Second of all, God is so good!!! As I was unable to make it to the training weekend, I just received the devotional via email, and so I just read all of the devotionals for this week in quick succession, and at the end of it all I just feel overwhelmed by God's love for me in his pursuit of me and how unfathomably wonderful and good He is!
I've had some jank (yeah NorCal slang!) times this semester, and I'm usually a happy person, so I really dislike being sad (not that anyone likes being sad. But sometimes I have a tendency to view it as me doing something wrong that makes me deviate from my usual happy disposition and then I get frustrated with myself, especially when I believe that I have no valid reason to feel sad). But God has been teaching me to thank him for the good times and the bad, and has shown me that many times we actually grow more in the bad times than we do in the good. Not only this, but I've been coming to realize that most of my feelings of sadness and jankness are from his Spirit convicting me of my sin, and so I've learned to give it up to God. He is the only one who can defeat my sin, not me. His power is perfected in my weakness.
So this quote from Monday's devotional just hit me: "Whether served or beaten you are having the kingdom wrestled into you and for that, you rejoice. " Therefore I will rejoice in the fact that God is shaping me into the daughter he made me to be! Whether it makes me feel happy or makes me feel like crap. Because it is a process and because I have grown more this year in college than I have my whole life! Glory to God! I've been drinking from the cup of life fully for the first time and sometimes it's soothing and sometimes it burns but it has brought me closer to God in ways I could never have hoped or imagined. I am just overwhelmed by the fact that he cares for us so much that he is always by our side, counseling us, guiding us, convicting us, and pouring his grace out on us.
How wonderfully relentlessly good our God is!
Honestly Karly I thought you wrote this when I read the title! I'm so glad you have jumped in here!
ReplyDelete"But God has been teaching me to thank him for the good times and the bad, and has shown me that many times we actually grow more in the bad times than we do in the good."- I liked reading this because it reminds me that without pressure, diamonds are not produced, without the grain of sand in a clam, there would be no pearl! There must be something present to challange us... Befriend, encourage, model and ... CHALLANGE! not live a happy perfect life! NOPE! CHALLANGE!
Thanks for pursuing me relentlessly God! Without you life would seem so bleek!