Ordinary People

Wednesday, March 29

Ordinary People
By: Melissa Beauvais

A drunk. A liar. A murderer. A doubter. Prideful. An adulterer. 
Who does that describe? Your friend? Your neighbor? That agonizing co-worker who makes you dread going into the office? The incarcerated?  Perhaps yourself?

These descriptions also define:
Noah. Abraham, Moses, and David.
Four patriarchs of our faith, all four flawed and yet all four God spoke a Covenant to– His Divine promise. 
We often forget that God used ordinary people to move His people to His New Covenant, the one prophesied to Jeremiah (Jer.31-34). Not only were they ordinary, but they were sinful and disobeyed God on their journey toward righteousness. But God! In His grace and merciful ways restored each of these men to further His Kingdom.

In this New Covenant life, we have the beauty of forgiveness and the pardon of our wicked ways. “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means!” (Romans 6:15). We are set free by the grace that goes before us, with us, and through us. In other words, we all have sinned and will sin again, but those who are in Christ are forgiven and become restored, and our lives are re-storied for God’s purposes.
Paul goes on to say,” Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death!  But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:19b-22). 
Our flaws do not define us, but when restored, they move us toward holiness if we allow Holy Spirit to move within us and shape us to look more and more like Jesus.