Cross Stitch Life

There has been an issue on my heart lately, one that I repeatedly deal with due to circumstances and events in my own past. The reflection is this: I see my life one way, while God sees it another.

I look back on my life and see pain, broken-ness, failure and basically, a mess. I see some good that has happened, and I definitely look back and see where God was working and how He guided me to certain places. I see that in my life now.

I also see where I failed to trust Him when I needed Him the most. Doubt enters my mind and my heart, and I wonder if there is something more out there for me. The devil likes to play tricks with our minds, and he is good at it too. I brought this up last week… it is an ongoing  battle, but one I am determined to win, especially since I have Jesus Christ on my side.

James 1:6 (NASB)

⁶ But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.

James 4:7-8 (NASB)

⁷ Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. ⁸ Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

Digging a little into the Book of James tonight shows us how wrong doubt truly is. We all have battles… some we win, some we lose. Ultimately, we have the Champion above all champions on our side, so we can never truly fail.

‘Submit to God’ means to give Him full authority over our lives.

‘Resist the devil’ tells me to NOT ALLOW the devil to lure and tempt me.

‘Cleanse your hands…purify your hearts’ is God telling us to replace our desire to sin with the desire to experience God’s purity.

I doubt. I admit it. Sometimes I wonder if God knows what He is doing – kind of a ‘DUH’ moment when that happens. Of course He knows, but He is also okay with me talking to Him about it. The more I talk to Him, the less fear and doubt I have.

Visualization:
If you have ever cross stitched, or seen a completed cross stitch project before it is framed, usually the back side is a complete mess (mine are, anyway). The front, the one shown from the frame and seen by the world, is beautiful, but the back is a disaster.

I compare the back side of a completed cross stitch project to how I view my life…. Lines going this way and that, zig zag all over the place. Holes in some spots, knotted up threads in others.

 

The front though... the front is what God was working on through that ugliness that I see. The front is what He was making us into the whole time we thought we were messing up. Even while we were messing our lives up and veering off the path God wanted us on, He did something good with it.

He made my life beautiful.

(Photo credit: Flicker)