It's not about me

Happy New Year! It's been a while since I've found the time or energy to write but I was feeling a bit reflective over the past couple days and it seems God is pressing a message on my heart for this new year. If I'm truly honest, while 2012 was filled with many blessings, it was also sort of a tumultuous year in my spirit. I battled some depression. It took a while to get out of that hole and I still have occasional days where I struggle to see the light, but praise Him that they are much much less. I have to say, though, that the message God keeps whispering to me is, "it's not about you." I don't think he's at all whispering that in a demeaning way or even that he's disappointed with me. But he is very practically urging me to turn my head up, to set my mind on things above, to look around me at the ones he has put in my path to bless and be blessed by. He is tenderly, gently pointing me outside myself and teaching me to look beyond even my feelings about the circumstances that surround me.

I recently was reading about grace. It was one of those things where I read a passage in my Bible about it (Titus), then saw a daily devotional about it, then sang a song in church that spoke basically the same message, then in a children's book. Really? You think God wanted me to hear something there?! It's not about me!

I've known what grace is for a long time. A free gift. A favor. Not earned or worked for. Given. Freely. But that fact that grace is still at work in my life constantly. That is beyond me. I can't understand it or comprehend it. But I want to believe it, and quit trying to prove it!

"We can choose to live as one "filling" with his grace--all that he freely gives." ~Ann Voskamp

"For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self- controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ" ~Titus 2:11-13

I want to start this year with this outlook. Less about how much more faith I can have, how much more & better I can teach or discipline my children or love my husband, less about how I can be the person I should (and want to) be. These are all good things. And I still have them as goals in the back of my mind. But in the forefront I want to just simply look up more than I look in. Seeking Him & His opinion about something even before 'searching myself.'

His grace allows me to live and move and breathe and raise lots of little boys, to love one husband and serve the people in my path in intentional ways. I fail miserably at all these things...but by His grace alone. Transforming grace. Redeeming grace. Training grace.

It's not about me. It's not about my faith. It's about a God who is mighty to save. And how He is always faithful.

Looking up...