From Woe to Worship

Today I find myself back at the beginning and I am struggling to find a balance in my mind of what God wants for me. I am reading in Philippians chapter 2 about how God himself came here and humbled Himself and became a servant and I am told to be more like Him. I read “do all things without grumbling or disputing” and I can’t find where that fits in my heart. So where is my boundary? How do I look for more in this life than what I have had and still keep my life separated from the world I don’t belong to? I am very distracted by the brokenness around me and my heart is defeated when I think about how quickly and easily I get to this place. “Rejoice in the Lord always” if I could set aside tired and emotional that would be much easier but I am looking out and not up today and that always has a way of making life harder. So today I relate to Jonah under the juniper tree, I have sat down to feel sorry for myself and pout for a while, hoping I don’t need to be swallowed by a whale before I will move. I have this vision of what I think life should be like and who I want to be in that life and I get so excited about the possibility of something I have never known and I want it. “With a childlike faith” I ask and pray expecting miraculous things to happen and I know it can! God can change the whole trajectory of this nation with a single spark; He can turn the world upside down with a handful of people willing to be used by Him for His glory. He can take back every inch of ground His church has given over if we will ask Him to. So why do I run ahead of Him and try to fix it before He gets there? Today I need to stop looking at who I want to be and start looking at who I am. He calls me beloved, adopted child, heir to the throne, redeemed, blessed, chosen; how easily I forget that just like Jonah in the whale when I desperately cried out nothing stood in the way of my rescue. God is faithful and merciful and His love for me I do not contemplate near enough. My job is not to change the world but to allow Him to change me. It is in His hands that I can rest and where my peace and joy are found so I will be thankful for another day, and just like that He planted a tree to shade me also.

Psalms: 139

1O LORD, you have searched me and known me!
2You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
3You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.
5You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it

In praise and worship I find the mountain top! He is my refuge, my shelter from the storm, and the rock of my salvation, His grace is sufficient and His mercy is endless. “True love is this that a man lay down His life for His friends” I’m still not sure where the old ends and the new begin when it comes to matters of the heart but I know the creator of love and I am His.