CHANGES

The past few months have found me and my life a bit topsy turvy.  I've moved trans-atlantically yet again, live in a new city, am studying in seminary and finding that I have changed so much and that my life now looks so much different from the life I've lived so far throughout my adulthood.


Over the past few weeks, I was thinking about how the Lord allows my life to take these twists and turns that I didn't expect, that He always uses to cause me to wait and depend on Him in new ways and force me to remember the reputation He has built for Himself of faithfulness and kindness.  He has kindly impressed upon me that in my waiting I'm pointed to and prepared in humility to look to and depend on God Himself alone and patiently wait for His good time and mercy.

I realize that my life looks different now than I would have imagined it last year and that at no point prior to that in the last 10 years did I plan or think that at this point in my life (having lived my dreams) I would once more be a full-time student, back in the US, sharing a room with another single woman, without the mobility of a car or reliable transit system, confined to the bubble of small campus life, with no income yet blessed by the resources and money He has provided (always enough and at the right time) to bring and keep me here and trusting, praying and waiting for Him to meet financial needs that I've never before felt.

I'm reminded once again of almost a year ago when I was waiting for guidance and direction on major life decisions.  After months of inner turmoil and confusion, I felt like I was hearing so many voices but not the one I needed, my Heavenly Father's.  I remember coming to a point and realizing that more than an answer I wanted Him, more of Him.  Not that I no longer NEEDED an answer, not that I no longer cared about it or doubted He'd guide.  But in telling Him that above all I desire to be nearer to Him and trusted Him to lead my love for Him deepened, along the way He opened my eyes to lies I'd believed and peace and truth that I'd never fully saturated.  I learned that my waiting wasn't so much about the gift, but the Giver and the truths He was cementing in my heart about Himself.

And of course, this points me to the truth of the Gospel.  We are all dependent on Him whether we acknowledge it or not.  We are all in need of what we cannot fabricate or provide for ourselves-righteousness because of our sin and ungodliness.  We all need Him to show us what we need and make us appreciate and gladly accept it-forgiveness of our sins by faith and trust in the substitutionary death of the only One who never sinned, evidenced as accepted by God by His resurrection 3 days later which gives us hope for the promises He gives us for new hearts, spirits and lives on this earth and one day when He returns to make all things new.  He has provided exactly what we need at just the right time.  Rom. 5:6 tells us "For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly". For those of us who trust and believe His provision of our greatest need of a Savior from sin when we ourselves were His enemies, simply because of His love for us, we know we can trust that He will and has provided everything we need here on earth as part of His new kingdom.  "He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?" Rom. 8:32.  Further, He will continue doing so to make us more like Him now in preparation for when He returns to complete the fulfillment of His promises, make everything right and fully establish His kingdom.   One of my favorite verses that reminds me of this is 2 Peter 1:3-4 "His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire."

I've recently been reading some devotionals from Andrew Murrray that have made me recall this and as I'm blogging again I'm inclined to share about some of the things He is reminding me and pointing out.  Today I was encouraged to read: "The waiting is to teach us our absolute dependence on God's mighty working, and to make us in perfect patience place ourselves at His disposal....Seek not only the help, the gift, thou needest seek: HIMSELF; wait for HIM.  Give God His glory by resting in Him, by trusting Him fully, by waiting patiently for Him.  This patience honors Him greatly; it leaves Him, as God on the throne, to do His work; it yields self wholly into His hands."

How patient and kind He is to gently and faithfully remind me of these lessons and my constant, never-changing need for a constant, never-changing, ever-loving Father.