A Difficult 10 Days

Since I went to the adoption/orphan care conference and felt a great conviction and calling, and surrendered myself to God to do anything for His purpose in my life, to trust Him wholly, and to be obedient to every word He speaks to me, I have been having very difficult days for 10 days now.  I have been trudging through each day trying to keep focused on God.  I felt the Holy Spirit speak to me in many different ways including: praise Him, be His disciple, He is Sovereign, trust God, stay obedient, ask others to pray for me.... But, last night I reached my limit that I felt like I was gonna blow and break.  I finally sat down and emailed the 10 people the Holy Spirit had asked me to share my convictions and vision with, and almost immediately I felt some of the weight lift off of me.  Today, I opened my Oswald Chambers book and stuck a piece of paper in it, and later when I picked the book up and took the paper out, the page it was on was exactly what I needed to hear.

"...keep our minds filled with the concept of God's control over everything, which means that a disciple must maintain an attitude of perfect trust and an eagerness to ask and to seek.  Fill your mind with the thought that God is there.  And once your mind is truly filled with that thought, when you experience difficulties it will be as easy as breathing for you to remember, My heavenly Father knows all about this!  Before you formed this concept of divine control so powerfully in your mind, you used to go from person to person seeking help, but now you go to God about it.  Jesus said there are times when God cannot life the darkness from you, but you should trust Him.  At times God will appear like an unkind friend, but He is not; He will appear like an unnatural father, but He is not; He will appear like an unjust judge, but He is not.  Keep the thought that the mind of God is behind all things strong and growing....Prayer is not only asking, but is an attitude of the mind...."  Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest - July 16 -.

God is at work in me.  He is convicting me, challenging me, changing me, showing me, and so much more.  I know that essentially my life is different and never will be the same again.  I see the work of satan in my life making me feel so overwhelmed.  I feel like there is so much resistance in my life right now, that I can't even function much less be obedient to the things I believe God has given me a vision for.  But, I have stayed steadfast in my mind and heart that I WILL stay obedient to Him no matter what.  And all these things that are bogging me down are really meaningless.  This has been so difficult!  Everyday I just want to go back to bed, close the door and cry.  I want to retreat from life and give up, but I know that in order for me to follow God's purposes in my life, I can not do that.  I must run this race to the finish, I must stand when there is nothing else I can do but just stand. 

The great thing is that every day I can see God at work in me and my life.  He has not left me, nor have I turned my back on Him.  I know I am growing stronger through this trying time.  And the encouragement from my friends and the Word of God that I keep running across the right passages, and the voice of the Holy Spirit in my life has kept me going.  He has sustained me.  He is sovereign in my life.  I am being sanctified to be His disciple.  My life is being rearranged.  And all this stuff is really tough.  But, I know that being a true Christian and striving to be His disciple is not easy.  I accept the challenge, I bind satan, and I will stay focused on my Lord and Saviour and allow His work to be done in me and through me and eventually it will fill me up and run over.  He's just gotta rid me of the junk and false thoughts in my life first.

I pray this is an encouragement for anyone going through trying times in their life right now.

My pastor's advice to me was: Pray. Have Peace. Plan. Have Patience.  I say: AMEN (so be it)