I watched a video on You Tube recently from a Stoneleigh
Bible Week in 1998. It stirred up happy memories of these times but also made
me realise how much I have changed since then. God has been doing a wonderful
work of healing and restoration and things that I struggled with then are no
longer an issue.
However it also made me realise that I would not like the
person I was then very much and it made me realise afresh what wonderful grace
God has for each one of us. He is not fazed by where we are, as he can see
where we are going. All he wants is our
cooperation through joyful obedience to let him work out our salvation with
fear and trembling.
I think too often we can be afraid of what God wants to do
or what may be required of us. However the God who loves us more than we will
ever really understand does not want us bound by the hurts of the past but
liberated to walk in freedom with him.
As ever, it comes down to trusting God that he knows best
and will never hurt us. His plans are
always for our good and if he is asking us to walk through something that he
knows we find hard, he is with us every step of the way. He will give us the
strength to come through it.
God is always telling me not to be so hard on myself and to
accept myself as he accepts me. This should also of course be applied to other
people. As we realise that we are all on
a journey and that God loves and accepts us as we are, where we are, he will
also give us the grace to accept others where they are as well.
No one has arrived and no one is perfect but as God unravels
the hurts, pains, disappointments and failures of the past it brings us into
greater freedom and ability to love others.
We are all works in progress and I love seeing the wonderful things that
God has done in people’s lives.
The Apostle Paul was only too aware of his past and of how
God had rescued him from a religious, legalistic, persecuting past and turned
those things which the devil had used for harm into the very things that are a
great blessing to us today. We have the testimony of Paul to encourage us and
the teachings of Paul to instruct us. Paul’s mind bound up in religion and
legalism when liberated by God became a well spring for much of the Christian
theology and church practise that we use and understand today. Paul’s letters have become the foundation for
the Church.
It is truly wonderful what God does in the believer’s heart
and life as we trust and obey him. So do not be discouraged if you do not feel
you are making progress, but accept the journey that you are on. In the same way accept others who are also on
their journeys and give grace to both them and yourselves.
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