A Good End, To a Long Week

       Hey guys! So, I was doing my devotions this morning and I'm working through a daily devotional this year called "My Utmost For His Highest" by Oswald Chambers. It's an older devotional that has been edited and revised to fit our language today. It's really in-depth, and God uses it to point things out in my life almost everyday. Today, it was talking about yielding to God and not to myself and my own desires. It referred to Romans 6:16. I went to Romans and read all the way to the end of the chapter. Romans 6:15-23 read:

       "What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness leading to sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
     
        Reading the entire passage kind of added on to what the devotional had already said, and helped me get the big picture. Being a slave to sin is destructive and doesn't do me any good. I don't ever produce any fruit, but simply roll around in the filth and stench of my sin. But, as the Scriptures say, to be a slave to righteousness is very different from our idea of being a slave. The things I do, and living in obedience to God now benefits me and I produce fruit that I can look back upon. I now have purpose to my life, and I don't ever have to feel lost or useless again. Yielding to my selfish desires and different temptations might feel good for a moment, but it amounts to nothing at the end of the day. I want to have purpose to my life, so that when I'm at the end of my life, I will know that I didn't waste my life on myself, but allowed God to use me and the abilities He's given me to benefit His kingdom.