10-7-11 “He did deliver me from bondage” p. 103 cont. Step 7

10-7-11    “He did deliver me from bondage”  p. 103  cont. Step 7

“What is His will and pleasure?  It is the same as His work and His glory – to bring to pass our immortality and eternal life.”

I think on a subconscious level at times or phases in my life I have wondered if God’s will and pleasure is not surely to ‘afflict and torment man’, as the weeds were placed on earth to do.  When I kick against the pricks and fight against the will of God, surely it is more painful.  I surprised myself the other day when I told my daughter, “Why do you persist in making your life harder than it has to be by insisting you have to have things you really don’t need?”

When I remember that He is my Father in Heaven; that He loves me, and that He wants me to be happy; that everything He is doing and leading me to is so that I can have eternal joy with Him and come Home—then the teenager in me is subdued and the child becomes trusting again.  Life is sometimes painful, but I know I make it worse when I don’t trust Him. 

“We can trust that that is what everything is for.  We can trust Him and thank Him in all things.”

Sometimes my heart can reach this place but it is not yet constantly there.

p.104   “It’s not how many times we fall down that counts.  It’s how many times we get up.”

I feel like this has been the story of my life.  I am so thankful that somehow He has given me tenacity and a determined desire.  Even though I don’t feel like I’m succeeding all the time, I know I’ll never give up.  He gives me that power to keep going.

When I am pregnant, in the first trimester I don’t throw up.  I just get nauseous all the time.  Yesterday I just wanted sit down and wallow.  I remember walking to the couch wanting to sit, but for some reason I turned around and went to do something.  After I did, I realized I forgot about my nausea while I was doing it.  It was a testimony to me that as I go to work in serving then I forget me own pains.  I can either sit down to wallow and actually make them more noticeable, or I can go to work and forget them.  “He that shall lose his life shall find it.”

I love what she says in the conclusion here, that Christ is the conclusion and the answer.  I have received this witness too: that He is the beginning and the end, the end and the means, the Savoir of the world, and the Redeemer of all mankind.  He is the answer to all our conflicts, problems, and small thinking.  He is the light of the Word, and the life, the bread and water, alpha and omega, the sunshine and the rain.  He gives us all that we stand in need of.  He holds the solutions we need and is waiting for us to ask.