Trying Harder to do better

My writing has been consumed with being independent, self reliant, pulling up your boot straps or receiving Gods love, grace and mercy and obedience comes effortless, willingly and easy.  God is teaching me a new thing.  It has been coming for awhile but this morning, today I am seeing it clearly (I think?).  I know there are many ways to living this Christian life in faith even though I have focused on the overflowing of faith and love through being with God in great joy!  I am going to write now on trying harder to do better.  The one thing I have talked against for so long.  But as I search the mind of God I see this still can be a life of faith, of dependence and reliance on Him.

This last week has been a sequent of events much like a roller coaster and my emotions have been drug along with them.  God has done some amazing things and I have been so very pleasantly surprised by His grace.  I have been filled with love and thankfulness and peace.  There has been extreme happiness and the feeling of complete failure and even struggling with hopelessness.  There has been faith, fear and doubt.  There has been pride and humility, the unknown and the surety, questions with no answers and answers with questions.  Feeling alone and scared and feeling supported and loved.  Yesterday I had a headache most of the day and slept off and on.  Today I am feeling a little teary and melancholy and wanting to go back to bed.  I have rested in the arms of my Father.  Talked to my best Friend.  Listened to the Spirit and so I am here, at this place, now.

Lee and Sarah called me from Charleston and can't wait to come back and have me cook a meal for them which delights my very soul.  Jennifer has flown out early this morning to go get the kids and come back today with them and I couldn't be happier about that.  But my body and my emotions are still wanting to crash.  I don't have energy.  I can't say I have a lot of peace and joy that Paul speaks about it all circumstances.  I am not troubled necessarily I am just drained.  I think well it has been some more week.  It is natural to feel the effects of it all give yourself grace and I am.  But the fact remains I have got to get moving, which is a wonderful thing for me right now.  I have got to try harder to do better.  I have got to get going when I don't feel like it.

Sometimes faith is hard.  Sometimes it is pulling up your boot straps and saying I can do this.  The difference is because I know God is with me.  He will provide the strength I need.  I just need to begin. 

I think of times a father or mother has to get up and go to work when they don't feel like it.  When they have to get up with the children and feed and take care of them.  When the addict has to say no one more time when their body is craving the substances.  When you have to forgive and do acts of love when it just isn't in your heart at the time.  When you have to do things you don't want to do for someone because maybe it grosses you out or you had rather be resentful toward them than to love and serve them.  Sometimes faith is hard.  Working out your salvation can be work.  It is doing what you do not want to do for no other reason than you love Jesus.  Yes you have to make yourself do the impossible thing knowing the One who makes the impossible possible will show up.  His name is Jesus.

When you step out trusting God will show up, even when things are really hard for you it is still depending on Him.  It is a test of your faith and trust that because He was there for you in the past He will be there for you in the present and the future.  That your heart will come along.  He will change it.  The power will be there.  The parachute will open if you just jump out of that plane.  My dad was a paratrooper and he told me about men they had to push out the door of the plane yelling and screaming because they were so terrified and didn't know if the shoot would open.  This is different.  You jump out of the plane because you know the chute will open.  You know God and His Spirit will come through even though it does not feel like it right now.  We are told to trust and obey.  Sometimes I think it is obey and trust.  You don't have that grace you need at this very moment but you know it will come.  In AA they say you have to fake it til you make it.  You know if you keep resisting that next drink at that moment there will come a day, two, then three where you have made it.  It is one step at a time sometimes.

I think this is one way our faith grows.  It is a way God stretches us beyond what we can do.  We are put to the test but He is the one who pulls out the miracle.  It has been said don't question in the darkness what He has shown you in the light.  It is still true whether you feel like it or not.  So I am going to make myself get up.  Go finished the kids rooms, take a shower, see if a friend can walk and go to the store hoping God puts the air beneath my wings on the way.  That somehow, someway I will start to fly.  That my parachute opens.