But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. ~ 2 Corinthians 4:7 ~
What a year it has been!
I can’t believe 2014 has come and gone.
During my time with the Lord over the past few weeks, I’ve reflected on
the past year. If you were to look at it
in the eyes of our society, it should have been one of the worst years for
me. But it turned out to be just the
opposite! I started 2014 off by just
barely treading water and ended it totally trusting God and stepping out into
the unknown.
2014 turned out to be a year of healing for me. The Holy Spirit was continuously reminding me
that God was working through me. It was
a great year but a hard year. I found
myself thinking, there is no way God can use someone as broken as me for his
glory. How often do we as humans do that
to ourselves? I know I do it a lot! But it’s just the opposite, he wants to use
people that live their life in total dependence on Him. You may ask, what does that look like? It looks like this: be humble, look to God
for your strength instead of earthy things or people, and trust that He will
achieve what he set out to do.
Your response to that statement may then go a little like
this…but you don’t know what I’ve done, I’m worthless, I’m not smart enough, I
don’t have enough money, I’m fat, I’m not pretty enough, I don’t have an
education from a well known school, I don’t read the bible enough, I don’t fit
into this family… the list could go on and on but these are just a few that
have I’ve experienced in my own life.
Satan loves to fill our mind with our faults and failures but this is
not God’s nature.
Romans 8:1,
There is therefore now no condemnation for
those who are in Christ Jesus.
I
realized in my own life that I was focusing on the wrong things.
I had to question myself…I am really letting
the world define who I am or am I looking to God to define my worth?
I love getting in God’s word as it is so rich
and clearly defines our worth.
2
Corinthians 3:5,
It is not that we
think we are qualified to do anything on our own. Our qualifications comes from God.
The Lord can and will work through us if we just let
Him. He longs for each of us to
accomplish His purpose for our earthly existence. All He asks of us is to trade our weaknesses
for His strength and to be obedient to His calling. For my life, being obedient to His calling
meant leaving my home, my family and most of my possessions to walk into the
unknown. I won’t lie…I had a lot of
“what ifs” go through my mind in the five weeks I had to prepare for this new journey. Then one night he gave me a clear question,
do you TRUST me? So I placed my faith in
Christ and look forward to how His glory can shine through my life.
What broken parts of your
life are keeping you back from experiencing God’s unconditional love,
forgiveness and grace? Broken things can
become blessed things when we let God do the mending.
