I'm thrilled to welcome Samantha Hendrickson to the blog today with a lovely guest post. Samantha has a beautiful heart for the Lord and others, and I've been blessed to connect with her through one of my dear friends, who is Samantha's sister-in-law.
God is consistently equipping those he calls.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love.” -Ephesians 1:3-4
Have you ever considered what it would be like to walk through your pain without God?
When it feels impossible to understand why a loving God would allow this in your life, so maybe, it would be easier to deny him access to your heart?
I have. I considered if it would be easier to just work out my own solution to my pain instead of reconciling and surrendering my heart to what God was doing.
I wondered if it would be better for me to try something other than the hard process of bringing my pain to God and asking “why?” and possibly not getting an answer. Or getting an answer I didn’t like.
Or maybe the opposite.
Being so overwhelmed with thankfulness for his presence in your life that the thought of doing this without God is terrifying.
If any of those thoughts have been yours, this is especially for you. <3
Now I’m NOT going to start this by saying that God chose this grief for you because you can handle it. Because that's not true.
That's not what “chosen” means.
What I’m talking about, is that when Jesus died for us and called us His own, everything was done for you. There is nothing that you can do, be, or choose that is going to change the status you have as his beloved child and precious treasure.
What he offers you in your grief is rest. “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” -Matthew 11:28
Rest from the striving.
Rest from the pain of perfection.
Rest from your plan.
Rest from what has not worked.
Rest to grieve fully.
Rest to sit in stillness.
Rest to fall into his loving arms.
Rest to begin to see something beautiful grow in your heart.
Rest to lean in.
Rest to be seen, heard.
Rest to be fully forgiven.
Rest to be loved and treasured.
Grief and our pain give us something that easy times never will. The chance to look deeply into the heart of our Savior and see his affection for us, to stop what has been normal happening around us, to pause and consider how our God is good in this difficult moment. Because if we can begin to see him working in those hard moments, what he begins to unfurl in our hearts is a gem, a true treasure. We get closer to living in the presence of God.
This whole post has been spent trying to usher your heart and align your thoughts around a correct view of God. So, we stop seeing him as distant and begin to see him as the ever-present comforter, whose biggest desire for us is our joy to be found in him. That is what a glorifying life looks like.
God knows that HE is what will truly fill our souls. It’s what he created us to need. And so, instead of leaving us to ourselves, pursuing our own version of false joy, he is using our painful moments to open our eyes. Not a single tear you cry is wasted.
“You have kept count of my tossings;
put my tears in your bottle.
Are they not in your book?” -Psalms 56:8
So you being chosen by God means that every moment in your life is being used for a meaningful purpose, that the future for you is full of love and thought to your care. That you are continuing to be chosen in every moment, never alone and always seen as beloved.
But only because Jesus made the hardest choice for you. He chose to lose everything so that you could be his. He chose you over his own comfort, he chose you over the perfect presence of his Father, he chose you so you could spend eternity with him in perfect peace and joy.
You are incredibly, beautifully chosen and equipped for your hard. So you can have hope, even if it’s hard to see it now; it is for you always. “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.” -2 Corinthians 4:16
