Faithfulness

Happy Fourth of July!

Today most of America is firing up the grills, heading to parades and getting their blankets ready for dusk to catch lightning bugs and watch the fireworks. I'm not entirely sure what I will get into today, I have a few things I'd like to do but honestly if all I did was watch the fireworks from the top of my street that would be okay with me :). Here's what I did last July 4th, not sure that picture will leave my head today.

If I could sum up what God's been teaching me these past few weeks in one phrase it would be that He is faithful. I've been reading through some of the old testament stories: Hosea, Joel, and I'm part-way through Amos and it's been amazing to see how through all the books God is using whatever situations His people are in to draw them back to Him. Most of the situations that his people are in are one's that they have brought upon themselves by living selfishly and desiring to live as if from this world. He doesn't like how they are acting and how their hearts are so against Him, but He never ever leaves them and continues to desire to have their whole hearts and lives. The same goes for us too. No matter what situations we have going in our lives at any given moment God is faithful through them and is working in and through it all- that's pretty incredible stuff! He is faithful.

This past week I started reading through a book called "This Momentary Marriage" by John Piper. It's a book about the biblical vision and purpose of marriage, so far it's really opened my eyes a lot to how vastly different the world's view of marriage is from God's original purpose for it. So far in the book Piper has made two points the build the foundation of what a biblical view of marriage is: It is God's design, and it is for God's glory- it is a display of His glory. It is a picture of how we as a believing body are the bride to Jesus, our bridegroom.
We are sinful, self-centered people yet God sent his sin-less son to die so we could spend eternity with Him. God sacrificed something so dear to Him for us because He was willing to do whatever it took to have us as His children.

"Christ will never leave his wife. Ever. There may be times of painful distance and tragic backsliding on our part. But Christ keeps his covenant forever. Marriage is a display of that! That is the ultimate thing we can say about it. It puts the glory of Christ's covenant-keeping love on display." - John Piper

Marriage is to put His covenant-keeping faithful love on display. He is faithful.

In church, the pastor has been going through the book of Judges. Today we went through chapters 8-9 which talked about Abimelech and Gideon- the main point of the message was that our choices have consequences but God does not just sit and watch us bring our lives to shambles from our selfish living- but continues to draw us near to Him, to call us to turn to Him. He is faithful.

Yesterday afternoon I went to visit family in New Jersey with my parents. On the car ride over I had quite a bit of time to think. I thought about how faithful God has been in my life and how he has turned every situation for His good. I thought about how he perfectly pieced things together when I was very young to lead my parents to send me to a daycare run by a church, which we eventually ended up attending. It was where I learned about Christ, and without it who knows what my life would be like today and if I would even know His truth.I think about high school and college and the situations I've been in- they haven't all been easy and most certainly I would not want to repeat many of them but God used them for His glory, he never left and he turned it all for His purposes and there is no regrets in Him. When I look back on my life I see God's hand. I see how He has been faithful, he has known what He's doing and it's all worked out for His good. Thinking through the lives of the people closest to me, I see it too. He is faithful.

It's so amazing to think about how different life would be if even one thing would have been different, if one piece was missing. I'm so grateful for all that God has done in my life for every experience and for how He's molding me to be more like Him. We serve a mighty God and words can't express all He is and all He's done and is doing.

Know today that God's hand is faithfully working in your life for His good. Each experience is just a brushstroke in the magnificent painting He's making out of our lives, and whole painting just a small paint splatter in His GRAND masterpiece.