I have had a worship song running through my head the last 24 hours. I don't know if anyone else knows it but the one line in particular that is sticking with me is this... "You give and take away, you give and take away, my heart will choose to say Lord blessed be your name." It does feel like that sometimes. You have to choose in the moments of great blessing to turn to the Lord and thank Him and recognize His hand in it. Then on the other side in times of great loss you have to choose to turn to God and say blessed be your name. Both challenging for different reasons. The other song is a Third day one. The line is "Please take from me my life when I don't have the strength to give it away to you Jesus." I find myself in seasons of life where this song is exactly where I am in my walk. Right now it is not but I think I am feeling it for others around me that are struggling so. So wherever you are finding yourself right now may God grant you the grace to bless His name.
Because I am on a spiritual kick I will go ahead and take a moment to share how God has been working in my life lately. A little over a month ago God was really revealing to me that I was not living my life in appreciation for what Jesus had done for me. I was walking with God and was even kind of living a "good" Christian life but I had lost sight of Jesus in the middle of it. More and more I was steeped in a bitterness toward certain people in my life. I was totally desensitized to what Jesus had done for me on the cross. A crucifix brought forth no emotions, it was the equivalent of something as everyday and boring as a ceiling fan. Nice to have one when I am hot, but never caught my eye. It was just a normal part of a room. I started to pray that God would bring me back to the heart of my faith. That I would remember my first love and be able to be truly thankful again. Well, He did it in a very special way for me. Every night before Brennan goes to bed we read books and pray and then he wants to watch a music video on my iPhone. I will find a Christian music video to show him. This one night I showed him one that I had not yet seen. Before I go further I must say that Brennan is very sensitive to images and is impacted by them a little more than the average 3 yr old. To that end I am very careful about what he sees. I was playing this video and then a particularly gruesome image of Jesus on the cross came up on the screen. My initial instinct was to turn the screen so that he could not really see it. Something stopped me though. He watched the whole video and said nothing about Jesus on the cross (rather unlike him.) I put him to bed and went down to do my bible study. I started thinking more and more about that video and found myself seeing Jesus on the cross through fresh eyes. It was horrific and painful and not fare. Then I started to pray about those people that I was holding bitterness against and just found myself filled with compassion for them. Something about knowing that I am in the same category as them, sinners that Jesus has died for, did it for me. I of course have always logically known that but with these individuals I didn't really know it in my heart. I am picturing us all standing side by side in front of Jesus on the cross and suddenly nothing else but that moment matters. We have all screwed up, but before God because of Jesus we are all beautiful. So to that end if you have found yourself desensitized to what Jesus has done for you, or are dealing with an ugly sin pattern in your life, I pray that Jesus will become new and fresh for you. Also, that you will find yourself standing next to me before Jesus on the cross seeing your sin being payed for and forgiven. I must say that one of the problems that I have blogging is that I have enough time to type something out but never enough to edit it. So forgive mistakes and just fix them in your mind for me. Hopefully it is not so bad that you can't understand my point.
Sandy, I am praying for you right now as you prepare for the D&C. May it go smoothly and in a very unMacNabb manor with no complications. Love you
