This past weekend, and even this past week has had a myriad of emotions, questions of God, and learning how he works.
Starting the week, I attended a conference the southwest Pastors and leaders conference I also got to meet up with a dear friend and spend some time with her and her family.
The conference was good, in some places convicting, I will likely cover my take always on a future article, or podcast.
However, coming back and dealing with the normal tiredness that comes from travel, and going in to a weekend, our house flooded do to a water pipe busting. By the end of this, we had an inch and a half of water cover over 90 percent of our house.
God protected us however, and we didn’t lose much save some papers and some cardboard boxes.
As it turned out, we had just bought some tickets to see Toby Mac in concert, and our pastor came to check on the flooding situation, and basically insisted that we go ahead and go.
While out of town I found that no matter how much I tried, my nerves were stretched to their breaking point, and I found myself asking How can I be a good witness for God when I keep screwing up?
I kept losing my temper, going off on people, and then feeling like crud every time it happened, because of the burning desire to serve him and show him to everyone I meet.
Yet, even in all this, in all the screw ups, the circumstances that seem to spin out of control, in all of it, I noticed something that is often written in the Bible, yet it is often forgotten.
2 Corinthians 12:9 NIV.
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.
Now, Paul wrote this from a prison cell, and he was asking God to get rid of a thorn in the flesh we don’t know what that thorn was, though many have ideas of what it might have been, due to other things he has written in other parts of the bible.
However, God said My grace will give you what you need for the day.
In other parts of the bible, it says that God has new mercies for us every morning.
What’s the point?
God won’t leave us to scrounge on our own, he has plans for us, every day, plans for us to walk in what he has laid out. Will we screw up? You better believe it, we are fallen creatures, who every day need his Forgiveness. And the fact is, that God every day will extend forgiveness because of his love for us, and his son’s death on the cross.
Yes, but what happens when I Sin?
Jesus covered that by his blood, so when we find ourselves struggling, because we did it again, even if we so hate that thing we did, it doesn’t mean that we are left to our own devices. Nor does it mean that we are too screwed up to be fixed. God won’t leave us to hang, he gets us even better than we get ourselves.
These are things that God is repeatedly teaching me as I walk with him. Some days I get it, other days, all I can taste is the guilt and failure of my sin and shame and even through this all, God’s love covers a multitude of Sins.
I am reminded of what God tells my husband Mike every time this topic comes up, sometimes Mike will ask God why he likes to hang around us humans? And God’s answer is so uniquely him, and yet I think it truly says it all. “I like fixer uppers.”
I hope this was helpful to you, take heart, God is not done with you, or me, or anyone who has named Jesus Christ as Lord and savior.
In Christ, Teresa Blaes.
