Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Made Perfect Through Suffering

I have had a rough day.

I have been asking the Lord to help me understand more of who He is. I have also been asking to be stripped of anything keeping me from coming closer to Him. Well, prayers like these leave me crying on my bed half way through the day :)

I do not want to turn to any thing or anyone (not even myself) but Him in my struggle to maintain day to day...in my discouragement...in my rejection...in my hunger...in my tiredness...in my emotional weakness. You get the point.

I want Him to be my ALL.

I also want to practice what I preach. I really don't want to be a pharisee, pretending everything is perfect on the outside to only be filled with spiritual pride on the inside. So to make sure that does not happen, I struggle with my flesh to gain mastery over it through the power of His Spirit. I fight with all of His energy inside of me to be less like me and more like Him.

Some days it is SO hard. I just want to give into my flesh. I want to be like the normal, luke-warm church member. I want to only give Him reign in the areas I choose. I want to just be human. But then I remember, He created me to be super-human. This world is not my home and it's ways are not my ways. I am called to be like Him.

As I wept on my bed I asked Him to forgive me for the places I have not been trusting Him. As I cried the most precious thing happened, I felt the freedom that comes with His forgiveness. I came to His throne for grace and mercy in my time of need and he freely gave it to me.

I wish I could say everything was perfect after that. Nope. Since then I have been tired, hungry, emotionally needy, sick...and in the struggle of these 'feelings' and circumstances I had to choose Him over coffee, Taco Mayo, facebook, self-pity...

Now that the day is ending I am so glad that I chose to memorize Hebrews 2:10 this morning. I have found great comfort today in knowing that the author of my salvation was made perfect through suffering.

This makes my American suffering a bit more bearable ;)

Hebrews 2:10
In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered.

Monday, January 10, 2011

The Radiance of God's Glory

I have been intentionally making more time to spend with the Lord in the last week. I have been asking Him to help me understand more of who He is. He is so much more than Savior. And Savior would be more than enough.

I am going to blog over the next few weeks what He shows me.

As for now, I am blown away that this God who always was, always is and always will be is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters. He is our faithful and merciful High Priest. He is our Intercessor. He chooses to dwell inside of us: sinful, weak, human beings who were at one time His enemies. He left heaven to come and live among us so that He could experience every temptation that we face. Instead of giving us the wrath we deserve, He says that we can find mercy and grace at His throne in our time of need.

He is so much more than my mind can conceive and He has given me my whole life to seek Him out in all of His mystery. I really want to KNOW Him, not know about Him, not learn stories that make me feel good. I want to KNOW Him. I want to know the power of His resurrected life living inside of me. I want to know and experience Him by sharing in His sufferings. I want to KNOW Him in His fullness, through the scriptures and through my daily experience with Him.

He has taken me on a journey in the last year to really understand what the gospel means for me and humanity. To understand the importance of the good news of Jesus Christ and to radically share it with others. As I am carrying out this conviction I feel I must understand who Jesus Christ is more fully. I want to build every part of my life on the foundation of who He is.

Please pray for me as I seek to know the Risen One in deeper ways...ways that will change my thinking and my life.

Hebrews 1:3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.