O to Grace How Great a Debtor

Debt has been on my mind a lot the past few weeks as we prepared to start our 6 month challenge. I often find myself going about my daily household tasks looking for ways that we can cut costs. We have a chart on our refrigerator where each month we will mark off the amount of debt we have been able to pay off.

We have chosen for the next six months to live daily like someone who owes a great debt.

A few days ago as I found myself again going over our expenses and searching for ways to shave off an extra dollar here or there to put toward our challenge and I found myself humming the hymn "Come Thou Fount of Many Blessings". As I worked I hum/sang through the words until I got to the fourth verse and was suddenly struck by these lines:

"O to grace how great a debtor

Daily I'm constrained to be"

Over the past few weeks I have spent many hours pondering and planning how to find ways to pay our monetary debt. I have been "daily constrained" to try to pay our debt. As these words ran through my mind the Holy Spirit struck with great conviction.

Do I truly live my daily life in a way demonstrates that I am a great debtor to God's grace?

I have spent hours pouring over menus, shopping lists, and food prices in my quest to pay back monetary debt. We have cut out quick convenience foods and opted to make things from scratch. But how often in my spiritual life am I willing to take the effort of preparing a spiritual meal from "scratch" rather than just grabbing a nice quick spiritual convenience meal from a devotional book, or a quick passage?

I mentioned in my previous post that I was looking forward to what God would teach us through this 6 month challenge and here just about a week after starting He has convicted me to spend the next 6 months not only learning to live daily as someone who is constrained to pay a great monetary debt but more importantly to learn how to live daily as someone who is "to grace a debtor".

Romans 6:17-18

"But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed,and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness."

6 Month Challenge

Today, March 1, 2011, is the beginning of a sort of contest for our family. We have decided that over the next 6 months we are going to see how much of our student loan debt we can get paid off. We have been paying cash for Scott's tuition for about 5 years but we have loans from college and seminary from before that time.

In about two months Scott will be graduating from seminary and we are burdened to pay off as much debt as quickly as possible so that we can be ready to serve wherever God would lead our family. Paying off debt is a pretty boring and kind of depressing thing so we have decided to try to make it a little more fun for us.

So over the next 6 months we will be pinching and scraping together every extra dollar that we can to put toward paying down the principal amount on our debt. It will be difficult as we have decided to cut things that we have previously considered necessities. We will be getting rid of our home internet which will be a big adjustment and means that I won't have many opportunities to blog or keep up with my friends on Facebook.

We are excited to see what God is planning to teach us through this. We pray that not only will He bless us financially but that we will also be drawn closer to Him as a family. We will also be using this time to pray and seek God's will concerning the next step for our family. We covet the prayers of our friends and family during this time and I will keep you update on our lives as much as I can over the next few months.