I Sometimes Feel Like the Sahara.

There are those days that you feel as if it couldn't get any better.  You are on top of the world, on fire for Jesus and nothing can stand in your way! Your excited and your joy bubbles over faster than you can contain it. Then come those days that you are doing all the same things, all that you know to do yet you feel so, for lack of a better word, dry.  I mean like the Sahara, the hottest, driest desert in the world.  This is exactly how I have been feeling the past few days.

Before I got into my Word this morning, I asked the Lord to forgive me for being so dry.  In my mind, I should be doing more, I should be learning more, experiencing more and any other godly verb that you can think of!  I should be floating on cloud 9 just because!  I should be bouncing around Allied Gardens with a big smile on my face proclaiming the good news for all to hear!  Should, should, should.  More, more, more. Right?  As I expressed my disappointment with myself, God in turn reminded me that those burdens that I am putting on myself are not from Him.  In fact, He reminded me of  two very important things that just seemed to have slipped my mind in all of my perceived dryness.  The first is that I can't base my standing or my relationship with the Lord on simply how I feel.  Feeling will come and go, they have the ability to change every day and I am a woman...enough said.  Secondly, my sufficiency can and will only come from Him, not myself.  No matter what extra burdens I place on myself, no matter what additional tasks I find to do.  I think though sometimes we forget..not on purpose, but in our humanness we just forget.

There are no shortcuts to the cross.  It is the Lord that wills the work to be done and it is then Him who completes the work in us.  Bottom line. It is a willing process of growing, learning, submitting, trusting, waiting, seeking, loving...and though it ain't always easy, it is always worth it!

The Greatest Gift...Sometimes We Need a Little Reminder.

The Greatest Gift -1 Corinthians 13

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. ² And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³ And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

⁴ Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; ⁵ does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;⁶ does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; ⁷ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸ Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part. ¹⁰ But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.

¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. ¹² For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

¹³ And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.