So, I really should be doing homework right now… but I can’t focus on it because I feel like I need to write instead. It’s been a feeling that has slowly been growing over the past week or so. Anyway, I was scrolling through facebook as my son was passed out on me and I came across a verse that Steven Furtick posted. It’s Mark 8:34… I pulled out my Bible to read the verses before and after to get a little more context and I would like to share if you wouldn’t mind…
Mark 8:31-38 “Then Jesus began to tell them that the Son of Man must suffer many terrible things and be rejected by the elders, the leading priests, and the teacher of the religious law. He would be killed, but three days later he would rise from the dead. As he talked about this openly with his disciples, Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things. Jesus turned around, and looked at his disciples, then reprimanded Peter. ‘Get away from me, Satan!’ he said. ‘You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s‘ Then calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, ‘If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my message in these adulterous and sinful days, the Son of Man will be ashamed of that person when he returns in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.‘”
This passage. How many times have I read it and I just saw the words, but didn’t really grasp the meaning? Jesus speaks so point blank to his disciples. He tells them like it is… he doesn’t sugar coat the hard times that are to come. It actually brings me a lot of comfort knowing that I follow a God that will tell me like it is. He will do literally the impossible to save my soul. He went through Hell and back FOR ME. I follow a God that will remind me of all the things he did for me… he will discipline me and slap my hand when I step out of line. In this passage He is beginning to prepare his disciples for what is going to happen to him, and to them as well. He is basically saying, “even though you are following me right now and everything seems to be going great… this is going to get really hard… and at times it’s really going to suck. There will be times that you are going to want to throw in the towel because the pain and suffering is just too hard to bear, but you have to take the good with the bad. You have to take up your cross and move. You have to follow me no matter what. Don’t just look at the shattered pieces of what you thought your life would look like. Don’t look at what you have lost. Look at the big picture that I’m trying to accomplish. Look at me.”
This past year my life completely shattered. All the hopes and dreams of what I thought I was going to have… broke into a million pieces right before my eyes.
My soul was crushed.
Everything shifted.
God took everything that I was banking my dreams on and took them away.
I had taken my eyes off of him.
I stopped carrying my cross.
BUT GOD. My two most favorite words. God is taking my shattered life, and he is turning it into a treasured gift. He is changing my perspective. He is showing me that what I thought was a worthless paperweight…is actually a very valuable gift. We have to walk through these valleys in order to experience what God intended for us all along. God never intended for us to see the big picture… that’s His job. If I knew 13 years ago that I would be in the position that I am now, I would NOT have signed on the dotted line. But God knew. God knew that I would struggle with trusting him, and that I would go through depression, and feeling unworthy and less than… He knew that I would try to fix it all on my own and trust my own humanness instead of him. And by doing that I lost who I was. My own life became the paperweight.
I am re-learning that the only opinion that matters is God’s opinion. I am re-learning to trust him moment by moment. Am I afraid of what the future is going to bring? Oh hell yes I am, but I know that I have God on my side. Even when I am uncertain of what tomorrow will bring… God’s got this. He is there helping me to carry that cross. He let me carry my cross alone because I refused to let him, and it got really heavy. I let my pride get in the way of who God wanted me to be. I have a long way to go to learning how to carry my cross again because I never want to be in this place again. I never want to lose myself again. It’s one of the most lonely roads. So, I’m going to follow Jesus with every fiber of my being and know without a shadow of a doubt what it means to live abundantly in Him. I’m going to allow him to put all those shattered pieces back together and make my soul whole once again.
A Caffeinated Mama 