Since so few people actually read this thing, I'm going to write about what is on my heart today without worrying about sounding prideful, because this isn't about my pride. It's about God's grace and His glory through my testimony.
Last night I realized how much God has changed me.
I have worked more then 24 hours since 2 pm Thursday. It has been a long couple of days at work. I know my limits, and they are very, very near. As in it could get ugly if I'm at work later then I'm scheduled to work today. I miss having more than an 8 hour turn around between shifts. But at the same time I have learned a lot about the person I'm becoming here.
In college, way back when I was just starting out on this journey with God (9 years ago last month), I prayed crazy prayers. The kind of prayers that you pray when you are young because you don't really understand the work that is going to come after you pray them. I asked God for patience. I asked that He would help me to be a better listener. I asked that He would lead me to a position of ministry with women. I prayed that He would give me a job that impacted lives in a direct fashion. I prayed that God would lead me to women to disciple. I prayed all these things with out really understanding the words coming out of my mouth.
Now 9 years later I find that I am a woman I never expected to become. I never anticipated that I would be patient enough to hold my words until I could speak without harming others. I didn't think I would ever be living and working in an addiction recover facility. I didn't know that praying for someone to disciple would mean living with 13 other women in a 3 story house. I never would have imagined that I would be going to a Southern Baptist Seminary for graduate school. I didn't think that God could or would change me so much.
Last night the ladies expressed some of how they see me and I was taken aback. It's alarming to hear how other people view you. It's also alarming how easily satan can convince you of how flawed you are. I struggled with knowing if I was the woman the ladies described me as or if I am the woman I have known myself to be.
And then, well actually just now, I remembered 2 Corinthians 5:17 "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, the new has come." I am not the flawed, self-centered woman that I was even just a year ago. (I will point out that I still have huge struggles and issues on a regular basis, they are just not the ones that I used to have because I have matured past those issues for the time being.) I have been made new and I experience new mercies everyday. I am not the girl that I was, I am becoming more and more the woman that God has made me to be and it's been happening when I wasn't paying attention.
I am amazed at the work that God has done in the little time that I have lived here. When I think about the things I struggled with daily before I moved I realize that my battles are very different. God is teaching me the fine art of preserving and pushing forward toward the prize.
I am more then changed.
We are more then changed.
We are made new, completely new.
The belief that "this is just how I am" is false. We are how God has re-made us to be. The parts of me that I thought were here for good, that were unchangeable, have become something new. God is for real when He says He wants to purify our hearts and minds.
To paraphrase Beth Moore: "I am not that woman any more."
Mel C
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