WHEN YOU WISH YOU COULD BE MORE THAN YOU ARE

Surely one of the toughest terrains for any of us to walk is that terrorizing zone where we admit that we aren't as much as we had hoped.  The admission is painful enough. The sheer loneliness that follows is devastating.  We had hoped that by this age we would be much more than we are; but it turns out that in many cases we are even less.

The mind and heart can hardly take it in.  When high hopes come crashing down and we are left with ourselves, whew!, it's tough to breathe.  So what do we do?  How do we react to circumstances or respond to people when we feel quite flattened, embarrassed, and ashamed that we aren't the tower of life we had hoped?

It is here, at this very place, that we are challenged to believe that we can be resurrected from this living grave of ours.  It is here, on this turf, that we must not give up.  Our conclusion must be of a living, breathing faith that even dead situations can be reversed.  Faith is believing what isn't yet can be.  Too, it is trusting that what has been lost can be resurrected.

And faith we are to possess.  Note that this faith is not a spreadsheet of right and wrong answers which we might find within organized religion.  No, rather it is an unearthy kind of air we breathe being assured that God can deliver us even when no one can remember the code.

So we persist.  We persevere.  We are backed by the of the Spirit of God.  Our work of faith is to stand still while He bears His fruit.  We can't on our own; but He will if we will but avail ourselves to His loving, growing, reaching process.

No man is an island.  Well, great.  I didn't want to be an island anyway.  I just wanted to make a difference.  That's what you want as well.  The longer we last in life we will note an increasing struggle to stay with His original call; more of Him and less of us.  Rats, I was intending to become more prominent; not less.

This world we live in is buried in stress.  Very few win the lottery and those who do, it is sometimes reported, find that they now have an entirely new region of frustration like never before.

So our option is profoundly powerful.  We must continue to draw to the Light.  He knows stuff.  We don't know beans about His stuff.  Let your discouragement awaken you to the reality that you aren't as much as you may have thought; but due to His embedded Spirit within, you are more than you had ever imagined because He alone brings you up from the grave...that grave that had hoped to conceal your beauty and wonder from the neighborhood.

When you wish that you could be more than you are, the only way is to follow the trail of Jesus; all of it.  This involves more than public approval coupled with alone-time with Father.  It includes rejection, suffering, disappointment...on purpose.  As we see him struggle, we identify.  And as we see him empowered even greater from those situations, we are cheered to keep moving forward.

Up from the grave we arise!