If you know me, you may know that my life scripture passage is Psalm 40:1-3 where it says. “I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, And set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and shall trust in the LORD.”

Recently I have been challenged to read and meditate on the whole Psalm, and let me tell you! There are so many wonderful truths in this Psalm alone! But as I was reading, I expected to breeze through the first 3 verses since I knew them so well. I didn’t. My eyes stopped from verse 2 and into the beginning of verse 3. Where it talks about God taking me out of the pit. But it hit me. God didn’t stop there. He didn’t take me out of the pit of hopelessness and patted himself on the back saying “well! I did my good deed for the day!” NO! He took me out of darkness, put me on a path of purpose, and took away the old song of depression and gave me a new song of hope. When I first started out on my walk with God, I had a blurry picture of what my heavenly father looked liked. Little by little “who God is” has been put in place. This truth was another piece put into place. Because that day I realized, Gods love is unconditional. He isn’t expecting anything in return, doesn’t have a hidden agenda in mind, isn’t looking to complete his check list of “good deeds for the day” and isn’t looking for a pat on the back for what he does. Should we thank him, absolutely! The Bible is full of verses about being thankful and giving thanks to God. And we should! But God doesn’t do it for the thanks, he does it because He loves us.

In my walk with God, it has been shown to me that my life is to mirror Christ. On this earth we know we will never be perfect. But we are to live in the new nature and follow his steps. (1 Peter 2:21) We are left with many examples where Jesus went beyond the extra mile. He didn’t brag about it, didn’t have a false humility, and didn’t have a hidden agenda in mind. I want to be like that. To live a slower walk of life and take note of pain around me. I want pointing people to Christ to be 2nd nature to me. I want to go beyond the extra mile. How about you?