Monday, January 31, 2011

Choosing Faith

Tonight I chose faith.
I found out tonight that, yet again, I am not pregnant.It has been half a year since Tyler and I started trying and I honestly never thought it would take this long. As I cried in my husband's arms, fear and hopelessness started to creep back into my heart. Lies that I have been fighting throughout this whole journey are now trying to become my reality again. I gave myself a good hour to cry and voice my fears to the Lord. Voice my frustrations and just be honest with what was going on in my heart. Will I be able to have babies and if not, why the deep desire to be a mom. Seem a little over dramatic? Maybe, but those thoughts have been a fight in my heart since day one of trying. I started down the path of asking why others were getting pregnant so fast and why did they deserve that blessing? Pride was creeping in and entitlement was quickly blinding me. I deserve this, right? But I had a choice to make in my heart last night. A choice to let my sin of faithlessness put a wedge between me and my Lord or a choice to be a faithful servant of a good and sovereign God. I was reminded of a sermon I listened to a couple weeks ago. The sermon was about trusting God and building faith in the hard times. That my God is a God who knows eternity and is looking for a people to remain faithful to Him because He is the Author and Finisher of  life. To trust that He knows what is best for my life. I want to be that people. I want my Saviour to call me faithful.
So, tonight I chose faith.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Faith and Trust

In church on Saturday we were asked what our prayer requests were. As soon as the question was asked, faith and trust rang in my heart. Now I know that those two are like blanket-sweep prayer requests that every Christian seems to ask for, but it is so lacking in my heart. Faith and trust in my Saviour should be the DNA of my life and should be a part of every thought and decision I make because He deserves NOTHING less. But so often I find myself trusting my own strength and wisdom rather than His. My fear of not being in control paralyzes me into self-reliance. A self-reliance that hardens my heart, ruins relationships and draws me away from the unconditional love of my Father.
I have been a Christian now for almost 20 years and yet I struggle every moment of the day of the concept of my Saviour's love. I know we will never fully grasp it until we live on the other side of Glory, but how can it be? How is it that such a perfect God would love such a wretch like me? It is so backwards. I struggle to get out of the mind set that there is some way to earn that love everyday. Read my Bible more, give more of myself, pray more and the list goes on. Though all of those to-do's are good and a vital part of my faith, it is not an equation that earns me more or less of Christ's unconditional love. He died for, all of me. He died for the good, the bad and the ugly of Kaci, once and for all. In my 20 years of following Christ I feel like I have known all of that with my head, but I am now asking that it would transfer to my heart. I want to be fully rooted in the love of my Father. I want to know the pride He takes in me and that those feelings towards me have not and will never change.
So for now, I pray for trust. Trust that the God that created me in His image adores and loves what he created in me. And faith. Faith that stands firm in my saviour matter what may lie ahead.