LIFE – Page 5 – MY CONVICTIONS

This week I had a deeper revelation of God’s love for me that absolutely wrecked me and brought me to tears! Of course when you become a follower of Christ, you are told about how much God loves you because He sacrificed His one and only Son for us, I mean who out here would sacrifice like that for you out of love? We might go a step further and call someone crazy for doing such a thing! But really anyone who has a loving, nurturing parent knows that without hesitation they would give their life for their child! Well we have the ultimate parent who did just that for each and everyone of us! So yes I grasped that notion that God loves us, but to be honest its been a concept that has been floating on the surface, mainly because I think I have issues with accepting true unconditional love, deep I know, but the Holy Spirit is revealing so much I didn’t know was there! I am reading the Bible and getting free therapy sessions from my counsellor! I am being refined, really made a new and it is a long process but I know it is so necessary to my walk. Sometimes we don’t even know how much we have hidden until we truly dig deep within ourselves! I can’t say I would ever truly fathom how deep God’s love runs for us but something hit me while studying the Book of Ephesians this week.

I think its fair to say I was left truly humbled and feeling unworthy, a feeling I don’t think I truly comprehended before! Please do not mistake me for being arrogant before God, never have and never will! I always humble myself, WE must ALL humble ourselves before God! But something clicked today about how God SEE’S me that took me to another level of humble. I realised that the disconnect came from how I view myself! I realised that I don’t see myself through God’s eyes, the vision I have is flawed, this is why the idea of God’s unconditional love for me wasn’t really penetrating the way it should! I really couldn’t comprehend it for myself. It’s funny because I will be the first to tell YOU God loves you with conviction, but I noticed that I was skimming past the notion when it came to myself! This revealed to me I have a heart issue, well I should say the Holy Spirit revealed to me that I had an issue with the posture of my heart. We have a God who is a searcher of hearts and minds, so if something is not right trust and believe He will show you. The great thing about all of this is that I would of been still unaware of this issue if I hadn’t of picked up my Bible! This is why I will always say PLEASE READ YOUR BIBLES! If you want to experience true change, growth and Knowledge, it will come from God’s word, the source! The revelation for me was “maybe I don’t love myself the way I should?” I know we have all heard that saying ” if we can’t love ourselves how can we love anyone else!?” or something to that same affect. There is a definite truth to that I believe, because if I was made in the image and likeness of God but somehow have a problem with myself, it made me think how that had to have a knock on effect with how I receive God’s love!?! When we truly receive or understand why God loves us and how much He loves us, we experience a change within, and our hearts are bursting with joy! It promotes a change in our spirits and now our eyes and hearts are focused on Jesus, and what we focus on is what we emulate! So it’s fair to say we start to become more consecrated and Holy!

Now I know that feelings of unworthiness is advised to keep you humble, even the Apostle Paul refers to himself as undeserving! EPHESIANS 3:8 “ALTHOUGH I AM LESS THAN THE LEAST OF ALL THE LORD’S PEOPLE, THIS GRACE WAS GIVEN TO ME: TO PREACH TO THE GENTILES THE BOUNDLESS RICHES OF CHRIST” But even in his unworthiness and his acknowledgment of it, he doesn’t let it cripple him from doing what God has tasked him to do, he seems to accept God’s love, God’s grace, and get straight to business sharing the Good News, seeing his position as a privilege to serve! The problem with me or with us as a body of believers is that we can sometimes let that unworthiness stop us from doing what we have been called to do! Sometimes we can have trust issues that run deep from dealing with the disappointment of people. We become so jaded by this world we live in, when someone does anything for us we become suspicious, asking “why?” instead of just accepting a good deed with gratitude and moving on! This world has sold us a lie on love. When you think about it, it’s not surprising being that satan rules down here, and he is ALWAYS going to give us a perverted version of God’s way. Down here people do things for others disguised as love, but wait with expectation for you to reciprocate, because if you don’t then they get to remind you off all the things they did for you, and the things you don’t do is how they measure love. Down here love is love, meaning we all get to do whatever we like and nobody can tell you otherwise because that is not deemed as loving! (let me not get too carried away there!) But God say’s to us ” I love you despite of yourself, I love you because I made you, I love you even though you do not get it right all the time” and most importantly we can not skim by this “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.” 1 John 4:9.

So the part that took my breath away in the book of Ephesians, and mind you I have yet to properly finish it, even though it is a short book there is so much to edify the spirit, I am going through it with a fine toothed comb! Earlier I mentioned how God saw me, and how it was different to how I saw myself. Well it’s Paul revealing the mysteries of God’s plan through Christ that humbled me. Let me see if I can break it down for you.

