"No Matter Who You Are"

"And gathered them out of the lands, from the east, and from the west, from the north, and from the south." (Psalms 107:3)

 Maybe the greatest challenge we deal with, big and small, is the question, "Why me?" I mean, if you have been walking in the Lord for any amount of time, you must have dealt with that question now and again. It is mostly caused by doubt; not so much about doubt in the Lord, but doubt in ourselves. If there is one thing that God has shown me through these many years of ups and downs, it is that feelings seldom have anything to do with what faith is meant to be about. We can wake up feeling so distant from the Lord, or we can wake up feeling as close as we ever have felt before in our lives; but those feelings have no relationship with what faith actually is all about. Our faith is not based upon feelings, it is based upon truth and love. Truth never changes, and love is forever. So what if you don't have a ministry that seems all the important, you are important to God because you are His child. So what if you have failed in almost every endeavor that you have felt called into, He is unfailing enough for you both. Most of what we live out in our lives is for learning how amazing the Lord is, not how important or successful that we can become. I heard at least two messages yesterday that spoke about a certain character from the Bible, his name was Manasseh. One of the messages was from J. Vernon McGee, so you know that it was not recently given. The challenging thing we seem to be stumbled by is the fact that we sometimes feel as though we lack change, at least the kind of change we think we should be feeling. We might think by now that our ability to resist sin and temptation would be stronger, or our ability to share the Lord with people would be greater. I think that God will use our weaknesses to demonstrate His power and might; after all, He is the one that chose us, we did not choose Him. Manasseh was the most horrible and evil king that Judah or even Israel ever had; and his birth was the result of Hezekiah's extended fifteen year life. If you are not familiar with that story, Hezekiah was told that he was going to die, but he cried out to God for more life, and God granted him his request. His son Manasseh was not the only bad thing to come out of those fifteen years; but it was the other big mistake that changed his son. Go figure...

"And when he took the scroll, the four living beings and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp, and they held gold bowls filled with incense, which are the prayers of God's people. And they sang a new song with these words: "You are worthy to take the scroll and break its seals and open it. For you were slaughtered, and your blood has ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. And you have caused them to become a Kingdom of priests for our God. And they will reign on the earth."" (Revelations 5:8-10) NLT