God Showing Himself Faithful to Us
We wanted to share how the Lord is working and speaking to us through this battle of cancer with Autumn. We find encouragement, peace and guidance in His wonderful, living word! These few devotionals have been a helping a hand and a means of coping and guiding us along this journey that the Lord has set in place for us. We hope you find some joy, peace and encouragement like we have, reading these devotionals!
The Way to Break Free From Stress
Ann Voskamp
When I feel like we're drowning in all of life, our daughter Hope and I will go up to the lake and feel the waves pound, sense the serene fury of water.
As the waves break against the earth it quakes the inner cochlear, and there's nothing else to hear but the breaking.
You know a pool isn't like this, I say slowly, watching the waves, seeing it for the first time. It has no power, no life - because it has no breaking of waves...strange how that the breaking, there is life.
Never be afraid of being a broken thing...unless a seed breaks, there is no life.
All down the shoreline, the waves keep crashing and breaking...and living.
All of life's losses break us, break through us, scar us. I want them not to. Frankly, there are days I'd like to hide my scars and the jagged edges of my brokenness, days when I wish there were no marks to bear. But if losses don't leave their mark - how can we say we were ever marked or shaped by love? Scars are signs that show the way we loved.
Give us a break, God, in the midst of overwhelming stress and pounding of waves, the storms of life.
When you're hit by the breaking of waves, break deep.
You've got three options when breaking waves hit, when you feel like you're drowning.
Either let fear make you run hard - but fear never makes you safe, fear just makes you fall - and fall hard.
Or, fall back on your pride and try to stand against that wave breaking over you - and it will break you.
Or lastly, when you're hit with a breaking wave - you can break deep. You can break deep into that breaking wave and let yourself be moved by Living Water and transformed and formed by Christ and remade by the rising current of His Love.
The only way through a breaking wave - is to break deep into the wave.
The only way through the overwhelming waves is to break deep into the rolling water and dive into the depths and stretch out both arms through the fathoms and let yourself be made into the shape of a cross.
That's all there is: You can either be broken by fear or broken by pride - or you can beak into the surrendered, cruciform shape of Christ.
Break deep. Break deep and break free.
Lord, when waves of stress rise and threaten to overwhelm, cause me not to be broken by fear of being overwhelmed or by the pride of standing in my own strength. When I feel stress cause me to break deep - break deep into whatever is coming at me, shaped like Christ, acting like Christ, formed like Christ, broken and given and surrendered like Christ, cruciform like Christ. Cause me break deep today - and break free. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Ephesians 4:24 " and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. "