Oh how He loves us.

Sometimes when things go too right, I tend to forget about God. I still pray and worship, but I fail to listen to God for most of the time. When He speaks I would rather think about all the things I can do in a day and the temporarily happiness that I can find without needing His guidance. Yet when some things break down its when I finally realize that I need God so much more than I thought, when He is all I have and all that I should depend on is when I see His love for us.

Why is it that when things go well we always lose sight of the great Lord. Maybe that's why there is so much pain and suffering in the world, because when there is extended happiness all we learn to depend and lean on for support and joy is our friends, our families, our material possessions, our worldy lives. Yet when we have everything taken away, when God is the only one that remains, that we finally lean on him and learn about Him and know that He is just as good in the past when there was joy as now when there is suffering. God is constant through all, He is the same yesterday, today, and forevermore. It makes logical sense then to contemplate that the sufferings we endure are therefore for our own good, because it brings us closer to Him.

I'm beginning to think that is the trick to living a content and satisfying life, to be able to enjoy God when we are doing well in life, and also to not have to change when things go wrong, because our hope has been on Him this entire time. What does it mean to lean on God? I don't even know anymore. What does it mean to have Him in our lives? How do we gain this strength to survive, to keep going and to see the grace that He provides us everyday when we lose our crutch. There is that one parable that I see people use often; 'Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish, feed him forever.' God could just give us a satisfying good life, but how can we ever learn about Him, about the person behind all these fish, if everyday we just wake up to fish on our tables. God is teaching us how to fish, how to live in Him. When we don't go fishing everyday, we end up hungry. Sadly, unlike hunger, we don't realize our depravity and our dire need for Christ until it is quite simply too late. We need to make our lives like that, where God is more important than food, where one day without Him will leave us starving and needing to get back to Him as soon as possible.

Recently, this idea of bearing with one another crept up in my life. That I'm supposed to seek after others with love and patience, bearing with their faults and forgiving them. There's a lot of people in my life that I don't really bear with. I would rather hang out with my close friends, and the others I'm willing just to see on a necessity basis; it's not really the right thing to do. Where on earth do I find this love when I have none of own, where can I turn now. Sometimes I'm scared to pray for certain things, because I think the way God answers prayers is to force us into situations that require those skills we prayed for. I pray for patience and God puts in my life those who I would quickly lose patience with. I pray for trust in God and then suddenly there are moments where I have no other options but to put my hopes and my faith in Him. I end up praying for them anyways, and enduring the consequences. This is because I figure those skills, though I don't want to go through learning to have them, will eventually prove much more useful in my life. If God knows my heart and my needs, why should I not acknowledge them myself. And when it comes to a point where I don't believe I can handle it anymore, when I find my strength lacking and draining away, I find that miraculously the energy I need fills my heart and I keep going. How God loves us so. So my prayer is for forgiveness, to love those I would rather not love. To throw away all my earthly assumptions and pride and desires, and simply turn to Him knowing that His will is sovereign and that all is for our good in the end, no matter how painful and mysterious it might seem at the present.

If His grace is like an ocean, we're all sinking.