It’s Personal (2)

Psalm 62:8

“Trust in Him at all times, O people;

pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.”

I love what this verse says. It speaks to something I have felt deeply this year.

The verse says pour out your heart to God!

You can’t stand what that person did to you today. You are worried about tomorrow. Your child is sick. You can not break a bad habit.

You do not have to have everything together to talk to God. God can help you break a bad habit. God can teach you a love for time spent with God. God can teach you forgiveness. God can show you how much God loves you.

I have been practicing trusting God with everything. Talking to God honestly about anything. Holding nothing back. If I am feeling it, then I can talk to God about it.

That gets personal and that gets amazing.

This is Love

Love:

God’s greatest commandment for us is to love God and to love others. God was the very first to love.

He is asking all of us to accept the love that he showed us by sending Jesus to die on the cross. Jesus was a sacrifice for our sins. So we could live forever and always with God, now and in heaven.

Jesus’ death made it so that all of us can come receive God’s forgiving love. Jesus tore the curtain that once separated us from coming to God.

This is love. God’s love.

God did not want us to be separated by our sins. So he died so that we might have life with God forever.

This is also the grace that he shows us. While our sin once separated us from God, while we rejected God over and over – God still wants to call us His child. His beloved.

God’s love is making a difference in my life. God shows me His love as I read the Bible and go about my daily life. I can see the difference that God is making in me and my relationships. As I experience God’s love it makes it easier to show love to others. The love that God has given me.

One way that God is answering my prayers is in how I deal with my children. I have prayed to God to help me be more patient, help me in my parenting. God has shown me different things about myself, the Holy Spirit (a part of who God is) and about my parenting. These things together are helping me. I know that it is God helping me and answering my prayers. It is cool how parenting has brought me closer to God and continues to. I am thankful for the love and grace that God has given me. As a friend of mine reminds me, God’s grace is sufficient for me (2 Corinthians 12:9). Where I am weak, God’s love makes me strong.

God is Patient

I have been reading through Isaiah. It has disturbed me at times some of what God allowed to happen to people. The judgement he brought on people.

I talked with my Dad regarding this. (I love those conversations with him.) I read a touch in a book about it called “Is God a Moral Monster?”. While I feel I am still trying to understand how God works I think I can for sure say that He is Patient. I can also say that there are going to be times that I need to not try to understand His ways. (Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding) There are going to be times that I can not see how He is working or understand what He is doing.

He is Patient. One thing that has been brought to my attention through my reading and conversation is that I can not comprehend just how patient God was with these people. How long God had waited for them and asked for them to come to Him. That the evil of that day was tremendous. God was still patient with these people for a long time. Yet the people continued to rebel. It is not like God is waiting to zap us with lightening. If that were the case I think it would have been done by now. Nope, God is patient. God is asking us to come to Him.