We are "more than CONQUERORS", through Jesus!

It has been a week of endless running around from events, to appointments, to practices, to games, to anything & everything!  I have found myself overwhelmed, at times, wondering why does life have to get SO BUSY???  When you have chronic pain to deal with, it makes everything seem more difficult to surmount.  

One thing I am learning through this difficult season of my life is......how to be more dependent on God and less apt to run ahead on my own strength .  Control has always been something I like to cling to in life's circumstances.  But, honestly - between having 3 teenagers & learning to live life in constant pain....I am learning first-hand how to rely on the grace of God like never before.  It sounds pretty lame & cliche  - even as I typed those words out, just now.  But, seriously I think I am now coming to a place of realizing the good that God has accomplished in me, already, through this season of chronic pain.  What has been debilitating, frustrating and incredibly humbling - has, in fact, created a need in my soul for a much greater dependence on my merciful God who longs to have me look to Him in the first place for all that I need to make it through the day.  

For most of my life, I have had a tendency to take the easiest ways out of difficult situations in order to escape them with the least amount of scars possible.  Even when God may have been calling me to persevere and allow His plan to be worked out in & through me.  Jesus never took the easy way out....He lived His life to be poured out & broken for us every single day.  He even took it to the highest level and gave up His very life....taking on MANY scars in order to pour Himself out completely & totally!  All to save us from ourselves.

This week, in my devotions I read something out of "My Utmost For His Highest" by Oswald Chambers.  It was all about the joy that comes from being, as Paul says "more than conquerors in Christ".....it reads:  

"The surf that distresses the ordinary swimmer produces in the surf-rider the super-joy of going clean through it.  Apply that to our own circumstances, these very things - tribulations, deistresses, persecution, produce in us the super-joy;  they are not things to FIGHT!  We are more than conquerors through Jesus in all these things, not in spite of them, but IN THE MIDST OF THEM!!! Christians never know the joy of the Lord in spite of tribulation, but BECAUSE OF IT."

I love this picture of the surf-rider.  After going to Hawaii and watching the surfers out there getting slammed & tossed all over the place by the huge, daunting waves - I can't imagine being out there without the solid place to stand - Jesus, our "surf board" that is the ONLY thing that can take us clean through the fiercest wave that seems unsurmountable.  If we try to swim through it on our own....we'll inevitably be tossed into the rocks along the shore, or get swept out to sea and be totally overwhelmed by the ocean.  Yes, the joy is in the scariest part...which requires total dependence on the ONE who can get me safely to shore.  Hallelujah!  He is so GREAT....Praise Him!  He is worthy, He is awesome, HE IS MY LORD & MY GOD!