November 2018 – taracogdell

I just threw away two ornaments because they had been stepped on and broken. Chards, the tiniest pieces of glass, useless to me.

Yet that is exactly what God uses. our broken chards, the crumbs of our life- because maybe that’s all we have left.

You know you’re in a good place when all that’s left is chards and you give it to Him anyways. You hand it to the One who can make something miraculous with it.

We don’t understand God’s ways, even His thoughts. Or why He takes so stinking long sometimes. But in the end what he is creating is more beautiful than we ever imagined He could do with such small broken pieces.

He takes your broken pieces and mine and somehow makes a masterpiece, He calls it the church. This place made up of chards held together by His Spirit.

You might have nothing left to give, your hands might be empty, open them anyways and let Him flood you with His very Presence.

It’s enough. It’s always enough.

His ways are not mine.

Hallelujah.

This past week my husband preached on the Armor of God out of Ephesians 6.

We were discussing the sermon and how to apply it in our small group. We got to the armor of “shoes readied with the gospel of peace.” We began discussing it and how we are supposed to apply this verse.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure.

Sometimes in this is the joy of discussing scripture, we get to put more pieces together that help it make sense, because we are talking it out loud, and the spirit is not only working in us, but the lives around us too.

I’ve struggled with anxiety; therefore, peace is a word in the Bible I’d run to in anxious times hoping it would come flying off the pages into my heart.

However, this night one of my fellow sisters said, “I’ve learned peace has nothing to do with calm.”

This rocked me to my core, to an untruth I’d believed for awhile. I looked at her and audibly spoke “yes.” Exactly. Clarity. Truth.

We spoke about what peace meant for our feet. I believe in this passage it’s meaning was to sturdy us. I suggested that maybe peace in the gospel is that the gospel has made us right in God’s eyes, giving us peace with ourselves. (Ephesians 2:14). Peace with the war that goes on within us. Like Paul talks about in Romans 7, he does what he doesn’t want to do then ends with but “thanks be to my Savior Jesus Christ.”

There is peace, and it’s not always the calm I once looked for. It’s peace with the fact that my God accepts me exactly as I am: wholly and freely His, because of my Savior Jesus Christ.

Month: November 2018

Nothing wasted

Calm