Remembering When...

Sometimes the easiest way to find yourself (or rather, finding yourself in God) is to go back to the basics. Remembering where God has brought me from, the journey along the way, and the very special present moment.

I've been contemplating these things. How easy it is to forget the things that are important in life, namely The Source that makes it all worth it. I feel like I've been waiting my whole life for something special, something grand and wonderful to take place, only to be faced with disappointment. But what I didn't realize was that the miracle has been here all along. The miracle I find in life is the beauty of the cross...everything fades in comparison.

My salvation experience reaches far beyond anything that I can comprehend. I was radically saved from certain hell by a God who is too holy and wonderful for me to understand. How easily I forget. Nothing compares to the beauty of the cross of Christ.

Along the way, He began a work in me, which is not yet complete, but someday shall surely be. Such strong convictions I had, or so I thought. I pride myself in knowing that I dedicated two years of my life wholly to God, and waited another two to court my future husband, but was my heart really any different...

A wise man once said, "Stop praying for a man and start praying for God to prepare you for a REAL man of God. The most unattractive thing to a man of God (I know some men of God) is a woman who is actively searching for a potential husband. It is so easy to sense. It actually shows two things: First, it shows that you don't trust God, that He is going to provide a wonderful husband for you in His timing. Second, it shows that you don't see yourself as worth being pursued. Devote yourself to One Man: Christ. "

I once thought my heart was wholly in this place. Yet, "the heart is deceitful above all else..." I am finding things in my heart that I thought were long dead and gone. But it seems that the condition of the heart always finds a way to reveal it's true nature. Sin abides therein. Dormant for a time, yet not completely gone. "I do what I will not to do," and in the process I hurt those I love very dearly.

Contemplating the cure...I talk alot about things I actually do not know of or have come to a full understanding of. The sovereignty of God, living the gospel, predestination, Calvinism/reformed theology. Truth is still truth, but only life-giving and inspires freedom when lived and applied. "I do not concern myself with matters too great for me to understand." A.W. Tozer said, "Important as it is that we recognize God working in us, I would warn against a too-great preoccupation with the thought. God will not hold us responsible to understand the mysteries of election, pre-destination, and the divine sovereignty. The best and safest way to deal with these truths is to raise our eyes to God and in deepest reverence say, 'O Lord, Thou knowest.' Those things belong to the deep and mysterious profound of God's omniscience. Prying into them may make theologians, but it will never make saints."

Knowledge is not enough, it starts in God's working in the heart. "One should suppose that proper instruction in the doctrines of man's depravity and the necessity for justification through the righteousness of Christ alone would deliver us from the power of the self-sins, but it does not work that way...There must be a work of God in destruction before we are free. We must invite the cross to do it's deadly work within us."(A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God)

In the present condition of the disease of self I carry, I must look back to go forward. As when I was first saved from the wrath of God, I must return again to the cross (and continue for life)."To the cross you beckon me, draw me gently to my knees..."

"For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified...."