Ezra

We were talking about Ezra in home group the other night, so I decided to read it and I actually shot through it in a couple of days. It's a pretty cool history book. But I got convicted a little bit when I read chapter 9, though.

In this chapter, the Israelites have been given a second chance. Because of their sins, they were exiled from Jerusalem and their temple was destroyed, but through God working on the hearts of the kings who were over the Israelites during their exile (showing that leaders don't have to be Christians for God to use them) they are allowed to go rebuild their temple and return to their land.

But, regardless of the blessings God gives to the undeserving Israelites, they begin to intermarry with the surrounding countries which God forbid them from doing. Chapter 9 revolves around how heartbreaking this was to Ezra and it got me to thinking about how I often do the same thing.

I am so undeserving of God's grace in my life, yet He blesses me anyway with more things than I could imagine even though I have sin in my life. And regardless of this, rather than humble myself to my creator, I start to get the feeling that God is just ignoring my sin and I can do whatever I want and I'll get blessed anyway.

So I'm pulling away from Ezra with this in mind. God blesses me out of His grace and forgiveness, and the least that I can do is to try to live in a way that reflects His grace. I need to be more observant to the things God has blessed me with and live my life with an attitude of humility and thankfulness and not come away with pride. The Israelites' sin ended in having to divorce the people they had married, and in the same way, I need to divorce the sin in my own life.