I'M NOT LOOKING FOR STUFF!

Early this morning I had a dream that a former co-worker of mine who is also saved had become very discouraged.  Things hadn't been going well for her for quite some time. She wasn't finding good jobs and basically had been struggling since our job shut down back in 2008. She had the look of defeat on her face and she said that she was just going to leave.  I asked her, "Leave where?" And she said, "Leave God". I started out encouraging her not to do that. Then I began to share with her how hard it has been for me also since our job closed. I was telling her how I wasn't making much money, lost a home, got evicted, didn't always have what I wanted,  and the next thing I knew I was preaching, and I heard myself saying,

"BUT I'M NOT LOOKING FOR STUFF; I'M LOOKING FOR JESUS!" I started preaching it so good and sounding so unlike myself that my own pastor didn't recognize my voice.

That's the sentiment of my heart at this point.  While we (generally speaking) are chasing everything in life that people are telling us we should be chasing, we are sometimes losing our connection with God, or using our connection with Him to try and get Him to help us get hands on all the stuff. But He's the One who matters most. The One who has been taking care of us the whole time we were chasing whoever or whatever. And every time the bottom fell out, or we thought the bottom was going to fall out, we ran crying to Him to "come help", not realizing that He doesn't have to "come help", because He never left. He was always there! Did He not promise that He would never leave or forsake us? Well, He HASN'T. He WON'T, and guess what...He CAN'T! Not only is He walking WITH us, but we forget too often...He's living INSIDE of us.

I won't criticize anyone who may feel like my friend in the dream did. I've been there myself before, accusing God of not being faithful to me while it seemed He was being faithful to so many around me. I disrespected Him by thinking that living for Him wasn't paying off. It wasn't giving me the same benefits that I saw it giving to others. I felt like if this was all He had to offer me, I could go and make my life on my own. I didn't have to be miserable and broken with HIM in my life! I could do that all by myself! Or maybe I could even do better on my own because it didn't seem like He liked me very much anyway! So yes I know how you feel, but I learned that He was being faithful to me by not judging me according to the foolishness in my heart toward Him. He was faithful by allowing me to survive EVERY situation and hurt that I thought for sure would take my mind or my life.  

When I came into this season, all I could do was look back and see very clearly.  What did God do last time? And the time before that?  And the time before that? And.....yeah, all those other times. He worked it out. He fixed it. He held me together. He kept my mind in tact. He healed my heart. He showed me that the end of it was actually worked out from the beginning.  He showed me that I had wasted precious time crying and worrying about something that already had an expiration date, and that date just happened to be...right on time. He showed me so many things that I could have and should have been doing while I was sitting around moping and feeling sorry for myself.

So this time around, the only tears I intend to cry will be when I'm seeking His face or worshiping and thanking Him for who He is. While I'm asking Him to fill the void I created when I spent time chasing jobs because I didn't realize He had an appointed time for me to go to work and my time off was to be used more wisely. This time around I refuse to worry about stuff. After waking up from that dream I was able to see that it wasn't about that friend or anyone else nearly as much as it was about me. It was a chance for me to see how the condition of my heart toward God has changed and how I've grown. I'm not looking for stuff. I'm looking for Jesus.

#freshstart #divinedoover #HeISFaithful #liveaBIGlife