What is my responsibility? - The somewhat different Advent Calender IV ...

Tuesday, Dec 4, 2012. God asks us to have pure hearts and pure hands. That is quite a challenge. Do you know, how to get a pure heart? Do you know how to keep your heart and your hands pure?

What to do and what not to do? …

When I was a teenager, I had my difficulties to understand what “guilt” should mean. At that time, I had a teacher, who said: “guilt is, if you do something which you should not have done. And guilt is, if you did not do something which you should have done.” I think that is a very good definition.

When we have responsibility for people, it means that we should take care. We should be there, provide food or attention or support or help. We might also need to provide control and interaction.

What is your responsibility? Are you responsible for kids? Are you responsible for a unit in some company? Perhaps it is just some project, you are responsible for. Or a role in some performance. Or you need to care for payments or administration? Everyone has responsibilities - for his job, and for others.

Jesus and pure hearts …

Jesus offers us forgiveness in his name. We can clean our hearts, when we come to him. He carried all our guilt to the cross. Here, we are renewed, our sins and our guilt is washed away. That is a fantastic starting point.

When we come to Jesus, we can have a fresh start. But then, we want to keep our heart pure. Learning to live in his spirit is needed. Otherwise, we just continue our old habits! We want to learn what our responsibility is - what we need to do and what we should leave and stay away from it.

God! Please forgiveme my guilt, please forgive me all I have done wrong in my life. Please forgive me all, I should have done, but never did! And then lead me in your spirit. Let me learn to go the right path. Let me learn to go good steps. Let me learn to live in your mercy, your truth and trustworthyness, in your love and gentleness and patience!

It is fantastic to take some time to pray this prayer, and start anew. It is fantastic, to live with him and learn from him. But we need to ask him, need to pray to him, to come and help! (Roland Potthast) ... more texts