I'm Glad I'm Not a Stoic
Merriam-Websters word of the day is stoic
– showing no emotion especially response to pain or distress.
My Wordle today (spoiler alert) was heart
and that got me to thinkin' it must be hard to be a stoic if you have a heart.
Truth is if you are a stoic you are pretty self-reliant. as a Christian, I am very God-reliant.
He started with my heart
Ezekiel 36:26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
Upon salvation, I was
transformed
by the Holy Spirit.
My heart which was once in opposition to God was changed from stone to flesh. I now am able to have a relationship with the God who created the universe (and the fediverse).
God created you... and values you... and only a relationship with Him will meet your most basic needs for love, acceptance, security and much more
Upon salvation, I also was not transformed into some Christian robot only able to do what I was commanded to do.
I am still Scott- basically weird, but mixed in with Jesus- super cool I now am Scott+Jesus Because of this, I don't have to suppress my personality and weirdness- God uses it for His glory!
And...
I don't have to be emotionless.
I can express myself in this world through my joyful contemplative annoyed blissful broken heart.
Why? Because God hears me and will help me through whatever trials come up in my life.
I trust Him fully- that is what hope is. If you don't know God, you struggle through your trials without Him (BTW that's REALLY hard...I tried that way for about 40 years)
Peace with God Through Faith
Romans 5:1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
I have peace, grace, and joy through the Holy Spirit I also have sufferings (because of the world)
My hope is two things 1. My eternal hope of heaven at the end of this life 2. My current hope of my testimony of what God has already done for me
Being a stoic must suck (no offense to the stoics- but they won't get upset anyway...)
Grace & Peace Scott ps– all scriptures are NLT unless stated otherwise- all emphasis is my own. pps– subscribing by email is the best way to follow the winding writing path I am on (and I am pretty sure Jesus loves subscribers ;–)