Today was good. I cannot remember why. By four I was really tired again. I tried to just totally tune into God for a refresher while feeding the twins. When I walked to my first meeting after work, I concentrated on taking my time and speaking to Him. But I was looking forward to both of my meetings, and I did so enjoy them.
I have continued my quest of reading the epistles for clues as to how Paul persevered in serving God completely when his life was so unpleasant in the eyes of a modern American. There are loads of them.
On Sunday, I was serving a little bit longer than normal with people who were serving with me. At some point as the day rolled on, someone made the comment that someday we would laugh about this. But we already started to laugh about it, as we acknowledged that these times of somewhat unpleasant service would be what would bind us most closely together as a team. The good times would be amazing, but the hard times when we all pushed through to love each other and others would change us more.
Paul seemed to be an expert on learning to know God best in the hard times. If one of my friends received 40 lashes minus one once, I would be more than tempted to tell them to take a few weeks off resting to pray about whether that is what God really was calling them to do. Surely God couldn’t want that for their life!
When Paul said that nothing could separate us from the love of God, it wasn’t a memorized doctrine for him. It was experience.
A while back I had a conversation with God about how was He ever going to prepare me to do certain things. Some of which I am now doing. My question was something down the order of “God, how will I ever be the type of person who would do that?” or “God, how will I change enough to be able to do that?” The answer was “By doing it.” That is the only way I will have faith to live in step 12 is by living in step 12. Faith without works is dead. If I want to know God deeply enough to follow Him wherever He will lead me, I will have to follow Him where He leads. And a good lot of the times, I am going to be willing to live a life I am entirely unable to live.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,k neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. – Romans 8:35-39
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