Remain In Me!

My life has been so crazy lately. The thing is becoming a christian is hard. Nobody ever said changing one's entire way of life is. Not that I know of anyway. Ever since opening my life to the Lord there have been so many attacks. Not physical in any sense of the word, but the emotional, psychological, and spiritual attacks are most definitely in abundance.

Satan is losing a longtime hopeful companion of his, and I can sense he is not happy about it. I had been doing his bidding for years through self-indulgence, gluttony, drug use, self-pity, and more. Now, I just want the Lord. All the time I just want more.

It is how they say, once you open your heart, the thirst becomes so great! It's not a suffering type of thirst as in the desert with no water, it is an intense craving though, that is impossible to completely fill. There is always more of God. More grace, more love, more compassion, and mercy.

The fight over me is intense at best right now. It is sometimes almost unbearable, I feel I can not keep fighting the fight. Sometimes I feel like going back to my old life. I have been retreating back into my familiarity of isolation. When I feel too much pressure, pulled in too many directions I isolate. Retreat to myself and hide from the world. Hide from the pressure.

I went to the river yesterday, I needed my heart rate to slow down. Stop the anxiety, stop the circles my mind was spinning in. I just sat on the bank listening to the water, watching the trees dancing a beautiful dance in the wind. I just sat there and marveled and the beauty that is God. I didn't want to think, or even to pray. I just wanted to sit and wait for him. Wait for him to speak to me. Open myself to him sitting there on those rocks, willing to hear his message rather than my own thoughts. It is a wondrous thing to do this. To just sit and look around you appreciating all the beauty that God created for me to enjoy, and see his presence in the world around me. I was at peace for that time. Completely open to God's word.

There was no bible, no pastor, no music, just nature, God, and me. I got the answer I had been looking for, I became willing to just listen and open my heart to his spiritual word not just his written word. This was his one on one conversation with my heart. It isn't a voice you hear with your ears, you hear it with your soul.

I love it when there are moments like this. He whispers "Be strong, be courageous, I have told you that you are not alone. You have never been alone. I always have and always will go before you into all your struggles and battles, I am always with you, I will never leave you. Be strong in me Kimberly, keep steady on your path. If you turn from my path, it will only lead you back into the darkness. If you remain in my light, your path will remain straight. I know the plan I have for you Kimberly, it is a plan to prosper you, not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future! I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life, you already know this, why are you in doubt? Why do you not trust, stay in my peace. Do not worry. I am here!"

I know that the struggle at home between me living my life with God, and my life with my fiancee, it is completely in God's hands. Isolating myself from the church, my bible studies, my love of christian worship music, it is not the way. The way is to continue to saturate myself in God's word, God's love, and God's mercy is the only way. I need not worry myself with how my fiancee' misses me and is complaining for my time. This is me, this is who I am, this is who God requires me to be. Love it or leave it. I am not going to change it, or sacrifice God's love for me for anyone or anything in the world.

I will redeem my time God has lovingly graced this sinner with. I will remain in his warm, tender embrace where I feel the peace I have longed to feel my entire life! I will not isolate, I will keep sharing with everybody I see what God has done to change me, and that he will do the same for them too, if they let him!