What is it?

Looking through my journals and email, I found out that I was wishing for a lot of good things to happen. I claimed to be “hoping,” but I did not/could not be confident the desired outcome would happen. That is not what hope is about. Hope is more than wishing. [Want to know more? Click here.]

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Surprised to be Loved: Psalm 18


Sometimes I don’t feel worthy of much. Sometimes I don’t feel worthy of being loved. But that’s not how God views me. He views me from a place of perfect love. Even when the rest of the world doesn’t appreciate me, even when the world tries to knock me down, God loves me.
Psalm 18 had so much good stuff in it that although I talked about part of it last week, there’s more to talk about. Verses 16 – 19 in The Message say,
“But me he caught – reached all the way
            from sky to sea; he pulled me out
Of that ocean of hate, that enemy chaos,
            the void in which I was drowning.
They hit me when I was down,
            but God stuck by me.
He stood me up on a wide open field;
            I stood there saved – surprised to be loved!”
So no matter what kind of havoc the evil in this world try to create in my life, God has reached all the way from the sky and pulled me up. If there’s hate and chaos in the world, I am still safe and protected by God. If I feel like I’m drowning in an ocean or am unable to breathe air, God is still sticking with me and putting me in a position to survive.
But surviving isn’t enough. Lately I feel like all I’m doing is surviving. A few years ago I made a commitment to pursue thriving. I haven’t been doing very good at that lately. Any thriving that’s going on is by accident. I have not been making conscious decisions to do things that make me thrive. For instance, I have not been taking substitute teaching jobs, or getting together with a friend I used to see regularly. And I’m left feeling like I’m drowning.
I can remedy that. I can take the sub jobs and I can call my friend. But I can also recognize that God is pulling me up and placing me in wide open fields where I can breathe and feel fulfilled. I can turn to God and regain the sense of being saved. I can rekindle the sense of being loved by a mighty God. It takes a little work on my part, but God is doing most of the work. I just have to be attentive to His workings and allow myself to feel His love.

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