Amazing Grace

I haven't blogged in FOREVER!  I also feel like I haven't heard from God in forever, too.  Now that life is a little more 'manageable' for us, I guess I've wandered away from God's presence.  When our trials were raging full force I was reading my Bible every day.  I remember reading about the Israelites and God's big huge blessings on them, His obvious hand in their lives, the way He constantly saved them from their enemies.  Then just a short time later they would be turning their backs on Him and "abandoning the Lord."  At the time I was thinking, "How in the world could they do that?!"  Now, I look at myself and am amazed that I am no better than the Israelites.  I feel I need God when life is falling down around me, but when He helps put my feet back on steady ground, I wander off...assuming I've got everything under control.

Luckily, I've began to catch that trend in my life and have recently put a stop to it.  I'm not going to wander so far off that we fall off the path again.  I'm making my way back to God who is still standing in the same place He was standing when I wandered off.  God continues to put the story of Jonah in my life.  It keeps popping up everywhere. So, I'm going to have to examine that further and see what He is trying to tell me from that story.  Expect a blog sometime when I figure that out in some "Aha!" moment.

The other day I was reading in Judges about Samson.  What a mighty strong man he was, but what a jerk as well.  He had wandered SO terribly far off the beaten path.  But God still used him in a mighty way.  The footnotes in my Bible state, "In spite of Samson's evident failures, the Spirit's presence was powerfully at work in him."  Despite myself, my sinfulness, my lack of motivation, my irritability, etc, God can still use me to accomplish what He needs to accomplish.  I want to strive to be more filled with God.  I'm a human and I'm going to mess up, but luckily God gives me grace for those times in my life.  He knew ahead of time that Becky was going to need tons of grace.  The Israelites were going to need tons of grace.  You were going to need tons of grace.

Amazing grace.  How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.