When life is bigger

Have you ever been through something that totally overwhelmed you?  Something that was so beyond your own personal capacity to cope, that you knew it couldn't have come from you?  That's where God thrives - that really is why He created us.  To be dependent on Him, because we are doing things much bigger than ourselves.

That's where I am right now.  Living in Korea with a family with whom I cannot communicate, trying to stay in touch with friends from back home, attempting to forge new relationships with people here, amid the stress of also adapting to a new culture....it's exhausting.  And at times it's too much for me to handle.

But that's why I'm so glad I've got God in my court.  God is bigger than we are.  And no matter what we're going through, He can handle it.  That is, after all, why we were created - to lean on Him.  Ephesians 2:8 (paraphrased) says that He has given us the gift of faith, which allows us to believe in Him, which saves us and gives us life, instead of death.  But it all springs from God.  "Not by works, so that no one can boast."

But we CAN boast - we can boast in what God has done for us, in the favor that He gives us, in the love that He shows us.  So when life has got you down, when life is bigger than you can handle, just remember, God is bigger.  It doesn't matter how big your circumstance is....God is bigger.  And He wants to make you alive in Christ.

Ephesians 2:1-10

 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, ² in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. ³ All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh^[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. ⁴ But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, ⁵made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. ⁶ And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, ⁷ in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. ⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰ For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Alive in Christ

A friend of mine told me today about a neighbor of hers who committed suicide a few weeks ago.  The story just about broke my heart.  I truly cannot imagine the depths of despair that a human being must come to, for them to be unable to find anything in this life worth living for.

But then I thought to myself…how many of us are simply walking corpses?  The first few verses of Ephesians 2 talk about how our sins have killed us, and how God’s grace is what makes us alive again, through Christ Jesus. 

What powerful imagery!!  I’m not one for frightening horror movies, but when I read these verses I picture entire cities full of zombies, with God’s redeemed fighting valiantly among them.  The scariest thing to me, is that most people can’t tell who are the zombies and who are the people. 

But I suppose, in the end, it doesn’t really matter.  We have been called to save the lost; but when our hourglass runs out, the only person whose destination we will know for sure is our own.  So here’s the question for today: have you been made alive in Christ?  Or are you still a walking dead?  I pray with every fiber of my being that you are the former.  Life is too precious a thing to experience it as a dead man.