Grow Up!
So I figure, I've been thinking about some things lately...like my age. I'm young, yeah but then I think 20's. The transition decade. I mean some time later marriage is on almost everyone's mind if not now. And I think of myself...where I am right now...and I remember telling someone yesterday, that I actually don't feel mature enough...like maybe when I get to "that point" I will be ready for a bunch of things. I feel like there's stuff that I have to change in my life before I get there...
Well, it's very consoling to know that I'm not alone. And I don't have to wait until I feel like I'm ready till stuff happens, I have to wait till God tells me I'm ready. After all if God tells me I'm ready He'll give me the strength to work through it. Part of a devotion I read this afternoon said:
Many Christians spend most of their lives waiting to see themselves change before they will believe anything positive about themselves. But the good news is that God sees our hearts. We have a desire to do what is right because He has given us a new heart and put His Spirit within us.
When we start believing what the Word says about us more than what we see or do, then our behavior begins to radically and rapidly change.
Well, in all honesty the devotion was about holiness...but it made me think about other things too. As a woman...and what makes me a woman and what doesn't. And what makes me ready for marriage and what doesn't. The truth is, there is always some element of some experience that makes one mature or not. However, thank God that He can help me become experienced where I need to become experienced...He can help me grow. In managing my finances, my time, taking care of myself amidst life seeming like I have a million things to do...He can help me grow in all these things that seem to be a part of being mature.
And like He says in John 15
1I AM the True Vine, and My Father is the Vinedresser.
2Any branch in Me that does not bear fruit [that stops bearing] He cuts away (trims off, takes away); and He cleanses and repeatedly prunes every branch that continues to bear fruit, to make it bear more and richer and more excellent fruit.
...all I have to do is remain in Him. So maybe I shouldn't sit around waiting till everything is right. I can ask God. I can let Him whisper: Girl you need to save that money...or clean up...whatever it is about just learning to be responsible for who I am and for my actions. There is common sense involved but thank God there's also spiritual sense which sees beyond what I see. Spiritual sense that defines who I am and where I am. No formulas but just God telling me that He knows me by name, He has a plan for me and He will help me be all that I need to be. As a student, as a sister, as a daughter, as a friend, as a wife, as a doctor...whatever. He knows what I need to be when I need to be. I just have to trust Him, ask Him for help, remain in Him and learn from my mistakes...
Grow Up!
So I figure, I've been thinking about some things lately...like my age. I'm young, yeah but then I think 20's. The transition decade. I mean some time later marriage is on almost everyone's mind if not now. And I think of myself...where I am right now...and I remember telling someone yesterday, that I actually don't feel mature enough...like maybe when I get to "that point" I will be ready for a bunch of things. I feel like there's stuff that I have to change in my life before I get there...
Well, it's very consoling to know that I'm not alone. And I don't have to wait until I feel like I'm ready till stuff happens, I have to wait till God tells me I'm ready. After all if God tells me I'm ready He'll give me the strength to work through it. Part of a devotion I read this afternoon said:
Many Christians spend most of their lives waiting to see themselves change before they will believe anything positive about themselves. But the good news is that God sees our hearts. We have a desire to do what is right because He has given us a new heart and put His Spirit within us.
When we start believing what the Word says about us more than what we see or do, then our behavior begins to radically and rapidly change.
Well, in all honesty the devotion was about holiness...but it made me think about other things too. As a woman...and what makes me a woman and what doesn't. And what makes me ready for marriage and what doesn't. The truth is, there is always some element of some experience that makes one mature or not. However, thank God that He can help me become experienced where I need to become experienced...He can help me grow. In managing my finances, my time, taking care of myself amidst life seeming like I have a million things to do...He can help me grow in all these things that seem to be a part of being mature.
And like He says in John 15
1I AM the True Vine, and My Father is the Vinedresser.
2Any branch in Me that does not bear fruit [that stops bearing] He cuts away (trims off, takes away); and He cleanses and repeatedly prunes every branch that continues to bear fruit, to make it bear more and richer and more excellent fruit.
...all I have to do is remain in Him. So maybe I shouldn't sit around waiting till everything is right. I can ask God. I can let Him whisper: Girl you need to save that money...or clean up...whatever it is about just learning to be responsible for who I am and for my actions. There is common sense involved but thank God there's also spiritual sense which sees beyond what I see. Spiritual sense that defines who I am and where I am. No formulas but just God telling me that He knows me by name, He has a plan for me and He will help me be all that I need to be. As a student, as a sister, as a daughter, as a friend, as a wife, as a doctor...whatever. He knows what I need to be when I need to be. I just have to trust Him, ask Him for help, remain in Him and learn from my mistakes...
Ephesians 2
He Tore Down the Wall
1It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. 2You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. 3We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. 4Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, 5he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! 6Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.
7Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. 8Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish! 9We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing! 10No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
11But don't take any of this for granted. It was only yesterday that you outsiders to God's ways 12had no idea of any of this, didn't know the first thing about the way God works, hadn't the faintest idea of Christ. You knew nothing of that rich history of God's covenants and promises in Israel, hadn't a clue about what God was doing in the world at large. 13Now because of Christ--dying that death, shedding that blood--you who were once out of it altogether are in on everything.
14The Messiah has made things up between us so that we're now together on this, both non-Jewish outsiders and Jewish insiders. He tore down the wall we used to keep each other at a distance. 15He repealed the law code that had become so clogged with fine print and footnotes that it hindered more than it helped. Then he started over. Instead of continuing with two groups of people separated by centuries of animosity and suspicion, he created a new kind of human being, a fresh start for everybody.
16Christ brought us together through his death on the Cross. The Cross got us to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility. 17Christ came and preached peace to you outsiders and peace to us insiders. 18He treated us as equals, and so made us equals. Through him we both share the same Spirit and have equal access to the Father.
19That's plain enough, isn't it? You're no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You're no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He's using us all--irrespective of how we got here--in what he is building. 20He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he's using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone 21that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day--a holy temple built by God, 22all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.
