![]() ![]() In 2018, God led me to a major breakthrough in my life when He freed me from the chains that anxiety had had me in my entire life. ![]() I experienced His nearness and comfort when my dad passed away and my mom and I made the choice to sell the house that was falling down around us and buy another one. My faith was stretched several years ago when I took the step to trust God to provide the $7,000 I needed for surgery and He did. I’ve searched for God and I’ve seen Him do some amazing things. Over the years, I’ve made progress in my faith and I’ve regressed. I wanted to make my own choices and let Him endorse them instead of asking Him what I should do and choosing to obey even when I wanted something different. I was trying to “do the Christian life” on my own, very stubborn, terms. So why was joy so elusive? The problem was that, even though I had accepted Jesus as my Savior, I had not surrendered my will to His as my Lord. I mean, I was going to church once a week, I was in a fellowship group that met on campus on Thursday nights, I glanced at a devotional most nights, and I prayed at least once a day as I went to sleep at night. There was a lack of joy in my life that I wanted to fill, but I couldn’t figure out how. I continued to grow in my faith as I went through high school and began college, but I eventually grew restless. The songs I had been listening to took on a new dimension and deeper meaning than ever before. The relief I felt when He did was palpable. It took a few months of His loving persistence, but in October of that year, I set my stubbornness aside and asked God to forgive my sins and to give me His salvation through Jesus. ![]() Songs with lyrics like, “Make it right, fall in love with Jesus tonight.” How much more blatant could He have been? The Holy Spirit used certain songs to speak to my heart as He began to woo me and teach me more about His love. Then I heard about a new radio station that played Christian music. I began to wonder if there was something else that I could listen to. (Not knocking country music, FYI.) As a preteen, I couldn’t relate to the songs about love and heartache and breakups. The year I turned thirteen, I began to get restless with the country music my parents liked to listen to. They were years for learning and growing and maturing. Those years weren’t a waste or filled with blatant rebellion or running from God. Just ask my mom, who labored eighteen hours before I finally made an appearance. Okay, a lot stubborn, and prefer to do things when I am good and ready. For those of you who don’t know me personally, I am a bit stubborn. From the time I truly realized that to the time I was saved was about six years or so. I’ve been in church since I was about nine months old, so I knew at a young age that I needed to have a relationship with God through Jesus. I grew up in a small town, the third out of four children, very shy, and with a love of stories and music. It’s about how this redhead came to know the Redeemer and how faithful He has been in her life. Disobedience, even in seemingly small ways, closes the door on some of those blessings. I don’t want to miss out on any blessings that God has for me. What will I miss out on if I don’t obey God’s leading?Īnd there’s my motivation. The writer urges the reader to ask what would happen if we take a step of faith and follows that up by asking what would happen if we don’t. The devotional I read today was on moving past fear. I believe that the second part is going to win. Another part of me reasons that, since God is leading me to share, I should do it because I love Him and want to live a life of obedience to Him. A part of me thinks no one will be interested, so why bother. Maybe it all boils down to fear of being rejected. So why do I hesitate? I am processing the answer to this as I type, staring at the blinking cursor until my thoughts unravel enough to grab hold of one and follow it. But on the other hand, there are some amazing things that God has done in my life that I know would bring Him glory in the telling and would be an encouragement to those who read it. There are some aspects of my story that are difficult to tell and some that will not be shared publicly. There is a fear that no one will be interested, that my life is relatively ho-hum and nobody wants to hear about it. I have felt led to tell my story lately and, to be honest, I’ve hesitated to do so. It has highs and lows, humor and heartache, and watching it unfold is quite an experience. Alice, the main character, does indeed have a story to tell. These are the opening lyrics to Bright Star, one of my favorite musicals and the most recent one I was able to be in. ![]()
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