Close Your Umbrella

My mom died in February of 2004. That year was full of emotions. In December of that year, I felt like I needed to retrace the path of her funeral procession and visit her grave site. 

All the way from LaVergne to White Bluff it rained. I kept praying asking God to stop the rain. The last thing I wanted to do was stand out in the rain. When I got to the church, I was very frustrated to see that God hadn't stopped the rain and it didn't look like he was going to. I fussed at God and told him that I was tired of feeling like there was something that He wanted me to do and then the entire time that I'm doing it I'm getting "rained" on. This time it just happened to literally be rain. 

I drove on to the grave site and stood in the rain with my umbrella. After an hour had passed, I could see the blue sky off in the distance but the clouds were coming from another direction. How frustrating to see relief from what is pounding you but that relief is not coming your way. 

I started to feel God prompting me to close my umbrella. I argued more with God. I continued to ask him to make the rain stop. God told me to close my umbrella and trust Him. I hadn't been able to trust Him to stop the rain up until this point, why should I start now. However, I finally did close my umbrella and seconds after I did, the rain stopped! 

As I'm standing there with umbrella still in hand but now closed, I'm awakened to a deeper meaning of the rain and my umbrella that day. I had umbrellas in my life that I had strategically placed within a short arms length just in case it started to rain in my life. God showed me that day that I had been using those umbrellas to shelter me from the rain and life's storms in place of trusting in Him. He was calling me to a deeper relationship with Him that day. A relationship of trust and dependence.

What umbrellas do you have lying around? Do you have one to shield you from financial stress? Maybe one to block the attacks of bullies? Maybe even one to protect you from people getting too close? Disappointment, failure, rejection, love, peace; the list of things that we shield ourselves from with our umbrellas goes on and on. Close your umbrella! There's no faith in waiting until the rains stops for you to close it. Close it while it's raining and ask God to be your shelter. 

They're just words... until you trust Him enough to close your umbrella

You're Not Worthless

For anyone dealing with self-esteem issues, I hope and pray that this blog will help you see how God sees you.  In His eyes, you are perfect!  Here’s some scripture to prove it.

Genesis 1:26 & 27 “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

In the 26^th and 27^th verses of the Bible, God has already declared that you are made in His image and after His likeness.  This was before the fall and before we needed Christ to redeem our sins.  Since sin entered the world, we need a savior to bring us back to perfection and unity with God.  That savior is Jesus Christ.  (For further reference; see Genesis 3, Romans 3:23, John 3:16, and John 14:6)  Accept Christ as your Lord and Savior, and the following will become true of you.

2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

No matter what you have done in the past, accepting Christ wipes your slate clean and gives you a new future.   One of hope, knowing that nothing from your past can keep you away from salvation. 

1 Peter 2:9 “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

God has chosen us.  We are God’s possession!  Why would a perfect God want to have something that is imperfect, broken, useless, or worthless?  Because He sees you as His perfect child who is like Him!

John 1:12 “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”

Ephesians 4:24 “And to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

The best part about this whole deal is that the only thing you need to do to accept this new identity as a perfect, holy, righteous child of God, is to believe that Jesus is your Savior!

Ephesians 3:12 “(Christ Jesus our Lord), in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.”

Our faith in Jesus Christ alone gives us such a beautiful identity.  One of the many things that I love about our God is that you don’t have to be good enough for Him to accept you.  He accepts you through Christ.  Whether you feel that you aren’t attractive enough, smart enough, talented enough, you’re too big a failure, or anything else doesn’t matter to God, because Jesus was perfect.  With Jesus in your heart, God sees you as perfect too.  The insecurities just mentioned are all ones that I have struggled with in the past several years.  Honestly, this blog began as God comforting me and turned into the thing you’re reading now.  I hope this helps you as much as it did me!

If you don’t have Jesus in your heart, then all you have to do is pray and ask Him to be your Lord and Savior.  Personally, if God sees me as perfect, then all of my insecurities about how people view me become irrelevant.  THE LIVING GOD THAT CREATED THE WORLD AND DETERMINES YOUR ETERNITY CAN SEE YOU AS PERFECT!!  If that’s not absolutely incredible, then I don’t know what is.

Father, I pray that I would be able to see myself as you see me, perfect and created in your image.  Make these insecurities and failures stop governing how I see myself.  In you I am perfect.  You are all I will ever need and I am forever grateful for that.

They’re just words… until you accept Christ and let His image also be yours!