In His Arms

So this blog has been quite the journey for me. Life is still a journey filled with joys and tears. But Jesus is always the focus and I never want to take my eyes off of him. Many of my readers have taken a pretty close look into my heart. A new step for me but a good one. You've read my joys and my fears - my trusting and my doubting. Real life I suppose.

As you read scripture there are countless stories about faith. The faithfulness of God's people is amazing as you read the stories. Today I was reading about Elijah. His faith in the the power of God was blowing me away. He had told the prophets of Baal to choose two bulls, cut them up, and put them on a wood for a fire. Elijah would do the same and call on the name of the Lord, they would call to their god. The God who answers by fire - he is God. Of course when they called to Baal morning till night nothing happened. Elijah even taunted them by saying "Surely he is god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened." (that sounds so funny to me) So when Elijah called all the people to him he prepared the altar to the Lord. Three times he had water poured on the altar so that the water ran down around the altar and even filled the trench. (amazing faith) Elijah prayed "O LORD...let it be known today that you are God in Israel...Answer me, O LORD, answer me, so these people will know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again. then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil...When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, 'The LORD - he is God! the LORD, - he is God!"

Oh to have that kind of faith. Oh how I desire that kind of faith. When we think about our faith walk, yours and mine, I think we first need to think about walking. Tim and I frequently take walks. Sometimes we just have the most peaceful walk ever but sometimes we might be walking along and it starts to rain, or we trip on the sidewalk. Whenever we take a walk we see things around us that we didn't see the last time we walked past. A cool tree we never noticed, a beautiful house with a cool front door, a house in disrepair, a park. Our faith walk is so much like that isn't it? We're walking along with Jesus, having a pretty pleasant walk, when all of a sudden something comes up in life that makes us trip - or we even feel like we got caught in a rainstorm and just want to run for shelter. We don't always see the same thing in our faith walk either. Tim and I could always go for the same walk all the time but we would never experience anything new and exiting. That is the same with our walk with Jesus. If we want to stay at what we think is "safe" we will never experience the potential of what God has for us. We've walked through some fire for sure - I'll bet that every one of you has too. Keeping my eyes fixed on Jesus through it all is the only way that I know how. The enemy will surely come along and trip us up so that our eyes come off of Jesus, but we must, we must, fix our eyes back on him.

Walk with faith believing that the God of the universe is actually holding you gently in the palm of his hand. He has his arms wrapped all around you and me. Feel it...........