Redeeming Love
“Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”
1 Peter 5:8 (ESV)
It’s an encounter, it’s an experience, it’s a surrender. We put all our faith in the creator and our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. Our plans for our own life look straight and free of obstacles, while God’s plan is filled with hills and valleys’. Truth be told, we were not created to live a life separate from God. His plan is perfect despite the hills and valleys. It provides us growth, it grants us wisdom, we begin to understand. Come as you are, and let God transform you from the inside out.
“Where do I go from here?” newly baptized and waiting for God to give me the plan for my life laid out in black and white, but if you know God; he doesn’t give us the easy way out. I was excited to be born again to walk in alignment with Jesus, to continue on the path of redemption and continuously feel the joy that was restored, but I didn’t hear his audible voice like others were hearing him, as they were describing it. Truth be told, a month after my baptism, I was in the hospital getting ready to have emergency surgery from a perforated appendix that I thought was a strained abdomen muscle. A week before thanksgiving, I woke up in the middle of the night in unendurable pain. At this point in my journey, I barely knew scripture. The only verse I knew was Exodus 14:14 “The Lord himself will fight for you. just stay calm.” It is what I would use to help me fall asleep, battling the thoughts in my head, and now the pain I was going through. Looking back, I can confidently say that the closer I was getting to God the more I felt an attack on my life, and I know in this moment, that it was an attempt to faulter my faith because I was beginning to lay the foundation on how I was choosing to live my life. Surrendering to God and giving him all my burdens. A lot of my life, I felt alone and always second guessed myself when speaking to others on if I was too much. When I finally decided to call my family, friends, and coworkers, the amount of love, prayers, and protection I felt surrounding me in that moment shocked me in a sense that, I didn’t know what to do or say. When I woke up from surgery, I had a coffee waiting for me in my room that two of my good friends brought me (I wasn’t allowed to drink this coffee), and they came by the next day with another one. I am extremely grateful for the people I have in my life and I knew I had people who loved and cared for me. When I was living a life separate from God, I was blind, and giving into the ways of the world trying to consume things that I thought would make me feel satisfied in life, but in reality all I needed was a relationship with God, and my eyes were opened.