YOU are IMPORTANT! Let me start of there. You might look at your life now, and not feel much optimism about where or what this life has to offer you, but let me help you understand the way it clicked for me. Before God created the world He had a plan for YOU! He loved you so much He chose you, because He knew you already! Take a moment and let that set in…. Now His plan for you was to be Holy (EPHESIANS 1:4), and the Hebrew word for Holy means to be set apart! But set apart from what? Well if this was his plan before the world was created the only thing I could see was that He set us apart from the Angels, as that seemed to be the story less talked about when we think of the fall of satan which we know happened before God created the earth! Now stay with me here because it was reading further that solidified that idea for me! Because of man’s fall from grace with Adam and Eve, we were spiritually dead because it has become our nature to live in disobedience to God, we live to follow the desires of our flesh, doing what “feels” right at the whim of our sinful nature! EPHESIANS 2:2 “YOU USED TO LIVE IN SIN, JUST LIKE THE REST OF THE WORLD, OBEYING THE DEVIL-THE COMMANDER OF THE POWERS OF THE UNSEEN WORLD. HE IS THE SPIRIT AT WORK IN THE HEARTS OF THOSE WHO REFUSE TO OBEY GOD.” Imagine living under the wrath of God because of our disobedience! And even though we lived this way God still planned a way for us to be reconciled to Him! That is love, a love I will never fully realise, because usually when people do me wrong consistently my response isn’t to find a way to reconcile. But God being so full of grace saved you through Christ! He purchased your freedom with the blood of his only Son, because He knew that was the only way you could draw close to Him, the only way your sin’s could be forgiven so you could have eternal life and gain a seat with Him in the heavenly place through Christ! Because of your belief in Christ, you are saved by the grace of God which is a gift, and this has nothing to do with all the good you have done, so that you can not boast! (EPHESIANS 2:8-9)

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So as unworthy as we may be, God still wants to redeem us! So even now as believers in Christ, when we let that feeling of unworthiness start to cripple us, its this knowledge of God’s love for us that should have us back on task like Paul! EPHESIANS 3:10 “GOD’S PURPOSE IN ALL THIS WAS TO USE THE CHURCH TO DISPLAY HIS WISDOM IN IT’S RICH VARIETY TO ALL THE UNSEEN RULERS AND AUTHORITIES IN THE HEAVENLY PLACES.” Remember when I talked about being set apart from the angels? Well this was the verse that solidified it for me! Doesn’t that blow your mind, or is it just me? When you believed in Christ you became part of one body (the church) You received the helper, the Holy Spirit, who was sent to lead you, blessing you with all the gifts of the spirit which come from the heavenly places, this is the sign that you have been purchased through the blood of Christ and a sign you will receive your inheritance that was promised from God! You gain God’s wisdom and it is shown through all the good things you do which He planned from long ago! And all this wisdom you show is just to display the multi faceted God you serve! And like a body we all have different functions, and your function may not look like your neighbours, your function may even seem minute, but its not because nothing about God is minute and nothing about God is unimportant! And all of this is to show these unseen rulers and authorities in heaven the richness that is God because they would never know this about their creator without YOU! I swear I had never looked at it like this before! This is the fun part of being a new believer, it’s learning all these things that let me know the character of my Father, it’s the deeper understanding of all that Jesus Christ has done for me!

I am gonna end with Paul and his prayer for the people of Ephesus, a prayer for spiritual growth for us all! I pray that you who reads this, God will empower you with inner strength, I pray that Christ will truly make a home in your heart, so that your faith will keep you grounded in his peace so that you will experience his love for you “And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.” Ephesians 3:18

Before I start on this journey it is only right that I start from the beginning. Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Cerise, I’m a black single female who found Jesus in November 2019. Now my story is not extraordinary, and for that reason I suspect some might find it relatable, or maybe not *shrugs shoulders* but before you understand where I am at present, you need to know where I came from.

Its funny how God reaches out to you from the most unexpected of places! At 38 yrs old I was enjoying a karaoke app named “Smule”. Now I had been on that app for a solid 5 years! If you enjoy singing, and enjoy meeting new people then this app is very addictive and it consumed a lot of my free time. But still God found me…. I started singing regularly with a guy from the USA ( yes there is always a guy involved *rolls eyes*) not only did we sound great together, we got on very well and became fast friends. Our friendship blossomed very quickly that we started to communicate outside of the app. Now I know you are thinking where does God come into this, well my new friend was a Christian! We had a long distance friendship as I am from the UK, but we spoke everyday! Every so often my friend would share stories from the bible, sounds very random but the way he told them always brought them into the 21st century. He was well aware that I was not a Christian, but he never treated me less than, or made me feel like I was excluded from some special club. He didn’t preach at me, you know like how you see some of the street proclaimers who aggressively scream in peoples faces about repenting, or meeting your end in a pit of flames! He actually never went out of his way to evangelise me like you might think either, what he did was so much better! What he did was share what God had done in HIS life, the life he used to live, the man he used to be, the freedom he found that only comes with following JESUS!

