Every Morning…

What do we know about every morning? We know that the sun will rise and be visible to all who have their eyes open – yes there are days where the sun is blocked from its full glory by some clouds, but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t come out right? Exactly… sometimes we fail to see God’s glory because it is being blocked by some clouds in our life. Sometimes we put those clouds there and sometimes we just allow them to hover over instead of reaching up and out for His face. Lamentations 3:21:-23 tells you to have hope and promises us that His mercies are new every single morning, and may not be consumed and that His compassion will never fail us. So remember, every morning, as the sun rises, His love and mercies are afresh and anew, waiting to see your face and hear your voice, waiting for you to say Good Morning Father, I am here today ready for you. He will come and scoop you up and cover you with His wings, giving you the strength and wisdom you need for that day. Something else I just thought of – think about how soft, gentle and beautiful the sunrise is – it gets brighter and brighter as the day continues. Instead of just, BOOM!, here is the light – now wake up!!! No, it comes progressively so and ever so gentle, and if you catch the first early spark of it, you will be amazed how it is different each and every single day, almost more beautiful than the next. That is exactly how His love, mercy and grace are towards us .He knows that we go through different things every day and that we need a different setting everyday to help us adjust and then conquer in His Name. Man, what an awesome and creative God we have! I hope this post brightened up your day and was a solid reminder of how awesome and big His love is for us! Also, the picture was taken by yours truly on an early morning when I used to have to work a 9-5.

Let Your Mess Become a Message

{Inspired from Joyce Meyer’s devotional, “A New Day, A New You, Let Your Mess Become a Message”}
2 Corinthians 3:18

Let’s Face it : When there is a big mess in our lives, we never really want to look at us – but we are usually really quick to pointing the finger at someone else or some excuse as to why this did or didn’t happen. It’s not easy to see where or how the mess really came about, but it’s important to acknowledge it and own it – own the fact that it is you. I know what you’re probably thinking, “What?? You’re saying there’s something wrong with me – what kind of inspirational post is this?!”… But quite the contrary my friends. This feeling and action is beyond normal, but this unfortunately can become a crutch to our growth and joy in life. I am speaking from experience on SO many levels here that are fresh and recent, things I wish that I didn’t have to admit, but admitting and acknowledging them has helped me improve in those areas greater than I could have ever imaged, and it was all, and still is a daily process. I used to be very defensive of just about anything personal. My father and brother have been a great influence on how to think before I react in a lot of those situations. A lot of the time, I would think that if I did something wrong, it was because there is something wrong with me, or that they thought I was dumb or incapable –  but really they, God, were just trying to help me and show me that they think and believe the exact oppostie.

Once you see that, it makes a world of a difference on how you move forward in that area. What did we allow in our hearts, in our lives, to make this so? How long have we been living this way?

Don’t get me wrong, God will gladly and can easily clean up your mess but what good is it if you keep doing the same thing, over and over, and over again – and not learn anything? I tell my son all the time, if you make the mess you have to fix (clean) it. His number one response is, “But that’s going to take too long mom”, or “It’s too hard”. I usually am too quick to respond, ‘Well you should have thought of that before’. Now, I know that is not how God works, but I am dealing with a 6 year old boy that needs to learn how to do things on his own and to think before he does the same thing again and makes a bad habit out of this. One thing’s for sure – God has certainly reminded me about His Grace when it comes to my son and how I can teach him spiritual promises and life lessons in simple things, step by step. So I tell my son to clean the mess and I see how far he gets and then help him finish it off. I have been finding that he sometimes gets quite overwhelmed in the process and I tell him that he can have a break, and then go back to what he was doing, this seems to always help. I check on him from time to time to see how I can help or guide him. One thing that I have noticed is that the more organized the room is in it’s structure, the easier the clean up is and less overwhelmed he feels. My overall goal with my son is to not make him feel bad or incapable of keeping a clean room, but exactly the opposite. I want him to feel and know that he is very capable, and to that it is important to build that character in him. For him to know that it’s OK and that I will be right there the whole time, cheering him on and hoping he will grow from this process and handle things differently next time. That is exactly what God wants for us and how He feels about us! He created us and knows how we can be, He loves us and  in Hebrews 5:12-14 he tells us that He wants us to grow and not stay a child forever!We will always be His children, but how long will we allow ourselves to stay the same age forever?

It’s funny how easy and quick it is to make a big mess and then how quickly it can seem like an never ending task to clean up. I absolutely feel that way when I let things get too far in my room/house/life, and when that does happen – and trust me it does – I have to clean and organize things one section, area or room at a time. Otherwise I will not do it right and will for sure feel overwhelmed, and do things half way and then give up until next time or pull the classic not knowing of where I put things because I did it just to do it. Do I ask for God’s help in this area? Absolutely! It’s because of His Grace and Mercy that I can and do! His Love is already readily available for us but He wants us to know that it is important to see is how did this happen??

Here is the Key Factor: God did not do this to us – not to teach us a lesson, not to make us a better person, not to make us see that we need Him in all things that we do. 100% no He was not the one to cause a mess in our lives. 100% yes we do need Him in our lives and He is our ultimate love and life source, but WE, us humans, are the ones that started it all. Yes, it is not always us that caused these things to happen in our lives, but when that is the case, we need to see that and not beat ourselves up about it. We always have choices in life, and we have been blessed to do so – to not live like a robot or a slave just because God “said so” – God wants us to know that we have freedom. That we can get to the point of listening to our hearts, to His voice and not our flesh, to get to the point where we say to ourselves, “Should I take out ALL these ‘toys’ right now, or just a little at a time?”, “Should I spend my money on this thing, or should I pay my bill?”, “Should I eat this fatty, sugar coated donut right now instead of a fruit or just a bite?”. The list goes on of what choices we can make every day to have an overall affect on something bigger.

Here’s the Kicker: How long have we been making these ill decisions in our lives to get to the point of a messy “house”? Things don’t just happen overnight – one room might – but not your life. It may feel that way, but usually it is definitely something that has been happening for a long time. And if this thing has been happening for a long time, what makes you think its going to be a quick fix? As we all know, quick fixes are really just temporary patches waiting to explode. But if we give it all to Him, and know and believe everyday that He is working on it and working on and in us to make quality decisions everyday, then we can start seeing the light – but we have the believe that light is there before we can even see it. We have to have faith that He can turn our mess into a message.

This is where you start growing. Understanding and seeing where this all started, and again – I must stress – do not beat yourself up on this. That is not the God kind of love, the God that is on our side is gentle, loving, patient and caring. He is The All Mighty, All Knowing and All Loving parent that believes in us and wants us to see that we do need Him, and through Him great things will happen. And when we do “see” this – boy oh boy – get ready! Before you know it, you’re going to feel like Clean House from TLC came up in your life! You’re going to feel like you barely did any of the work, because you realized that you were not alone in this process and know that you are not alone in this process moving forward. So let your mess become your message – and not just for you – for others around you! It will be evident that God is there with you and that you have built your house on a solid Rock!