Renewal

The Lord has been so faithful. Even faithful to keep me from my sin. I don't know how He did it, but He has prevented my path from my usual sins. Thank You Lord. I can only imagine that it is in answer to many prayers, it is His pursuance of me in my life and it has been some of the conscious decisions to look for Him and pray for Him instead of engaging in my sin pattern.

I have renewal this morning. I don't know how it came, maybe it was from last night's sleep, maybe it was from listening to this podcast last night, hearing how the Duggars so immerse themselves in the Word and genuinely walk with the Lord.

This morning I was reading in my Bible from John. Jesus was saying "I am the light of the world, whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." 8:12 Whoa, that's a pretty hefty statement. He is calling Himself THE light, saying if you don't want to be stumbling around, you need to follow me. Scriptures like this one grab my attention, Christ is the only way. He is the only truth, He is the only life. Jesus wasn't just some good man, He made audacious statements like that. I wonder what it was like to be a Jewish leader and listen to this son of a fisherman make these claims. I bet it was angering, frustrating. And then Jesus had to go do stuff like make a blind man see or raise a little girl from the dead with hundreds of witnesses. Not only were His miracles undeniable but His teaching was astounding. What confusion He created.

I'm thankful that I have the privilege to see the whole picture. Well, at least the whole about Jesus. I get to see all these things in light of the cross and the resurrection and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. I still wrestle with Jesus about things that happen in my life, over some of His teachings, but I know that He is the One who paid the penalty for all of my sin. His sacrifice on the cross gave me new life. He is the soon coming King and He will bring the world into judgement someday, no one knows the day or the hour, but He will come... and I am astounded by this.

So the Lord gave me a new passion for memorization today. Nope, I'm not going to try to memorize a book of the Bible, someday I will do that again I hope. But for now I'm going for individual verses and I think I'm going to follow the lead of Robert J Morgan in the book 100 Bible Verses everyone should know by heart.

Lord, I cannot do this without You. Renewal comes from You. You drop things into my heart without me even knowing them. I know this task will come with great opposition from the Enemy and I pray that You would thwart him. Please protect me from his lies. Please surround me with Your angels. I give Your Holy Spirit control over my steps today, over my purposes. Please lead me. So often I want to take over, I think I can steer the car a lot better than You can, but that is wrong Jesus, that is a lie. I surrender to You today, help me to surrender for the rest of my life. Thank You for my husband, for my son, for this precious daughter inside of me. Help me to be the best wife and mother I can be for them. Please renew my friendships with other believers today, give me fellowship today, please let me not be discouraged in this area.

amen.