I’m so thankful to God right now, not because everything is going great and I live in a perfect little protected bubble. No, things are starting to get tough again; this happens every now and then both on the race and in life but we grow with stress, right? So I’ve been stressed and stretched, the present wounding has brought up past wounding. The next thing you know I’m crying really hard, but recently I’ve learned… actually the day before the wound occurred… I learned that you need to take an account of each offence, write them all down and see what you’re looking at, then forgive the person. If you just forgive and don’t take into account all the ways they have wronged you, then things can be hidden and you haven’t really forgiven everything completely. The next thing you know you’re walking around bitter, unsatisfied, and complaining.
I am grateful for the wounds; I know that God is doing a work in me and that he is preparing me for His purpose. Being repaired hurts sometimes and you have pain for a while, but you just have to trust God that he will turn it for good. What I’m saying is that I’m back in the repair shop witch is a good thing. He’s working on me, digging out the garbage and replacing it with good stuff like; love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, self control, and humility which is the foundation or the root from which everything good grows.
The hard part is the struggle that you go through when the rubber hits the road or the brown stuff hits the fan. That’s when your true colors show. That’s when you and everyone else get to see your fruit, the good, bad and ugly. How can pride survive? It can’t, it dies and turns into insecurity, and that’s not good. Humility on the other hand is good but I don’t think that it comes from being hurt. I think it comes from fearing God.
That’s why the fear of God is so important, it keeps us humble not insecure. It keeps us grateful and too scared to complain because we know that things can always get worse. I read Ecclesiastes the other day and part of what it says is that far too many people live life frustrated, angry, and discouraged leaving this world no better off then the day they were born. You should
enjoy your work during the short life that God has given you,
accept your lot in life and enjoy the fruit of your labor. (5:16-18) I think too often I focus on what I want and what I don’t have and it wrecks my day. But when I focus on all the many blessings I have, I know that I live with tons more joy and find it easy to praise God who is so worthy to be praised.
