Up, Down . . .UP

Ever get stuck in "down and out?"  Run down and weary?  Tired?  Overwhelmed?  Unsure.   Maybe you are like me and always try to “fix” yourself...somehow.   When you feel unsettled or when something troubling comes up and you feel like you need to get it out by talking things over with a friend, husband, or whoever is your first person to confide in.

Or perhaps it is food you turn to first, usually not even realizing it but those yummy things somehow always seem to make you feel better…for a moment.   Chocolate is so heartwarming...isn’t it!  Don’t know about you but so often I am turning first to everything else except where I should be, and that is to God in prayer.  Search His word.  “Casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” -1Peter 5:7

Secondly,  focus on being grateful, thankfulness always puts things into a better perspective.  Here is a little excerpt from Oswald Chambers; it was on my calendar today:

“Let us go to Judea again.”  The disciples said to Him, “…are You going there again?” –John 11:7-8

“Faith is not intellectual understanding; Faith is a deliberate commitment to the Person of Jesus Christ, even when I can’t see the way ahead.  Are you debating whether you should take a step of faith in Jesus, or whether you should wait until you can clearly see how to do what He has asked?  Simply obey Him with glad, unrestrained Joy.”

Right now is the perfect time to remind ourselves to put our focus on Christ.  The day we celebrate on Sunday changed life forever.  It gives us hope.  Gives us what we could never deserve because our sin killed our chance to have a relationship with our Creator.  But Jesus restored it.  There is a place to focus.  My heart will rest on that hope.  One more unexplainable thing is that God doesn’t see me as the sinner I am, He sees me through His son. 

“You sin, and if you are His and the Holy Spirit indwells you, you know what your sins are. How on earth are you going to get up tomorrow morning and say, “I’m going to serve God today” . . . how are you going to do that? You have to know that you’re forgiven, and you have to know that you are righteous, and you have to know He loves you. It’s the only way.” --Elyse Fizpatrick

One thing I won’t understand this side of forever: God sees you as righteous.

Here and Now

A while ago I got a tattoo on my wrist that simply says GRACE. I wanted it to remind me of God’s grace for me and to help me remember to give grace to others. Sometimes that tattoo on my arm has been my own personal ‘Jonah type situation’. I could easily ‘cover it up’, or so I thought, when I didn’t ‘feel like it’, just like Jonah ran, or so he thought, when he didn’t feel like it. I am asked daily to live like Jesus, extend grace (which I am so freely given – God is a god who extends mercy when we don’t deserve it, everything that is given to us, even the submission to Him is given by grace and mercy), show His love through my life. Well, let me tell you, sometimes, okay honestly, most of the time, I JUST DON’T WANNA!!!!! I have had something inside of me stirring for more, more Jesus, more ways to show Him in my life, more than what the church we were attending was providing on so many levels. I wanted to get out….. (I ran).

Jonah spent three days in the belly of a fish. That fish was Jonah’s ‘salvation’. Bear with me here. If he

didn’t have that time in the belly of the fish, time to spend isolated with God, I think he would have kept running or ‘covering up’(or trying to at least). When we left our church, the church we had been at for so many huge milestones in our lives, I felt lost. I was not content with the church but I felt out of place with the point in our lives we were at. I prayed, a lot more than I had been praying in the past years. I leaned on God, way more than I had in the past years. I dug in to His word, clung to his promises. 

This was my fish belly.

I was starting to feel a lot of discontentment with what was going on. I felt like there was more that I

should be doing (always thinking it had to be something BIG). I was afraid I was going to miss the point, the point of all of this. What God has opened my eyes too are that there is something more, He has plans for me, but they are His plans, I cannot control them. I have so much to work on, right here in

my adorable little home that my hubs and I have together. I have three beautiful children that I am

homeschooling and need to practice GRACE with on a minute by minute basis. I need to show them

God. I have myself to deal with, my completely insecure self. I am slowly learning the more I embrace

that God loves me, the me I am, not the me I think others want me to be, the more grace can flow

out of me. I need to show myself God more. I have an amazing husband, who needs me to hold him

accountable and show grace daily as well. I need to show him God more. I have neighbors who will

hopefully see the love of Jesus by us just simply reaching out by helping out (totally out of my safe little

world I have put myself in). I have come to realize that Jesus is the SAFEST place to be, but he doesn’t

want us to be ‘SAFE’ in the terms I have put it in to. He wants us to move out of comfort, he wants us to stretch, to grow, to go, FEED HIS SHEEP! He will hold our hands and give us the words, we simply need to let the grace flow through!

-JENI