Chosen but not exempt

Hello commissioners! I wish you all a happy and blessed new year. I know I'm a tad bit late, but here I am! We have now entered a new year and I am filled with gratitude because God has been so good. 2020 was a tough year for a lot of people and it nearly took me out, BUT GOD! I made it through and you did too, that in itself is a reason to give him praise. Well since its been awhile, I will catch you all up on what I've been up to. For starters, I have been in my WORD! This year, I want to be intentional about knowing God on a new level. There is so much to know about God and I find so much joy and peace when I read my bible. I randomly chose the book of Ezekiel to read because I've heard many sermons about Ezekiel prophesying to a valley of dry bones and how God caused them to grow flesh and breathed life into them. Its a pretty fascinating book and one I didn't think I was quite ready for. I say that to say, God's love for us can sometimes make him seem contradictory because in one verse he wants to destroy Israel for their sin and in the next, he wants to save them. Throughout the entire book, there are so many instances where God gave the people so much time to repent but they refused to. While God's wrath is not to play with, his love and compassion for his creation is something that just cant be put into words. For even in his anger, he offers us an opportunity to become right with him.

But what really inspired me when reading the book was not just God's love and plans of redemption for us, but the assignment that was on the life of Ezekiel. Ezekiel was obedient to God. Everything that God commanded him to do, he did so I was shocked that in the midst of his complete obedience to God--God chose to take his wife away from him. She died. I was left awestruck. I use to think that when you're obedient to God everything will go right for you and while that is sometimes the case, there's a lesson much more deeper than that. In Ezekiel 24:16, God told Ezekiel, “Son of man, behold, I take away from you the delight of your eyes with one stroke; yet you shall neither mourn nor weep, nor shall your tears run down.” On top of that, God asked him not to mourn!! Like huh? I just lost my wife and you didn't stop it and now you're telling me not to mourn? At first, it made no sense to me that God would allow something so painful to happen to this faithful man that literally devoted his life to him. And there lies the problem... Sometimes as Christians, we create this narrative in our head that God exists for us instead of us existing for God. It is this very thought process that causes us to believe that everything in our life is supposed to be smooth sailing with no type of hardship when we are obedient to him but I find that the opposite is also true that God’s light shines brighter in darkness. God reminds us that in this world, we will have hard times, face hardships, difficulties, but to not lose heart because he has overcome the world--John 16:33. In overcoming the world, he has overcome everything that could destroy us. If he says to take heart, its because he knows that it won't kill us. God will never leave us hopeless when we face troubled times, he always provides a way out and to me, hard times, highlights our dependency on God. We can't make it in this world without him.

My prayer lately has been for the difficult moments that occur in my life to make me trust God more. Imagine a world with no hardships. Would we really have need of God? Think about all the great leaders and prophets in the Bible, they all went through something but it was in their darkest times where they saw the power of God move the most in their lives. Paul and Silas while in prison when they experienced the power of God through an earthquake that rattled the prison so much that the prison doors opened! Could he have kept them from being there in the first place? Sure, he could have but then we wouldn’t have this story of how God will literally shake the earth for his children. In allowing them to go through that, he demonstrated his love for us and how nothing can’t stand in his way when he wants to deliver you. And you want to know what else was so powerful about that moment? Right before that, they were praying God and singing hymns--Acts 16:25-26. Our praise can literally break prison doors and set captives FREE! Then there are people like Job who suffered insurmountable loss but then God comes along and blessed him with twice as much as he had before. Then there’s Joseph who was betrayed by his own brothers and God made it that he was second in command in Egypt and was able to save those same brothers from famine years down the line. Then Paul, Daniel and his friends and the likes. There are countless stories in the Bible of God moving on his children’s behalf after they were faced with great difficulties. God moves much more powerfully in our hard times more than in the good, and maybe its because he just likes flexing his muscles to remind us and satan's minions that he is GOD! So how will you react when you face hardships? Will you trust God or will you give up? Will you break out in praise and worship and shake the demonic realm or will you wallow in your pain? Today, I just want to challenge you all to read your word and get to know God. Trust him in the difficult times and release it all to him. There is a greater glory awaiting on the other side of trusting him. He is not mean, he is not trying to harm you, for Jeremiah 29:11 tells us otherwise, that his plans for you are great and know that even if you're gong though a hard time right now, he is with you. The Bible tells us that he will NEVER leave us nor forsake us--Hebrews 13:5 And even IF he doesn't show up the way we expected, we will never turn our backs on him.

Remind yourself of 1 Corinthians 2:9 "What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived" -- the things God has prepared for those who love him. BE ENCOURAGED. Just remember, just because we are chosen by God, we are not exempt from pain or difficulty. Stay the course, don't give up, in due time, he will ACT!