And this is Life...

So, some things have been coming my way lately that God has been using to challenge and refine my idea of living. My schedule has been thrown off and I've had to take things a little easier than I would like to, especially in the midst of the storm of dead week and upcoming finals. I experienced stuff that has made me feel like I am outside the sphere of life, on the outside looking in. It's as if I've been watching everyone else scurry about in serving the Lord in their lives in various ways and there I was uselessly sitting on a top shelf. But these are lies and not the beautiful Truth that comes forth from the lips of my Lord. Today I spent some time in Beck Chapel just praying and reading and God spoke some beautiful words to me. He brought to my mind John 14:6: Jesus answered them, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life and no one comes to the Father except through Me." Yeah, God, I know that you are Life. But He wanted to share with me some specifics. So in my private thoughts to Him I wrote: Nothing I do, say, think, or feel gives me life or makes me alive...not the blood in my veins, the breath in my lungs, the beat of my heart, nor the thoughts of my mind constitute my vitality. Jesus, You have given me life through the sacrifice of Your own. So that even if my heart stops beating, my breath ceases, or my mind fails, I still have life eternally in You. Praise to the Lord for He is good. How beautiful is that!

[And you He made a l i v e, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us a l i v e together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.--Ephesians 2:1-7]

Doesn't this bring new meaning to the idea of death losing its sting? Jesus has killed death for all those who believe in His name. Believers can now no longer be dead nor can we ever die because even leaving this earth means that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. |2 Cor 5:8|

Oh how the Lord blessed me today with joy through the hope that is His Son, Jesus Christ. Despite how I feel, physically or emotionally, I am living the fullness of Life through Him who saved me by His grace. This is Jesus and this is Life...