|
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:16-19
One thing that God has taught me during my walk with Him is how to enjoy this ride of life. My dad reffers to it as the "Roller Coaster" because of it's many highs and dips, and sedden twists and turns. My life like everyone else's has been full of thrills and chills, but not until I became a true Born Again believer in Christ have I been able to take this ride and learn to enjoy it with out fear. Before I was saved I believed in God and in Jesus according to what I was taught. Other than Sunday Mass I never picked up the Bible and read it. It was all hyrogliphics to me. I prayed when I was desperate for something but otherwise I lived my life how I wanted and in my own terms. I was never an atheist by philosophy only by action since I truly acted like if there was no God to be accountable to. But when trouble hit, I was terrified because I knew that even if I prayed I was the one in control of my own life and I somehow knew that my power was limited. So like any other unbeliever I learned to seek the easy, and more pleasurable way of life (or so I thought). Finaly at 18 years old the Lord showed Himself to me in a clearer way than ever and I recieved Him as my Lord and Savior. The damage had been done though and I was used to carving out my own path. It took years for the Lord to show me truly what it meant to give all of my life to Him. I was so used to being in the driver's seat that although I knew who God was and that all He wanted was the best for me it still became very hard to let go of my control. I wanted to be the operator of the roller coaster because I was afraid of where He might take me and that I would not like it. It's been just in the past 5 years or so that this roller coaster took sveral terrifying twists. Through those God showed me two things. One, that I obviously didn't know as well as I thought I did how to control my life, and two that in order for me to have real peace, joy and fullfilment I had to just let go and let Christ drive. That was hard to do, much harder than I even thought it could be. There were times when things seemed to be going great and life was exciting and full of possibilities, then the dip came and everything just crashed and shattered. Never before have I've gone through so much excitement followed by tremendous dissapointment. I often cried myself to sleep wondering what many people do when they feel out of control "What have I done to deserve this Lord, haven't I've been your child? I thought you loved me?" What a selfish and prideful question. Of course I truly had not been completly obedient. Not only had I done much to deserve the troubles I was in but also enough to deserve Hell itself yet by His Grace and Mercy I'm getting Heaven. I even told the Lod that if He was just building me up to crush me over and over again than I'd rather Him just not give me any dreams and hopes and I would just crawl into a ball and wait to die. Pathetic I know. I was mourning my loss of control, which meant that God's plan was working! He was shaking me up with all those twists and turns so that I would finally loosen my grip and let go. For the last couple of weeks Nick and I have been acending one of those hills in the rollercoaster. Several opportunities and blessings have come up on us that have given us hopes and dreams anew. That's how it always goes. As we just go about norman life suddenly, what seems out of the blue, some wondeful oportunity arises for us. Our intentions always are to serve Christ and to be content with whatever circumstance we're in. But as I have learned I've not always been faithful at that. When this current blessings began to arrive my cynical human self though "Ok let's not get too excited now, you know what can happen." But this time, even to my own surprise and probably for the first time in my life I honestly replied "No matter what happens, even if things don't work out according to what we want, I know that the Lord is in control and life will be good for us because Christ loves us." Wow, am I truly beileving that?! I've repeated that quote to many people since I've become a Christian whenever they've come to me for encouragement, but not until now have I believed and practiced it for myself. Have I finaly truly let go and let God be in control with joy and peace? Well, since the day when I forfitted this situation to Him all our plans seems to be falling into place perfectly. Who would have thought? When I let God be in control things just happen so naturaly and perfectly. A big "DUH"! What if things fall through and we head down another dip and crash? Will I sink into a pityful and prideful pit of despair and curse God? I realy don't think so, not this time. I think the Lord finaly got through to me. If things take a course other than what we hope although my intitial humn responce will be dissapointment I think that this time I will just sit back, go with the flow and just enjoy the ride. I'm not in control, the Lord is. And that feels great!
|
Comments
|
|
|
|
|
Posted by
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|