Family & Friends,
It boggles my mind to think that God looked into the future, saw you and me and out of His great love for us, developed this mind bending plan to save us from ourselves. He has a big picture in mind and the way He goes about accomplishing His plans leaves me dumbfounded. His ways and thoughts are truly higher than mine!
2015 has been a perspective bringer for me! Starting a new job last December gave me a whole new vantage point to take a look at myself and this life God has given me. The transition in job has been difficult for me in several ways, difficult because it forced me (the positive spin would be enabled me) to take a look from a different vantage point at what kind of person, friend, sister, daughter, aunt, servant, leader that I am. God has also used people as He often does and new challenges to reveal Himself to me this past year. Much of what I’ve seen and realized has been a reminder that I desperately need a Savior and that is a good thing to remember.
I have spent most of my life in love with the Lord, desiring to serve Him, but I did have ideas of what that would look like. Guess what? It doesn’t look like what I thought and to be honest, I have wrestled with God about that.
I have struggled with what to do when life isn’t going how I want, when you keep waiting and hoping and there just doesn’t seem to be any give. What do you do with unanswered prayers, unfulfilled dreams or an ache in your heart that is always beneath the surface?
I am seeing a shift in my perspective with the Lord, it is changing the way I pray and the way I view my part of God’s big picture here on earth. With God’s help, I am learning to see beyond me. Don’t get me wrong, I struggle with getting over myself daily, but I want my life here on this planet, however, long that may be, to matter beyond my designated time slot. That means, I must defer to the one with the big picture, that means that my life is God’s story to write, even when it has unforeseen plot twists. It means that when God appears, unfair, unjust or unloving, I am using my limited perspective and not His eternal one.
It is my prayer for both myself and you that we will have the strength it takes to surrender those things we don’t understand to the One who does, that we will have a vision of life that goes far beyond ourselves, that what matters to the heart of God would be foremost in ours.
I am thankful for a God who has gone to such great lengths to show His love for you and I, who consistently demonstrates kindness and patience with my many failings and He doesn’t ask that I do it alone, He continually comes close. He is Immanuel, God with us! He is with me and you too, right in the middle of life. Life…beautiful and messy, sweet yet difficult, wonderful and hard.
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to You and Yours!
Denise
“For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
2 Corinthians 4:17&18
Neeserisms 