Happy Spiritual Birthday to you. Today...
...is the first day of summer.
...is the longest day of the year.
...sometimes falls on Father's Day, depending on the calendar.
...gets a lot of my friends excited (Vacations! Beach weather!)
...is our spiritual birthday.
"Oh!
Happy Birth--- wait, what do you mean by that?!"
(Glad you asked.)
🎂
8 years ago, on this day, June 21st, Kevin and I walked into the community center in the center of our state for a typical church service. At the weekly gathering we had been attending for about 5 months, it was your typical morning of Christian praise music, sermon, Bible study and community.
Or so we thought.
But something different was about to happen. Thanks be to God it did, and here we are 8 years later.
June 21st was the day we accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior.
Immediately, things were different. Physically, my husband and I experienced a change, but that's not always the case with everyone, so I won't talk about that.
The important thing is that from that point on, things were different.
As Billy Graham famously said, "I have never known a man who received Christ and ever regretted it."
But, here's the thing:
As much as life is different, things are still the same.
What do I mean?
We're still us. Faults and all. We're still prone to anger, and depression, and jealousy, and ego.
Yep.
Still prone to confusion and still brought down by people drama.
We're not immune to struggle.
Ok, ya filthy bunch of sinners, so what changed?
Our way of thinking, our love for each other and for other people.
Our family relations.
Our marriage.
Our lifestyle.
Our perspective.
In everything we do today, we seek to glorify God. (1 Cor. 10:31)
That's not to say we do it right. It's to say we try. (And fail, and that's where God's grace comes in.)
Hopefully YOU can see that we're different!
Gal. 5:22-2422 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 [a]gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. 24 And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
Jer. 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.
2 Tim. 1:7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
We're still prideful at times, and we let our egos get the best of us. We let anger and other emotions get the best of us.
Comparison still steals our joy. Jealousy still tries to wiggle its ugly self in.
We struggle with self.
But the struggle is no longer ours to face alone.
That's one big difference. God fights your battles when you ask Him to.
What's neat is these changes happened gradually and continue to happen.
And I can still remember how we'd respond to situations in our past life, especially dealing daily with the drama of the rock and roll bands.
Or how we'd deal with family challenges.
(Don't know where I'd be if I'd lost my brother even a couple of years ago. God walked me through that unimaginable loss when he passed away suddenly at 42, just 5 days after our father was buried.)
Or any kind of conflict that life never fails to dish plenty out of.
But God.
And that's what this post is all about. Please don't think it is about us, me and Kevin. It's always and forever about God. We live for God. He is a perfect God and He is personal to each of us. He chose Father's day to be the day we'd be saved. "What a gift for the father," I remember our pastor saying that day.
God knows what you need
He knows what you need, and He supplies it.
Notice I said "need" and not "want." He knows what you want. And if He decides not to give me what I want, then I just have to trust He knows something I don't. So, He only gives me what I need.
Thankful for that.
That's part of God's provision. He loves me and will give me only what I need. And He is a God of good, great gifts.
Praising Him for His goodness today. Praising God for making us different.
So, what do we want to do with this "different?"
The lyric in Micah Tyler's song says it best:
I wanna be different
I wanna be changed
'Til all of me is gone
And all that remains
Is a fire so bright
The whole world can see
That there's something different
So come and be different
In me!
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" 2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV
John 3:30 He must increase, but I must decrease.
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Listen to Micah Tyler's song "Different"
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