Tuesday, July 12
If we let Him, can God take our faults and flaws and leave them in us but at the same time use them to His glory? I hear so often about how we need to identify our faults and give them to God, presumably so He can remove them from our lives. But what if He chooses to leave some of those flaws because they make up part of who we are? And what if He gave us those very flaws for certain reasons that only He can know to be used by Him for His purposes?I worry. Everyone who knows me even a little knows that. I worry. It's one of my biggest challenges to a spirit-led life, or so I've always assumed.
Worry weighs us down; a cheerful word picks us up. Proverbs 12:25 The Message
I like that these phrases are paired together in this scripture. Worry does weigh me down and make me anxious. And cheerful words do pick me up. I realized this morning, though, that the bridge between the two phrases - for me - is very often God himself.
I worry some during the day, but usually I'm too busy doing the things of the day that need doing (including the daily rant that we live in a pigsty and that if my boys would pick up anything - anything at all - maybe we could fix that). It's at night that I worry the most. Something will wake me up while the rest of the house is asleep and quiet, and then, I'm a bundle of worries.
I worry about logical things and illogical (Mike prefers these because he says those worries are more easily talked away). I worry for me and mine and for other people. I worry, sometimes, about how much I worry.
And then I pray. In those still moments when it's just me and my fears, I pray. I take each of them to God for as long as it takes for a calm to wash over me and sleep to take me. My worrying - the act of it - takes me to God, which is where I need and want to be anyway. So does that make it okay? Does it make worry a personality trait rather than a flaw? I'm not at all sure.
But I do know that when I share them all with Christ, I feel calmer, more peaceful. Encouraged. And that's good enough for me, at least for now.
[ posted by Chel on Tuesday, July 12, 2005 ]
[ 1 comments ]
1 Comments:
I worry, too, Michele. Oh, do I worry!!! And I wish I didn't. Maybe one day I won't.
Or maybe it's my "thorn in the flesh" and something that God will use to His glory...that's a reassuring thought...to think that He will use the things that I despise most about myself to touch others' hearts!
