I love that God uses me to encourage other people. God always seems to be there when I need Him to encourage others and I rarely need uplifting. I tend to look at the bright side...mostly.
I used to be one of those people that judged, gossiped, griped and complained about everything. Like "why does God do this to me?" or "can you believe what we just saw?" oh and "Oh my goodness, what was she thinking?". Yeah...one of those. I thank God for opening my eyes. What a terrible way to live, getting joy from others pain, or worse yet, causing said pain.
A long time ago a preacher said "write down everyone who wronged you then forgive them. Man that was hard enough but then I wrote a list of all the people I had wronged "and it was longer" Then I called the ones I could to ask them to forgive me and to tell the others I had forgiven them, the ones I could not for one reason or another IE: death, could not locate, etc... I have to believe God knows my heart and that I am forgiven.
While speaking to every person I could feel the presence of the Lord with me. It made me strong. I was able to call many people and reconnect on a new level with some who are very close to my heart. Funny though most of them did not even care what I had done. They seemed to not remember or really were not influenced at all by my behavior 15, 20 years ago or they had already forgiven me. And a few of them were grateful that I had forgiven them. As for the one I could not get ahole of "he died before I made my list" I forgave him and I actally felt bad for wishing him dead all those years ago. "I hope he knew Jesus when He died."
What was nice was I realized while writing the list of people I needed to forgive that it would only be right to write one for the people that I felt needed to know I had truly changed.
I thank God for that. I swallowed a lot of humble pie that week, even choked on some of it but in the end my conscience was clear. After doing all that It was reveled to me that it was not nessasary for me to do that. God had already forgiven me.
Now God uses me as an encourager for those suffering and discouraged with life and complaining about decisions made and blaming God. One thing I realized is God did not do it! We do it and then ask him why our life turned out a certain way. We choose our path, He can help correct it "If we ask" but we usually don't until we messed everything up so bad He is our only out.
We need to recognise God is in Control. I know that sounds like so "Christianise" but He is. He knows every hair on our head. It does not and will not matter what it looks like to anyone but Him after all is said and done.
At the beginning of this post I said "I mostly look on the bright side." Not always. I do get discouraged and when I do I go to my father and ask Him to reveal the positive in this situation and he does.
I think He allows us to have bad or sad things happen to regain our focus or to point out an area of weakness so he can mold us and shape us into what He originally planned, After all He is a jealous God. If we did not need Him He would have no reason to exist in our lives. We need to recognise God every day. He has given us everything including his own blood the least we lowly humans can do is acknowledge Him every day if only for a moment.
We are not worthy as a people of His awesome sacrifice yet He thinks we are. He wants us. He gave us an out. Jesus is the answer (corny but true). Jesus died so we could be free. We should be grateful and joyful when we come to him. We have no need to feel guilty because when we repent He forgets because He loves us...God is Love!
