One Thing I’ve Learned
By Kaden Slay
There was never really a time in my life where I didn’t believe in God. I grew up the son of a Missionary who would later become a Pastor. I knew the Word, I heard the stories, I sang the songs. I had two faithful, God fearing parents who taught me right from wrong. But when it came right down to it, although I believed in Him I did not believe Him or know Him. I had relied solely on the Light in others to get me through my own darkness . A season of physical illness, a heartbreak, a few wrong friends were all it took for me to turn around and find myself completely stranded in a self-made wilderness. Like that prodigal son I had always read about, I took what God had given me and ran as far and as fast as I could only to waste it all on things that I was sure would make me happy. I made my bed in a wasteland, and man, did I lay in it.How often do we, the Sons and Daughters of God find ourselves leading lesser lives? Princes and Princesses, living as beggars, eating with pigs? So scared of their mistakes that they’re willing to settle for less than everything God has promised them. For me the trap was the need to be right vs. righteous. I would have much rather hid my sin (my pride prefers to call them mistakes, but my heart knows it’s sin) from everyone than admitting the truth. I would have rather slowly died. It was mortifying to tell the truth. That’s pride. It kills.
But the all-sufficient grace of God is relentless.
“I can never escape from your Spirit!
I can never get away from your presence!
If I go up to heaven, you are there;
if I go down to the grave,you are there.
If I ride the wings of the morning,
if I dwell by the farthest oceans,
even there your hand will guide me,
and your strength will support me.
I could ask the darkness to hide me
and the light around me to become night—
but even in darkness I cannot hide from you.
To you the night shines as bright as day.
Darkness and light are the same to you.” PSALM 139: 7-12
Where can we go? Where can we run? I say from experience that there is NO WHERE. He is not a man that He would lie. It’s easy to want to hide and let ourselves believe that we have gone too far. But Psalm 103:12 tells us that we are not defined by the things we once did. God takes them as far as the east is from the west, and when He does that, it’s no longer ours to carry, it’s no longer our’s to see, it’s no longer our’s to deal with. Fighting with our past is redundant because it’s undoing what God has already done. The Lord is a good Father, faithful to love and to give. We don’t deserve it, we could never earn it, yet it’s completely given unto us. All we have to do is receive it.
One Thing I've Learned - Devotional