Tag Archives: Devotions

When Hope Feels Lost

Posted in Motivational, Uncategorized by

 

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Do you ever feel like your life is just a mess. Like there are pieces of you spread all over the place. Like a smashed vase, there’s spilt water and shattered ceramic and shredded flowers. And you just don’t know where to begin to put it back together again. Let alone how to get into a place where you would be proud to show it off, or  give it as a gift.

You try to super glue it back together, but the cracks are still there, and the water pours back out. You try and gather back up the water and pour it into another container, but it’s impossible to pick back up, and the flowers are still a mess.

Trapped by broken relationships, or guilt from past you are stuck. In a place where you can’t move forward and you definitely can’t go back.

You know there is no way of sorting out this mess on your own. There is no hope of getting back what you once had, there is no chance left. It feels like you are too far gone.

When our lives are a mess, when it feels like there is no hope left and we have gone too far; even then God is still devising ways to bring us back to him.

Maybe he needed to push you over the edge so you would fall into his arms.

It doesn’t matter how broken you are; how far from him you have run, or what you have done. He’s running towards you as well. This is not the end of the story, it is just the end of a chapter.

Turn the page, run to him, and he will restore you.

Like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be recovered, so we must die. But that is not what God desires; rather, he devises ways so that a banished person does not remain banished from him. (2 Samuel 14:14)

 

 

 

Unsettled Down

Posted in Motivational, Uncategorized by

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In my early twenties my aim in life was to settle down: get a good job; a nice house and become financially secure. I had spent so many years moving house from town to town, that I just wanted to stay in one place for a while, find a home and become rooted. I wanted a decent job so that I could afford to buy nice clothes and have a nice life. I wanted to look like I was successful.

For me the last year has been an incredibly difficult one. I now have none of those things, and at times I have felt like an utter failure.

I had forgoten that these things are not our measure of success.

I had forgotten that in Christ I am rooted; that he is my home; and that when I bank on him, I will always be financially secure.

God has pushed me out of my comfort zone; to the point where the only thing I can lean on is him.

We need to remember that a life following Jesus is not going to be a settled one. Bad things will happen, and some times we will go through years of trials; at times our lives might feel unsettled, but in him we will never be insecure or unstable.

Sometimes, although we’re not facing trials, God may still be pushing us beyond our boundaries.

There are so many things I said I would never do, that God has literally laughed at, because his plans for me are so much different and so much bigger. I always said I would never work with teenagers, or in the church of England: I have done both. I said I would never live up North, and once again, I find myself there. And finally, I always said I would never start a blog!

When you put your trust in God, he will push you further than you could have imagined. But he will also love you more than you could have dreamed; hold you tighter than you could have hoped; and lead you on a bigger adventure than you could have reached alone.