I’m grateful to have survived a pretty major economic setback while managing to hold onto my first house and while honoring all my financial obligations in a timely manner. If that’s me being “on my bum” then how would you describe your own circumstance? Can you not see how you’re sounding, here? Motes and logs, Bible, read it, get back to me. OK?
And yet with all this outward diligence here you are singing the blues. Poor you, only 20 years to go, 10 year old car. Cue the Stradivariuses.
How about not straining out gnats while swallowing camels? The bible, read it. Then get back to God.
Look, not to be unkind.
But why was it you were being so diligent?
If it was just to look respectable for its own sake, rather than because your heart and the Lord’s were in the same place about fair dealing — well, the Lord calls that hypocrisy and it’s not just bad, it’s sad!
The Lord’s heart is glad except where it stoops to share in our sadness in order to raise us up again. Start singing praises and just watch what begins to happen. Don’t put any mental lid on where the Lord can go with you — not because you earned it but because He wanted to give it to you and you were willing to joyfully take the unearned gift and raise it to His glory.
You could be killing yourself with “diligence” — because it’s about the wrong things first.