My Spiritual Journey

To read the previous My Spiritual Journey entries, click here

To fight sin patterns in your life, you must know where your weaknesses are. To live in denial of your weaknesses means that you deny yourself the opportunity to grow. Its a lot easier to ignore sin than to fight it, but fighting it is an important part of the journey to becoming more like Christ.

So Here's What I Know About Myself:

1. I am an introverted person. I love being around people, but I must have time to myself or else I begin to feel overwhelmed and frustrated with life. Alone time throughout the day is what rejuvenates me.

2. During the normal schedule of life, I can manage finding time to myself. Whenever I begin to get frustrated, I know its time to sit quietly with God for a bit. I can get the kids started on an activity and go sit on the couch with my Bible for a bit.

3. However, when life is not normal (vacations or when company comes to town or right after a baby is born), I have not figured out how to find that time by myself in order to keep my heart quiet and control that sin in my life that tries to overcome me.

4. This is my continual battle in life. For as long as I remember, I’ve had to battle getting easily frustrated and overwhelmed by things. You can ask my parents…it was never all that pretty as a young child! The one time I found complete victory was before I got married, and I lived by myself in an apartment. I had all the patience in the world b/c of all the time I had to myself. Unfortunately, life doesn’t stay that simple.

5. In II Corinthians 12, Paul talks about the thorn in his flesh. Vs 7 starts, “to keep me from becoming conceited…” Sometimes I wonder if the Lord uses this frustration in my life to keep me humble. Nothing makes me crawl back into His lap faster than when I lose my temper.

6. Like Paul, I continually cry out to God to remove this from my life, to help me find victory over this, to allow me not to struggle with this anymore. Although God continues to grow me and pushes me forward in my journey, He has yet to completely remove this struggle from my life. As of right now, its my push to remind me how dependent I am on God and how thankful I am for his grace.

7. Last week I talked about being helpless before God as one of the first steps of prayer. I asked God to teach me what that meant last Tuesday. He used the rest of vacation to show me how helpless I am and how dependent I need to be on His strength and power. I love that God continually teaches me, but sometimes I wish the lessons didn’t need to be so humbling! I think the next steps of this journey will be difficult but so good as I come out on the other side.

8. This morning I am thankful for a husband who loves me despite my struggles, a family who gives me grace when I need it, and a Father who promises to continually refine me so that one day I can stand before His throne in complete victory.