Living Life for Christ Alone

  When suffering grows long… Pretense is cast away and the true colors of our faith are revealed. Questions surface, doubts speak, and endurance wears thin.  This is when we are purified by fire. How will we answer the questions?  How will we fight the doubts?  How will we keep going through the suffering when the endurance all but disappears?  The answer is simple. So simple in fact, that we easily overlook it.  We can’t. Our own resources are not enough to pull us through. And when we finally embrace that fact, we open ourselves up to One greater than our weakness.  He steps amid the rubble of our broken lives, sees the crushed self-will, the shredded self-confidence, the sense that all control is lost, and finds us in a place where He can do something with us.  For before the long season of suffering began, though we thought we had built up something He could use, He saw how we were trying to mix self in with His power. And He also saw the grea...

"'Has love no power to save apart from suffering? Why must love suffer at all, and why, above all else, must love suffer long?' "'It is because the very essence of love is oneness,' said the King.  "'That is why love must suffer. If the beloved creatures whom the Creator created for love's sake must suffer, then the oneness of love makes it impossible for Him to allow them to suffer anything which He is not willing to suffer with them.'"   (Mountains of Spices, Hannah Hurnard) //   "...The very essence of love is oneness..." This phrase has echoed in my mind many times this week.  It is impossible for our God to let us suffer without suffering with us. It is impossible for trials and pressures to squeeze us on every side without Him feeling those trials and pressures too.  And yet, how often do I try to handle them on my own?  Standing up under pressure without supernatural strength holding you can only last so long.  My own sou...

  "Who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God." (2 Corinthians 1:4) Comfort draws us to its source. And God's comfort is meant to draw us to Him. Maybe this is why comfort is something He does in all  tribulations we face. And maybe that is why comfort is something we can't keep to ourselves.  True comfort lifts our gaze far beyond our temporal experiences to our eternal reality. True comfort magnifies God in our hearts.  True comfort is heavenly, and it's a salve that truly heals.  Earthly comforts don't do this for us. They are far from lasting.  Well-meaning people encourage a pity party, which only lengthens the suffering and makes it more unbearable. Pity parties do nothing for anyone. Any comfort that turns my eyes inward will surely deepen whatever wound is there, for only God has the salve that heals. I can only make my wounds worse...

I often write to my soul in psalm-style, acknowledging the feelings and struggles that are there, but then proceeding to counsel my soul with truth. It is he or she who "speaks the truth in his [or her] heart" that is given a clearer glimpse of God. (Psalm 15).  With that being said, I will be posting on here some examples of what that looks like for me in hopes that they will encourage you that it is indeed possible to have a soul-full of feelings and a day-full of less-than-ideal circumstances and still walk victoriously because of who we are in Christ and where we stand before God.  I penned the one below this morning as I was processing through some challenges that I am going through lately.... Hope it lifts your gaze upward as it did mine!  “I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places, that you may know that I, the Lord, who call you by your name, am the God of Israel.” -Isaiah 45: 3   Oh soul, why do you struggle against being l...