Over the past few months, I have been hit with a few real­iza­tions. Life goes on; peo­ple con­tin­u­ally grow and change; you can expe­ri­ence moments of great hope and hap­pi­ness; and life can also come crash­ing down on you. You some­times wish things wouldn’t turn out the way they have turned out, and then there are those moments which take your breath away. Through it all I’ve been thank­ful to know that the con­stants in life remain the same, and that God is still same, yes­ter­day, and forever.

I’ve been encour­aged by the words of Christ:

Then Jesus told his dis­ci­ples, “If any­one would come after me, let him deny him­self and take up his cross and fol­low me. For who­ever would save his life will lose it, but who­ever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and for­feits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life? ¹

I’m in a jour­ney, over these next few months, of learn­ing the mean­ing of silence and quiet­ness. I’m finally under­stand­ing that to do great things for God, you need to have this iron-will to go the dis­tance, expect unwar­ranted crit­i­cism, live with God’s pur­pose in mind, and finally trust that the life God has for you is always bet­ter than the life oth­ers expect of you.

God’s path some­times include hun­gry lions in dens, or a blaz­ing fiery fur­naces, or an angry mob car­ry­ing you through the streets, or even death on a cross because of the God you wor­ship. Everybody’s cross is dif­fer­ent, but essen­tially remains ‘their cross’. Some­times God’s desire is for us to walk through pain and suf­fer­ing, just so His glory would be revealed in us. We do not trust Him just so He can come through for us and make our lives a par­adise on earth, but rather we take up our cross and will­ingly die to our desires and dreams, and in doing so pro­claim that He is God and that we fol­low hard after Him. For we have found true mean­ing in life. Our pur­pose is found in the one who first loved us. We live now com­pletely for Him and Him alone.

Let come what may, I choose to serve, and trust, and believe, and hope, and pray, and live, com­pletely and pas­sion­ately for this God who gave me life. There is noth­ing greater and life has noth­ing bet­ter to offer me. I hold onto the Cross where Christ shed His blood for me; I live in the real­ity of  Christ liv­ing in me and the pres­ence of God work­ing out in me; and I hold fast to the hope of Christ and a bet­ter day in glory.