Happy New Year. 2015 is here. As I review events of the past 12 months I am challenged to make 2015 twelve months of serving the Bethlehem Baby who went to the Cross, came out of the tomb and became my living Redeemer. Jesus makes all the difference in the world.
Jesus turns sadness into gladness, defeat into victory, depression into joy, rejection into acceptance, bitterness into sweetness, unforgiveness into forgiveness, darkness into light, and on and on I could go. How does He do it? From the manger to the resurrection He defeated satan and every enemy even death itself to give to us abundant life.
There is nothing logical about how He changes things. He told his disciples that we gain life by dying. We gain by losing and to follow Him we give up everything to have unexplainable abundance. It sure doesn’t make sense to me but that is exactly what He tells us in His Word.
I listened to the message of Nick Vujicic at the Hour of Power broadcast this weekend, a man born without arms and legs. You can visit his webpage Life Without Limbs and hear his testimony. He shared how he had prayed for the miracle of God giving him arms and legs until God revealed to him that he was the miracle.
Too often I allow myself to be caught up in the memories of the past, remembering the difficult times I have faced. For the most part the valleys of the past are the consequences of the choices I made outside of the will of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I remind you as I often must remind myself that He told us we will reap what we sow. Praying for crop failure does not work.
Then I hear the message of Nick Vujicic, a person with no arms and legs, by no fault of his own or the consequences of choices he has made and He shares the message of seeking a miracle from God to give him legs and arms and God tells him he is the miracle. I was showered with conviction. How often I consider my past as an obstacle for God to do with my life what He would choose to do.
It isn’t my past that forfeit’s the manifestation of the power of God. It is me continually praying for forgiveness when God took care of that on the Cross centuries ago. The miracle God desires to perform in my life is me simply surrendering everything I have to Him. Yes that means the terrible choices I have made in the past. Even through the consequences of disobedient choices, reaping what I have sown, a spiritual law that God Himself made, He desires through my dying to self to make me His living miracle.
As we enter 2015 would you join me in surrendering everything to God and allow Him to make you the miracle He desires you to be. I commit myself to quit asking God to take away this and add that but simply ask Him to make me the miracle that He can use to proclaim His message of hope. Let me share the abundant life that comes in a total surrender to His Will by becoming His miracle.