Grateful

My gosh, today I am just so incredibly grateful for everything in God’s glorious Creation. Everything seems to have a brilliant glow. But I will get to that. Right now, I am in my room, writing, birds are flying around outside my window. I put bird seed there last night. I am remembering a time when I had probably the most important and incredible epiphany that I had at the beautiful church I used to go to in Markham. It happened like something just clicked into place. I am almost certain that it had much to do with my small group and with a confession I made to them. Because all of the sudden and it happened out of thin air, I felt in my heart the awesome, beautiful and soul-filling love of God. Prior to sharing with my small group what I shared with them, I knew that God loved me. But it was very much on a conscious level. Everything I had been through in my past caused a lot turmoil in my soul. In that sense, the feeling that God loved me was more of a cognitive feeling than anything I felt intuitively in my heart. Wow, this feeling was deep man. It was deep like it had penetrated my very soul. I felt literally like a new creation. Actually it didn’t come from out of thin air. I felt it a bit the night before at that church. And I noticed it just in my desire to worship and to connect to people. I could feel my facial expressions moving a lot more fluidly as though I had been released of a pain. But this. All of a sudden I felt in my heart. I felt this: this world has the capacity to be so cripplingly cruel. So much pain and suffering fill its corners and evil and darkness seem to rule most of the time. In the midst of this, God saw what the evil one had done to His Creation and saw the fact that His people kept being led astray. It’s because of the evil and suffering in the world that God had such incredible compassion for the world, yet not being able to truly interact with the world that He sent His Son for us so that we could have a relationship with Him. So that we could have a relationship with light, even surrounded by much darkness. Praise the living and beautiful Father for loving this world so much. The time when I felt this was when I was contemplating death and the pit. Contemplating the fact that Satan’s biggest tool in shaming people into not trusting God is by leading them to believe that all of the bad things that are happening and have happened in this world are because of God. All of a sudden I realized that it is only in the knowledge that God’s love for us is so great, for Him to send His own cherished one that even in the midst of such overwhelming, overpowering darkness and fear and shame and anger and terror, we are able to overcome. We’re able to overcome knowing the overwhelming, overpowering love, faith and grace and joy that are all in the LOVE that God offered us. This revelation helped me to focus on the Gospel and in that, to see myself with a new light. I am starting to notice the love that surrounds me. And the reason I view myself with pride and love is because I know that I am loved. We have that certainty. With the knowledge that our Messiah of love, our Christ has already accomplished whatever obstacle you are facing. He has overcome death. We are not alone. With that hope, we have the confidence to not just live. We have the capacity to do amazing things in the name of love. That hope gives you confidence in that you will be triumphant no matter what happens. We may be surrounded with darkness, loneliness and shame. But we are certain and firm in the fact that God is on our side. I am speechless. Praise God!