immeasurable love.

I listened to a great podcast today. It was from Chip Ingram's "How to overcome pain" series... this one on broken relationships. It is well worth the dollar I spent to get it. It was just so neat that God lead me to listen to it today. You see I have been looking forward to today for the past 51 days. Not Dec. 10 necessarily, but for 51 days to elapse since DJ and I broke up. That is how long we officially dated and I thought that once today came, when we would be "friends" for as long as we officially dated, that I would be completely moved on and life would go back to the way it was before him. That is not completely true, but God is continually teaching me to trust Him in all things even this pain. (I would encourage you all to listen to this message if you have any broken relationships (not just romantic) and could use some healing. You can borrow my itouch if you want!).

This podcast revealed to me all the areas I have done these last 51 days wrong. The message was from Ephesians 3:14-21 (which is the same chapter I got my name for this blog from). He walked through the four steps we must take to heal broken relationships and how God can use broken relationships to bring us to a deeper knowledge of His immense love for us if we let Him.

The four steps Chip outlines to overcome the pain of past broken relationships are;
-Take it to the Father (FIRST!) (3:14-15). So many Christians would rather pay a Christian counselor to listen to them than spend an hour on their knees. He says we are living in a world where Christians don't pray.
-Ask God to have inner strength to yeild to and not resist His work (3:16). We all go for the instant quick fix to numb the pain; we go to another relationship or pull back from all, to substances, to sex, to any adrenaline rush we can find, etc. but we should be letting Him use the pain to bring us to Him and allow Him to have free reign (control) of our hearts.
-Ask God to help us grasp and experience His love (3:17-19). Recognizing He loves you and doesn't ever do anything to harm you. He sees the bigger picture and He invited us to go to Him to see it with Him so we can experience His love in a new, deeper way.
-Expect Him to answer these prayers in ways beyond what we can ask or imagine (3:20-21). His power and imagination are beyond our comprehension. He is longing to answer our prayers for the above 3 steps in a way that shows the world that it was His doing so He will get all the credit and glory!

This message pointed out to me that I need to recognize God as the one who brings all things to bring Him glory, good and bad but all things He does so that we can not take any credit for ourselves. If we try to manipulate the situation we come out on the other side thinking, "Look what I did," when we should let Him be in control (since He is anyway!) be saying, "Look what God did!" He mentioned that there is nothing like a broken relationship to show us how people let us down and God is the only One who will never let us down. God will continually remove things from our life not because He is a mean God but because He is a loving God who wants to show us Who we can trust and let Him work all things for our good.

I do not know the future, but I know the One who holds the future and that He is bent on doing me good out of His immense love for me, that He is extremely powerful beyond what I can imagine, and that His dreams for my life are immeasurably greater than anything I could fathom. I am excited about the journey to come and I will cling to Him, the One who will not let me down, along the way.
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I didn't know my blog would end up like this as I started it, but I want it to continually be an honest look at what God is teaching me with that hope that there is at least one person who needs to be encouraged from hearing it. I am a sinner saved by beautiful grace.