Good Enough

For many of us, our biggest problem is that we don't like ourselves, and our skewed outlook makes it difficult for us to believe that God could possibly love us. 

For years I struggled with this problem. I spent at least 75 percent of my time trying to change myself, exerting double extra effort in all the things I do, adjust to everyone else, but all I really did was stress myself out while the devil constantly made me feel guilty by putting me down, telling me that this is lacking, ho come you never do this? Worst, even if I give my 150%, I never felt good enough.

Isaiah 53 tells us that when Jesus died for our sins, He also bore the guilt. He loved us so much that He paid the price so we wouldn't have to suffer with the terrible feelings of condemnation. If we go to God and sincerely ask Him to forgive us, He does, and there is no reason to live with condemnation.

God loves you, and He wants you to believe it and receive it all the time. He also wants you to be free from condemnation. But it takes faith and boldness to be free. God says you are good enough. Accept that today and live a life of victory.

God, Your Son has taken my guilt and punishment and made me good enough. I believe that today, and I refuse to live with the burden of condemnation. I ask for and receive Your forgiveness for my sins.

charmed life

I received a disturbing message from someone whom I'd met at a writer's workshop about two years ago.  She mentioned that she was living a 'pathetic cruel life' and went on to profess her continued love for an old colleague of mine. she ended her message with what to me sounded like a bitter note.   "Anyway, you're lucky. You seem to be leading a charmed life. Take care."  Honestly, I found this to be quite disturbing.  I mean, what does she know about my life?  What does anyone know about other people's lives?  The fact that I'm always smiling in my pictures isn't any evidence that I'm living a 'charmed life'.  I wish I did though, but very few people in this world can only be so fortunate.  I wouldn't want to encourage anyone to think of me that way either. However, I do confess that right now I am happy and contented with my life because I made a choice to be happy despite my own cobweb of personal dilemmas. I lived a very complicated life. No one's life is ever perfect.  Even Jesus' life wasn't perfect.  Only HE was perfect.  I like smiling for pictures.  I like dressing up.  I like new experiences.  I like discovering myself.  I like meeting people.  I like enjoying every happy moment in my life because maybe later on I might be less happy.  The point is, everyone's lives are different.  We all come from varied backgrounds and circumstances.  I have made it a practice not to be bitter, jealous, or remorseful of other people's lives because it won't make my life any better.  Once you start monitoring other people's steps you stumble on your own and end up wasting time.  Instead, we should just be contented with whatever is handed over to us and deal with every situation the best way possible without making silly excuses for every burden we encounter. God has a plan for all of us. We just need to be patient until we know what he in stored for us. For me, it was a tortuous path. My Cross then is one difficult I had to endure as a sign of my faithfulness and commitment to Jesus. These trials are given to use for us to realized something. It happened to me, I realized a lot of things not only with myself but as well as in life.

As my College prof said: "Your past does not determine your future".

Nothing is ever what it seems to be. NEVER ASSUME ANYTHING.  After all, don't we each have our own little stories to tell? 

God will be always there for us no matter how many times we fall or even how often we fall as long as we know how to stand up, God will always give us a second chance. We all commit mistakes. No one is perfect. It's a matter of accepting our faults and learning from it. God will always  give us opportunity to straighten out the bad choices we made.