that their is a God of grace. but i love that it gets better. i love that God was rich in mercy and proved his love towards us by sending Christ to die instead of us! WHAT!?!? doesn't this boggle your mind!? i know most people who read this, (if anyone does), know this story and know who Jesus the Christ is, etc., but how often do we try to grapple with the riches of His grace?

i can't even begin to understand this. i know it to be true and i am amazed by this God who has called me child. sometimes i feel like paul in philippians 3 when he says:

"If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless."

i spent so much of my last 23 years living in legalism, felling entitled to the presence of God. how dare i in sight of the work of Christ on the cross? to that, i follow in line with paul:

"But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

so i guess in a sense, this is my resolution for the year. i so desire to cling and strive towards Christ and nothing else. i feel like this is always my resolution, whether at the beginning of the year or hopefully daily, but i hope this year God will take me into a greater understanding of Him and His glorious grace.