So, yesterday feels like years ago.. Wow. I didn't realize that just yesterday was Wednesday... the last time I had time to sit and just do whatever feels like it was a week ago. That means today was full of stuff and reeeally long. I should be in bed now... but I'll get there.

I just wanted to write a little about what God taught me yesterday. I was praying about the upcoming week, and I realized that as good as I was feeling about it, I still needed to make sure that I was getting all my strength and power from the Lord to live my life focused on Him. I couldn't expect to get into the year and hit tough situations and all of a sudden stand strong on Him... I need to be doing that now.

And then I opened up to read yesterday's "My Utmost for His Highest" by Oswald Chambers... and it was a fantastic meditation on John 1:48. And here is what he has to say:
"We imagine that we would be all right if a big crisis arose; but the big crisis will only reveal the stuff we are made of, it will not put anything into us... You will not [rise] unless you have risen to the occasion in the workshop, unless you have been the real thing before God there... Crises always reveal character."

Now I must be rooted in God "in the workshop" so when any crisis comes I may be revealed as a tried and true child of the King.

I lift this year to Him. May I represent Him in all I say and do. May the debt I owe to Him be apparent to everyone I run across... which is an unusual request, I know. I don't know many people who want to be known by their debts, particularly if they are eternally unrepayable and eternally undeservedly cancelled debts. But if my great debt being shown brings glory to His sweet and precious Name, then hallelujah! May all I EVER do or say point to the eternal debt I owe to Jesus Christ.

Practically, how do I point to that debt? It must surely lie in the way I treat others. For when I give water to "the least of these" it is as though I am giving it to Him -- pointing to how IMPOSSIBLE it would be for me to serve without His sustaining strength.

I think I might be able to make a very broad statement: everything points to the utter glory and might of God's hand... simply by existing. That is how the "heavens declare His glory" - by mere existence.

In that way, the unregenerate also points to His glory. And the regenerate in the same way.

What I mean is this: Both the regenerate and the unregenerate point to God's glory on a double level: the former by His sovereign choice to save and justify him, the latter by His sovereign choice to display His wrath upon him.
Oh, no, He is not a SAFE God... He is a wild and untameable God. But He is a good God who seeks His glory in all things.

How blessed I am to be numbered among the elect!! And how humbling to realize that I cannot draw even one breath but those ordained by God for me to breathe. What a helpless and feeble creature I am. But for the power of the cross, I am so lost and weak. But I boast in strength that my Jesus provides for me to breathe and walk and be His.