Well, I'll be....(an epiphany - of sorts)

(okay I know we WISH we had servant girls - but

we can plan the day for ourselves anyway, right?)

I confessed to a friend at Church yesterday that I am more willing to get up and work out at 5:30am than I am to open my Bible. My embarrassing reasoning is, that if I don't go ahead and do it first thing - I won't do it at all - because of interuptions and such. Wow...what was I thinking? I need to get up and read my Bible. No wonder I am confused all the time. No wonder I cannot find the strength to do what I need to. My reasoning is so backward sometimes! So this morning, I went to this daily devotional site I like to go to and read 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 -

7 To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

This is great news. I told my Bible Study last week that I did not like me. I felt I was flaky and I talk too much...all of these things - they are impossible to change. And I sometimes feel that I was picked last to be on the Lord's team...you know the one that is standing there that nobody wanted but had to take? I know...that is feeling sorry for myself - yet another wonderful trait of mine...thankfully that one I can do something about. But anyway - the above verse - as soon as I read it shot this comforting balm through my soul. My goofy personality - it was given to me by God. Now whether this is a thorn like Paul's I have no idea. All I know is that it keeps me reliant on God. And that...is a good thing. That is a blessing and a praise that I can know that God is using this quirk of mine to keep me close to him. And in understanding that - I no longer feel like the last one picked - but one bestowed with amazing gifts to serve the Lord.

Amazing how we take things and turn them into what is bad sometimes isn't it? Though - honestly, sometimes I still wish I was a different person...but then who's to say I would like that person any better? I guess deep down each of us know our own flaws and failures and wish that we could be more like someone else we hold in high regard. That is our fallen, human nature.

I am thankful that God loves me - I am memorizing this passage. Hopefully I will remember it when I am busy kicking myself because of something I dislike about myself. I do have to remind myself that I am a well-loved daughter of Christ and that I am a trophy that God is proud of - I hear my pastor say this - and am amazed. How can I be?


I pray that one day I will no longer be surprised by that - but know it and share that wonderful realization with others as well.... so that they too will know that God loves them in that special way.

This is the devotional site I love to go to:
http://proverbs31devotions.blogspot.com/
It was incredibly encouraging this morning!

God bless your day!