I haven't posted in almost a month, and there really is reasoning behind it. The stuff God has been showing me and the things he has been revealing to me are much to personal to post on any kind of blog, viewable by anyone and everyone, so I have settled with writing in my personal journal and being content with that for the past few weeks.
I am home again now. When I look at my life, I live in two completely different worlds, and they are each entirely confusing, and thoroughly opposite. I will be working so hard on fixing one part of my life at school and God will be speaking to me so clearly there and making and shaping me into the woman he wants me to be and then, BAM. i come home and even though that problem isn't even all the way completely fixed, God throws a curve ball at me and shows me another part of my life that I need to work on and fix, something I thought I had completely in line with His will.
School is overwhelming and I have made decisions in midst of stress that I wish I had taken more time to process. At school my life goes 9782346 miles per hour and here it seems to go -487 instead. My thoughts are so confusing and things around me are constantly changing.
God is so amazing, in the midst of all my confusion. I know he has a perfect plan for me and all i need to do is trust him. I've been learning how to listen to him more clearly, because sometimes its hard to see whether my emotions are doing the talking or whether it truly is God speaking to me and urging me to do something in my life, and to change, or to just accept something in my life as the way it is going to be, and stop trying to change it. Maybe what I'm experiencing is completely in God's will, the timing was just all messed up.
As I look back on my first semester of college, it was a roller coaster. And not just one of those little kid roller coasters either. It was one where there are warning signs all over the entrance and the operators strap you in really tight with one of those waist bars as well as a pull over bar because there are so many unexpected flips, turns, ups and downs. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy myself, but there were definitely times where I've been screaming in fear of what was going to happen, because I honestly thought the roller coaster car had completely gone off track! There have also been those times where I was sick to my stomach wishing I had never gotten on the ride in the first place, if I had only chosen a smaller hill to climb up first, or if the track only didn't go so low... I couldn't live in the if's and maybe's though. And I'm glad I realized that. After all, God created this roller coaster I've been experiencing and he knows exactly what I need to grow and change through.
A verse I have been clinging to lately is Colossians 1:24 which states, "Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church." Matthew Henry puts it like this in his commentary, "we suffer on other accounts; for we do but slightly taste that cup of afflictions of which Christ first drank deeply. A Christian may be said to fill up that which remains of the sufferings of Christ, when he takes up his cross, and after the pattern of Christ, bears patiently the afflictions God allots to him." When I think about how vast the pain and how large the trials Jesus faced were, I become so humbled. As a Christian I am supposed to be like a little Christ, always becoming more and more like my Heavenly Father, while still accepting my insufficient abilities to be perfect. I am always so amazed at the way God shows me how great his love is for me, and how undeserving I am of it.
Also in Romans 8:26-28 Paul states, "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." As a girl, living in this fallen world, I am weak. Not just today, not just this year, but always. In Greek translations the word weakness reads as asqeneia, which is usually translated as infirmities, weakness, or failings. This word also means "to understand; to do things great and glorious, [or] to bear trials and troubles." How amazing is this to understand that weaknesses are good, they are God's way of showing us that we are not perfect creatures who can accomplish anything. Without weakness we would have no longing for a helper, one to help us up when we fall, one to heal us when we are hurting. I am so thankful for my weaknesses and how God is using them to reveal to me more of his majestic will for my life. I do not know and will never know exactly what I need in each moment or how to fix problems in my life, but the Spirit does, God does know. I am so encouraged by the last part of this small passage because it is a promise, not just to me but to all who love Him. "In all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." How encouraging!
So, no matter which part of the roller coaster I find myself on today, or which turn I hit tomorrow, I know that God has a plan for it all in the end. Through my asqeneia he is going to conquer all.
"What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?" -Romans 8:31
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