I believed in a God, I knew there was no such thing as evolution, I knew that there had to be something more in this world, the intelligence that comes from constructing this earth was no accident! But even though I believed in A God, I didn’t know what that meant to my life! Who was God, and what did he want from me? In the past I have had strong urges to want to find God, but being that I had nobody around me that subscribed to any kind of doctrine I never knew what to do about it or where to even start! So I carried on and everyday life became a distraction (the enemy is crafty like that)

ACTS 2:39 THE PROMISE IS FOR YOU AND YOUR CHILDREN AND FOR ALL WHO ARE FAR OFF- FOR ALL WHOM THE LORD OUR GOD WILL CALL. When the Apostle Peter was addressing the crowd telling them what they needed to do for forgiveness of their sins, that last part struck me! GOD CALLS YOU! There are plenty of verses that talk about Gods calling that are probably better examples like MATTHEW 22:14, I’m just currently reading the book of ACTS right now. But really consider that, he calls us! Do you ever find yourself drawn to know God? maybe you are a believer maybe you are not, but think back in your life, have you ever felt the pull/call of God? I realised in that moment that those random urges I felt in the past to know God was actually God calling me! But I never answered. The enemy is like bad reception on a phone call, God rings your phone, and you try to answer but the enemy runs interference and now the call is breaking up and you can’t hear a thing, so you hang up! Well praise JESUS I finally answered!

Now I had a very distorted view of what the Bible was, it’s purpose and what it said. Ask me where these ideas came from, I can’t even really tell you! I guess I would say it was a mixture of other peoples OPINION, what I FELT, and what the CULTURE we live in told me! I felt so strongly about these feelings/opinions that didn’t even originate from my thoughts, how strange right!? I always considered myself a fair person, never made judgments based on other peoples opinion before, so why was I doing it now? The problem was anytime I had biblical questions I always found Christians clueless! Now I’m not saying all Christians lack knowledge, I’m just saying I could tell by the response I got when asking questions that there was a disconnect. Unfortunately all that did was make me feel I was right, and my feelings were justified.

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Now where was I? Oh yes, my friend was a Christian! Not only was he a Christian, he was a Christian who read his bible, spent time in Gods word and knew more than any Christian I had ever come across before! He was able to provide so much clarity to my thoughts, always giving context to scripture he presented! Having a new take on the bible I wanted to know and understand more! I always had this impression that the bible was boring, dated text that had no relevance to life as we know it, oh how wrong I was! So the beginning of November I made the decision to purchase my first bible. My intention was to just read it, I wanted to see what else it said, I still had other thoughts and feelings that needed answers! If I’m really honest part of me was reading it to still validate what I thought I knew to be truth. I didn’t read it to come to Christ, but to satisfy my own need to be right! Well God sure showed me! With the help and assistance from my friend I started reading it everyday. By the end of November I told my friend “I think I might be a Christian!?!”

I can’t explain the power of God! I just know its real! In that moment I had never felt so sure about anything, never felt so convicted before! I decided that I needed JESUS! I guess the rest is history. Here I am almost 2 years in my walk with Christ, still learning so much (do you ever really stop learning?!) feeling like a real toddler. I am learning that being in Christ is nothing to do with religion but its all about relationship, and just like any relationship, what you put in is what you get out! It’s not been easy, but JESUS warned us the righteous road would be narrow, I just underestimated how narrow it would be. The narrow road has brought me so many blessings, blessings that have made the journey worth it! I could never go back to my old life, I wouldn’t even want to! I lived in so much bondage in my past life, not to say life is peaches and cream now, I still have strongholds that I am battling with, but I know that I will overcome them in the mighty name of JESUS! So welcome to MY CONVICTIONS. This is a safe place where I share my thoughts and feelings on my new life with Christ, how I am constantly convicted during my restoration, basically a journal that nobody asked for! Lets normalise being honest with our walks! If it inspires one person to seek their Father, then my work here is done!

Tag: LIFE

DO YOU UNDERSTAND GOD’S LOVE FOR YOU?

BACK IN NOVEMBER 2019…