Who am I?

Yesterday was a good day off.  I went boarding with Alex Yi and went to bible study.  What more could I ask for?

Granted we talked a good bit, and some of the things we talked about got me thinking who is a person?  Is a person their actions and words or their past or their mistakes or their heart?  I think in the anti-legalistic Christian community that we seem to be in, most people would say the heart.  If you love God and you are obedient to His Word then you are certainly a good person despite what you may do or say.  But then, those things aren't seperate.  Your heart and actions and words are all connected.  Obviously we fail.... a lot.... but if you love God and are obedient to His Word, theres no excuse for ANY pride, ANY slander, ANY jealousy, ANY lack of discernment, ANY selfishness, ANY ANYTHING that doesn't bring glory to God.  With that kind of heart and understanding of His Word, EVERYTHING needs to be done for His glory and every failure is unacceptable.  Unacceptable, not because it can't happen, we fail every day, but unacceptable in the exact meaning of the word.  In seeking holiness no fault can be accepted by any means, so what will we do about those failures?  If we see it we need to do something about it, and if someone points it out to us we should be humbled, not defensive.

From that I realized you can't really know someone without knowing their heart, their actions, their words, and very importantly, what they do with their failures and their sins.  So anyway my point is you can't say someone is good because of their heart, and you can't say someone is good because of their actions.  Both need to be in the right place and for the right reason, and by that, most of us probably aren't that good.

I used to want to beat up Alex and humble him, but I understand him a bit more every time I hang out with him, and I'm always encouraged.  But for some reason I don't want to beat him up any less.