You are meant for greatness. You have a God given purpose and are loved beyond measure by the creator of the Universe. When life’s circumstances get hard and painful I have trouble believing this. I question if those around me can still see it in my day-to-day life. This year was not an easy one, I made it more difficult than it should have been. 2018 left my faith hurting and doubting God’s love and purpose for me in many ways.
2019 is a year of returning to God’s love and purpose for me. As I have wrestled with aspects of my faith and His plan for me through the disappointments and unmet desires, I have also watched as God continued to work through me in a lot of ways to show Himself to others. I’ve hosted a small women’s bible study in my home weekly. I’ve shared Jesus and who He is and His love for each of the women in my living room week after week, yet I doubted it more and more for myself. I think God gave me those very women to help me see Him and my purpose when it was the hardest for me to see past my pain and disappointments. As the year drew to an end I read the story of Lazarus and two versus really struck me,
John 11:5-6 “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.”
As I read these words something deep inside me stirred and felt the heat rise to my face and tears well up and run hot down my face. It says he loved them but then he waits. He doesn’t come when they are feeling so desperate and so hurt. He waits. I know we all know how this story ends. Jesus ends up raising the dead. The miracle is so worth the wait and the pain but it could not happen without the waiting.
It can be so hard to trust God’s love and plan for me in the pain and waiting. I have to hold on to the truth that He does love me and He is working. I don’t know what my miracle will look like, what he will do in my life with my dreams and desires. I do know that the same Jesus that cried with Mary and Martha and loved them deeply also rose their brother from the dead. He did more than they could have ever have asked for or imagined but it took some pain and some waiting to get there. That is the God we serve, one of love and purpose. Yet, He is still God, therefore I will not alway understand His way. The God who loves Mary and Martha in this passage of scripture, the one who cries with them even though He knows what is ahead. He holds them and hurts with them and ultimately does something better. That is the God I want to remember and hold tight to each day of 2019.
God’s love language is obedience. That sounds so horrible to me, but when I actually live it out it’s so merciful and loving, His ways are always so much better than my own. I’m both terrified and excited for the journey and excited to bring you all along with me. I pray that your 2019 is also filled with choices that lead with His love and that we can see many more miracles in 2019.
John 14:12-13 “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in my will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even grater things than these…And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”