Day 19 of 31 Days of Chasing THE Light

-
Forward Light



“But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,  I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” ~Phil. 3:13-14 ESV




I don’t know about you but I can live in the past sometimes. I can start to define who I am by my past mistakes. But I don’t want to live in the past. I want to move forward because I am not defined by my past. He doesn’t see me as a failure – even if I feel like I am. But, we are all failures if we are honest. 

This social media world we live in today can make me feel like a big failure.  Especially if I start to compare myself with everyone’s “highlighted reel.” Steven Furtick says, “The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.”

I didn’t finish college. I dropped out after my 2nd year. Fear, for the most part, is why I didn’t finish. I let fear overtake me and thought that I couldn’t handle it. I got in with the wrong crowd and was a scared teenager. So, I dropped out because I didn’t think I could recover from my mistakes and went home…where I felt safe. 


I could focus on dropping out and think of myself as a failure or I could focus on the fact that by leaving college it led me to Blacksburg, Va – to my husband. It led me to nursing school. It led me to having two beautiful children. To truly finding Jesus. To my photography/blog.  To being thankful and grateful for everything in my life today. That is falling forward.

Focusing on what I don’t like about my past or my mistakes means I am lost. Lost in the present and stuck in the past. It means I have taken my eyes off of Jesus and turned around. Sure, we can learn from our past…but to stay there does nobody any good. God doesn’t remind us of our mistakes so why do we? I must choose to look at myself through the lens of Jesus. I must choose to lean into Him and focus on how He sees me.
 

Sometimes we have to go through the fire to get to the joy.
 
When I start to forget who I am and whose I am – I remember that in Christ, I am:

            *God’s Masterpiece (Eph. 2:10)
            * Forgiven (Eph. 1:7)
            *A new creature (2 Cor. 5:17)
            * Strong in the Lord (Eph. 6:10)
            *Accepted in Christ (Eph. 1:6)
            * Loved with an everlasting love (Jer. 31:3)
            * Overtaken with blessings (Deut. 28:2)

Today, when we are tempted to look back…root down into His promises so that we can rise up to His grace. Let’s move forward shinning our light knowing whose we are.
 

write31days.com


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Worry? Proverbs 31 OBS Blog Hop

-
Image
  This week's blog topic from Proverbs 31 OBS is on “Worry”… AND I know a thing or two about worry.  I’m betting a lot of you reading this do as well.  Dictionary.com defines worry as: “ to torment oneself with or suffer from disturbing thoughts; fret. ” Torment oneself.  Suffer.  Fret.  That’s what I can do to myself sometimes.   I’ve heard that if you worry you don’t really trust that God can handle it.  You don’t trust God with it.  That’s hard to swallow for me.  Because I worry about my kids, my family, me, friends, etc.  But I’m in the Bible every single day.  I am a Jesus girl.  So for me to worry and then see that my worry means I don’t trust that God can handle it is hard.  UGH.   I am getting better about it though.  My time with God every morning is helping.  When I start to worry about something…I begin to pray.  I stop the tormenting in it...
Read more

A Raging Battle.... Proverbs 31 OBS Blog Hop

-
Image
On Sunday of this week, we started a new online Bible study with Proverbs 31!  I am so excited because I love anything Proverbs 31!  Our study this time around is by one of my favorite authors, Lysa TerKeurst….and her book, Made to Crave !  I have read this book already and it is amazing.  If you want to jump in on the study…please do!  Go here to sign up:  http://proverbs31.org/online-bible-studies/ This week for my blog topic I picked “A Raging Battle”   because food is not something I crave more than God…I crave other things.  God has shown me some things that I crave more than Him and it’s not pretty.  “My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord ; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.”  Psalm 84:2 For three years now I have been doing a 365 photo a day blog and last year I started writing every Thursday about my faith and whatever was on my heart.  I felt...
Read more

Palms Up! { Day 220 }

-
Image
This week, I started a new Bible study with Proverbs 31 on a book called “What Happens When Women Say Yes to God” by Lysa TerKeurst….and I’m excited for this study.  Really Excited!!   I haven’t always said Yes to God…in fact I have ignored Him and said no to Him a lot in my life.  Makes me sad to think of how many times I have been blind to all He has for me or to all the times He has tried to lead me in a different direction.  Fear and lack of confidence have always held me back from saying YES to Him.  Sometimes I think that I know which path is better for me to take and sometimes I feel like I could do it better.  Ouch!  Or sometimes I just feel like its too scary and I don’t like change too much.  Lysa TerKeurst talks in her book, “What Happens When Women Say Yes to God” about “Surprise Parties” and how it must break God’s heart when He has planned something for us and we are too tired to notice, too blind to see or we...
Read more