God can and will use ANYTHING to speak to our hearts. Join me this week as I share one of His creepy crawley visual aids!
Control
For He delivered us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in Whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.Colossians 1:13-14 (NASB)
Snake Numero Uno wasn’t too big a deal. It was in plain sight, and I had been warned. I was even asked if I wanted it killed or relocated. I chose the latter. Looking back, it seems like the ball was in my court, so to speak, and I was reasonably comfortable in an uncomfortable situation.
Snake Numero Dos WAS a big deal! It caught me off guard, invaded my space and I felt helpless. I was extremely uncomfortable in an uncomfortable situation! Other than about twelve inches, the culprit was the same: a big black snake. What was the difference?
Control. Don’t we believe that life is better when we’re in the driver’s seat? The enemy knows that, and he stealthily invades our space with the deception that we somehow have it all figured out. We like for things to be what we want, when we want and how we want. We really think we know best!
I love Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of Ephesians 2:1-10. O how I pray that God will cement these truths in our hearts so when that “Serpent of Old” comes slithering under our steps – whether we’re blindsided or prepared – we’ll see him for who he is — Satan, the deceiver and murderer from the beginning.
It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.
Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing. –The Message
From my heart to yours,
Tami