09.25.12

I've been thinking a lot about the power of the God that I serve, the Lord that I love.

His goodness, love, and mercy are well-known. We hear about how He reaches out to the hurting and the outcast, and I love all that. But my heart has felt a little heavy lately and I'm realizing that I've lost the awe of how full of power He is; that there truly is no one like Him. Situations that seem impossible to me really aren't. It's so easy to be overwhelmed by the issues in the world and so my soul must continually be reminded that the world's problems, not matter how big or small, do not define or change who God is.

Max and I were talking about it this way the other night. Our generation seems to have this notion that our experiences determine reality and truth. What we can see, feel, and understand with our minds, that is real. Yet that is so not how God is. Our experiences of God do not sum up the entirety of who He is. Christ's disciples spent 3 years doing everything with Him, watching and listening, yet their understanding still fell so short of who He is and what He came to do. So how do we, who have had only glimpses of Him so quickly rush to say, "God can/would/should do this."

What I am saying in all of this is that Paul had it so right when he wrote in Romans 8,

"For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity [some translations say hostile] against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God."

I'm not talking about perfection or self-righteousness. I'm talking about relinquishing our minds to be ruled not by our own understanding, but by the Spirit of God.

Just another of those simple-yet-hardest-to-do challenges that God puts forth to His children.

Sidenote: 

I am totally impatient to meet our little Hanley Rose.