I Get To Be Me!

In my desire to write a "powerful" devotional blog, I have not done any, and was reminded last night that I quit things, so, I get to start again. I am sitting in my living room, listening to workers outside of my opnened window FINALLY fixing the drain so that it doesn't flood my porch and the walk way infront of my apartment. WOOHOO! I find great joy in this as I have lived here for 2 years, and it gets pretty mess over here.

As I have grown in the Lord, I find great joy in SO many things and honestly, I find it hard not to have joy. This month marks the 5-year anniversary of Bill's death, wow, I truly can't believe it has been that long. I have learned so many things in these last 5 years, I have learned that I CAN do ANYTHING that the Lord has given for me to do. I have learned that I don't' have to people please, that I don't have to jump through any hoops to keep people in my life, nor do I have to fear being abandoned. I have learned that I love myself, I love how I look, I love that I bring sunshine and joy wherever I go, that I can't change me, only my Heavenly Father can. I get to wait and let HIM change me and get to keep submitting. Papa God gives me EVERYTHING, love for Him, love for others, the amazing gift of faith, the ability to follow Him and everything else in between.

I have always believed that I had to jump through all of the right hoops in order to gain the Fathers love, or at least keep Him from being mad at me. I looked at others who I though were more spiritual than I and thought there was no way I was going to get rewards to throw at Jesus' feet because I wasn't like them. I love Philippians 2:12-12 – they were told by Paul that they were not only to obey the word of the Lord while Paul was there, but they were to carry it out on their own. "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure." This is so freeing. I have tried to change me all my life, fought to get rid of the ugly things in me. If only I would memorize more scripture, or go to church enough, or sing enough, witness to others more, THEN I would free myself.

The Amplified puts in definitions of certain words in order for us to understand it more, "work out" has these words as meanings – Cultivate, carry out to the goal, and fully complete – "with reverence and awe and trembling – self-distrust, with serious caution, tenderness of conscience, watchfulness against temptation, timidly shrinking from whatever might offend God and discredit the name of Christ. See, I need to live in fear, or I might do or say something wrong and give the Lord a bad name. However, the next verse says that "it is GOD who does the work in us to do of His will and His good pleasure.

We can't be good enough, we can't keep ourselves from falling, we can't even love God, without Christ in us. He perfects everything that concerns us Psalm 138:8; and He completes that which He started – Philippians 1:6. We just get to surrender to it, even when it hurts, even when we don't have any of the answers, even when others think we are crazy, we gt to keep walking. I have learned that He isn't so concerned about my mistakes, He knows we are dust, He loves our surrendered hearts, like David. I am so thankful He didn't leave me where I was and He is still working.