He is mighty to save.
(This is a picture of villagers in Burma who as children have to raise one another because all the parents have to go to work in the fields to grow food so they can survive. This visit was extremely moving.)
This month marks the second year since I gave my life to Christ, sitting in Grace community church, watching little children make such a promise and it stirred me greatly. I haven’t stopped chasing after Jesus since that day. I haven’t even looked in the other direction, What I have found on this road to redemption has pushed me to my limits and has challenged me to go farther, trust more and be passionate like never before. I now see that I have a future where once I was lost, my past is washed away and the life I live now is just what I would imagine as perfect ((or as perfect as could be)).
Though hard times have come and gone, still I know He is faithful to me and I don’t have to worry about the mistakes of yesterday and don’t have to worry about the coming of tomorrow. I used to live out of fear of everything, now my mind is able to rest and know that He is God, I am not, and it is all going to work out perfectly. It is very difficult for us as humans to submit and give up our rights to anything, including how to run our own lives. But in Christ, not having control gives me freedom to live, whether I fail or succeed I know that I still have everything IN Christ. We can tend to think that by having everything planned and controlled we can be the masters of our world, but in reality the more we give up the more we are able to receive. This whole train of thought led me to coin the phrase “you can only carry what you can put down.”
In our world today how many people do we see striving only to fail and fall into depression or self hate? How many times have we had our everything invested into something that we shouldn’t have then suddenly it was taken away? This is too much the case with relationships ((which is a whole OTHER topic that I will try to avoid this time around)), especially when we are young. We can’t give something up so then we must become the master of it so we can control it and therein we won’t have to give up what we control. Unfortunately in these cases the only way for God’s will to be done is for him to take these things from us. Then we turn and blame Him and freak out and blah blah blah, we know the story all to well. If you’re a parent how many times have you known better than your children and they got so angry or upset or even said they hated you, but still you KNEW with certainty that you were doing the right thing regardless of what they thought? This was almost a daily occurrence in my family of ten kids while growing up! Praise the Lord there were three older children than me that I could learn from and see more clearly that mom was totally right! Ha ha, moms are great!!
For me I try to lay as much down as humanly possible because I know that my God will take perfect care of me and those around me, besides, it is so difficult to hold some things. I can’t possibly hold myself responsible for my parents divorce or my older brother dying, I just CAN’T hold those things. That would make my ministry or job ANY different? I actually can’t hold any of it, and that’s the way we were created to be, simply dependent. It isn’t about God being a huge control-freak, but it is because of the fact that we screw up, a whole lot, and God ultimately wants the best for us… so twist my arm, God, you can have my life!