I love that we serve a God that is omnipresent. I am grateful that He is everywhere at all times yet capable of loving and engaging each of us personally. That’s amazing. But, sometimes His omnipresence only serves to intimidate, condemn, and annoy me. Especially when I don’t feel like I’ve lived up to all I’ve learned. I find myself seeking to escape His presence. I try to shield my thoughts from Him. I don’t want Him to know that sometimes I doubt His goodness and His willingness to intervene on my behalf. There are moments when I just want to yell, “STOP! Leave me alone. Don’t bring another issue to the surface. I don’t need any more tests to my faith. Just let me be!” But, God loves us too much to just “let us be.” Believe it or not you are important to God. He is aware of everything that is going on with you and He cares. He is invested in how you think and how you feel. God has afforded us a spirit of courage, self-discipline, and sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7). But, these disciplines stem from our connection to God. The enemy will seek to keep you separated from God. The enemy will seek to convince you that you haven’t made any progress, that there isn’t anything to love about you, that there is something within you incapable of being fixed, or that you will never come close to bearing the likeness of Christ.
Don’t feed into those lies.
Today, I just want to encourage you to keep going. Keep praying. Keep reading your Bible. Keep seeking God. You are making progress. Your service and obedience to God are not in vain. There is a change in you and your faith has made you whole (Mark 5:34). You are not lacking in anything. There is nothing that God cannot work out within you– no sin, addiction, stronghold, or vice is too big or too small for God to handle. This walk with Christ is not going to be easy. So, find comfort in the notion that we never have to go far to reach God. He is readily available and yearns for us to come back to Him. Despite your rebellion, “secret” sins, your attempts to ignore and avoid God, or how angry you are with Him…He loves you…STILL.
Remember that.
[photo credit: Shannon Miller]
Ashley Ivery is a single mother of two brilliant children, Aiden and Devyn, with an overwhelming desire to empower women and help them to realize the importance of a relationship with God. Through her writing she hopes to encourage women to claim their strength and value in Christ. She graduated from Fayetteville State University in 2012 with a BS in Psychology. Her motto is: “Be Authentic. Live Honestly. Dispel Light.”
