Rough Waters

To the voice to the liar in the mirror, saying you can’t ever change. To the guilt that is sitting on your shoulders, always keeping you locking in chains. To the past that you can’t undo. To the pain that you are walking through to the small and big mistakes to the sin that keeps you down this is what love has to say

Say Goodbye

Eating my own words in this post, and it doesn’t taste very good. I have a feeling that much of my future will consist of doing this…. realizing the errors in my reasoning and trusting the Lord to take me from glory to glory in the levels of my understanding and in my sensitivity to the compassion of His heart. Day by day, the Lord is bringing me to a deeper understanding of the souls of the people that I desire to help—- and He’s giving me a more real and strong love for them than I have ever had before.

It has taken me a lot of prayer to post another blog not because I am scared of how people are going to view me or because people I know and also people I don't know  are reading this. But, because this is me this is what the real Elena looks like. I am afraid of being Judge, I  am afraid of being viewed differently because my heart aches differently, I am afraid of people reading by vulnerability. But, what I am certainly not afraid of is my love and heart for the Lord and through this season God has been stripping the layers of my pride from me and replacing it with compassion and love and real hard Truth, truth that can only come from Him.

Lately, I started to focus more on my inner-self and re-evaluating the choices that I have made and the choices that I have continued to make and I have come to the perfect conclusion that I will always struggle with SIN. Not because I want to be intentionally disobedient to such a loving God but simply because I am human. Sin is not just what we do, it’s who we are. It’s affected every part of us. We are not what we should be and we desire things we should not. Again, I know it takes faith to believe that. And if you don’t, I pray the Lord will grant you faith and in His loving kindness lead you to repentance even amidst the mass confusion of your feelings. He did it–and is still doing it– for me. Jesus substituted Himself in our place and died for our sins— bringing upon Himself the condemnation that was headed toward us. He absorbed it all. I don’t fully understand that—all the ins and outs of how that took place— but I believe it. And I trust Him with all of my being. You don’t have to “get it” to come to Him. Just come. Lay it down including your desire to fully understand everything. Personally, best decision I ever made!

The Bible says, very implicitly, that Christ  “has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son”- Colossians 1:13 and also that “ sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace”- Romans 6:14. I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I think about the reality of this truth and then line it up alongside the reality of my struggle with different sinful tendencies, I start to doubt that I have any part with Jesus Christ.  My hope starts fading. My assurance is almost nonexistent. My sanity starts crumbling. Do you know what I’m talking about? Have you been there? Are you there now? 

It’s a horrible, despairing place to be.

But think about this for a second, does our struggle with sin point more toward the fact that we aren’t saved or does it point more toward the fact that we are saved and known by Jesus Christ? I would venture to say, based on Scripture, that it indicates the latter. If the Holy Spirit was not in us, convicting us of sin and leading us to repent, there would be no struggle. Our wills would be under the dominion of sin, in complete submission to Satan, and we would see absolutely nothing wrong with ourselves– neither in our actions nor our thoughts. In fact, we would see our sin as good.  Look around you, I know you have people in your immediate, everyday life who don’t experience the same internal struggles you do. You see them do horrible, wretched things without an ounce of remorse. We’ve all been there, pre-conversion, but we’re different now. We’re changed, transformed and new.

We must realize that knowing we’re messed up and knowing that we’ve failed God are tremendous blessings. Just think of all the people in the world who are unaware of their sinfulness and headed toward eternal anguish and torture. Their ignorance of who they are in comparison to a holy God will literally be the death of them.  They don’t truly see that they need to be rescued. They may think it’s good to “believe” in Jesus, and they may even go to Church because it’s the “right” thing to do, but they don’t really see that they need Him. I also think that even in the most mature of Christians, it’s possible that pride can subtly maneuver itself  into the heart and mind and start to deceive genuine believers into believing that they “are without sin” (1 John 1:8).  Lord knows we see a lot of people act like this! But the truth is that the sheep of God, in this life, will always fight against sin.

“^For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.  For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.”- Apostle Paul (Romans 7:15-25)

If you’re struggling, praise God. Seriously, praise His Name. Because if there were no struggle, there would be no salvation.  When you fall, get back up and keep fighting. When you’re weary, wait on the Lord and He will revive you. Don’t try to live this life in your own strength, because you won’t succeed. Rely on Him….His presence. …His power…not yours.

We need to stop trying to crucify him again

And please, please remember that His grace covers your failures. You are and overcomer

Every.    Single.    One.

This is my battle

Elena