Resurrection

As I have said before, I am reading the book, “Lord,Give Me a Heart for You” by Kay Arthur. I am always amazed when the Lord brings something into my life, whether it be a person or a book, that ministers to me right where I’m at. That has happened two times today; once with the book, and once with a conversation I had with my sister; both were balm to my soul. They showed me areas that I need to give up, areas that I need to let the Lord heal, and areas that I need to grow in. It’s times like these that I am completely caught off guard by Gods tender love for me. I know in my mind that the Lord cares deeply for me and that He is concerned with the trials that I face, but I have a hard time believing it when life gets hard. I have realized that I give the Lord a lot of lip-service, I don’t know if this is because I want to look better than I actually am, or if it is just a matter of human weakness; doing the very thing I do not want to do. Either way the Lord has shown me that I am adequate in Him, it does not come from myself. The word adequate has a lot of different connotations; capable, effective, competent, satisfactory, sufficient; I am ALL of these IN Christ. I am capable of answering His call to be effective in His work because He is sufficient to get me through; praise you, Father. When I find my adequacy in Christ I can persevere through the hardest storms. He breathes light into darkness and is faithful to do the same thing in a life that is surrendered to Him.

In John 12:24 Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds”

Kay Arthur says, “ Fruit is born out of death---death produces life”, I have always said that the Lord showed me this principle when Sam was born. We had gone through a year of loss; loss of a business which led to loss of a reputation, loss of everything we had worked hard to gain. It was a year of sadness and in the midst of it I found out I was pregnant with Sam, I was angry, I saw it as loss...a loss of freedom. The Lord was so faithful to show me, through my pregnancy, that where there is death there is resurrection. Sam was a way for us to know that God gives life, that He hears our cries, that He understands our pain, and that He is still in control. We gave him the name Samuel because it means God hears. He hears us and gives us what we need, even when we don’t yet realize it’s what we need.

Being in Africa is a different kind of death, it’s death of a life that I loved. It’s death of living in a community I knew, in a culture I understood. It’s death of comfort and peace of mind and many times laughter. But what I am learning is that Christ is worth it; This life hurts and lot of times I get angry, but God promises that life will come out of it. He has shown me that when there is death there is resurrection. I haven’t seen the light yet, I’m still searching for the resurrection, but I know God is faithful to give it. I just keep thinking of Sam and remembering that my God is about life.