Shiny

Last year I had this feeling, I couldn’t quite put it into words, but it was there nonetheless…I felt like I was running on fumes, like I was surviving on my fat reserves. I kept standing on the same scriptures, the ones that God had used in many, many ways in my life and marriage and family. I kept ending up in the same favorite passages. It was like my comfort zone, like a favorite blanket on a chilly afternoon. I am so glad that I had those fat reserves, so glad I had those passages to stand on. But, aren’t you glad our God is more than we can put in yesterdays box? His mercies are new every morning. I can spend my lifetime learning and loving Him and still not know but a glimpse of Who He is.

Have you ever seen the progressive sanctification in your life? Can you look back at your maturing and see things that you thought were so absolute and that you knew so well and now you think, oh that was so childish, I hardly knew what I was talking about. God, Abba is constantly challenging us to trust Him in new ways, to commit to Him in new ways and to grow in our love and faith and forgiveness. Can you look back at a major, catastrophic event in your life and say Thank You Jesus! I have been looking back over the 1^st 7 years of our marriage and I have been thanking God for the hell we came out of. I’m not brave enough to say I would willingly walk it again, but I am so grateful for all the fruit that came out of it and for our fully restored marriage.

I have been reading, studying, memorizing His Word for many years…I went to a Christian College, then to Bible School, worked in full-time ministry for years and yet I feel like I can never read enough of His Word, but it had become comfortable, complacent, boring, if you will.

I am reveling in this word ‘New’ right now. He is doing a New thing in my heart! A New thing in my walk! He is going to stretch me and grow me into this New thing that He has in mind. Never has the living, breathing Word of God, been more refreshing than the last few days. Twice in the last week it has literally jumped off the pages and wowed me out of my complacency. His Word is indeed active and alive and sharper than any two-edged sword.

I do not know what this New thing is. But here is what I do know. I don’t like to be bored and I am ready for the challenge. I don’t imagine it’ll be like a fairytale, I imagine it will be dirty and hard and ugly and glorious all at the same time!