People ask us how we are holding up and it has been a blessing to be able to honestly say that we are truly doing well. God's "peace that passes understanding" is very much "guarding our hearts and our minds" though many things seem a bit uncertain. We have a sweet hope in the God who always keeps His promises. God has encouraged our hearts greatly through the care and concern of others and the ways that He has used them to meet physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. And, His Word is living and has kept certain places of our hearts from going into hibernation or wanting to give up all together!
Having said that, there are still days, hours, and moments of having to preach truth into our hearts, having to cry out for joy, repent for putting our hope in the wrong places, plead for peace, and renew our mind with God's promises.
Those moments of crying out come quickly when I am packing. In fact, the last couple of days, I have been struggling to find one good thing about packing. There are more steps in our packing then there is in most of my recipes!
-first, sort through items and put into three piles: keep, throw away, or give away
-decide who the "give away items" should go to
-figure out what items we will need to keep and take with us to my parents and what items can be packed for storage
-find the appropriate boxes
-fill it with the items we are keeping
-get up and go find something to wrap the breakable items with
-tape and label the box
-repeat process over and over and over again!
Hmmm....sounds like I am complaining, huh? Well, I was. And then God's Word convicted my heart. Here is what I read in Philippians 1:
"I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel...and in that I rejoice."
Paul said that while he was IN PRISON! How could he rejoice? Because his goal in life was that the gospel would go forth. If it meant he had to be in prison for that to take place, then he would joyfully stay in that prison cell. Wow!
I know that I am "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light." (I Peter 2:9)
And I was convicted...because if God has seen fit that the best way I can "proclaim His excellencies" and "advance the gospel" is by packing boxes then I want to rejoice. If Paul can rejoice in a prison cell, I can certainly rejoice, through the Spirit, in my mountain of boxes!
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