i am not, but i know I AM!

With finals and Don Rags just around the corner, I am so tempted to focus on my inadequacies… how I don’t know what I’m doing, I should be studying even harder, I don’t have the capacity to think and remember like other people, I don’t belong in this program, etc. But I’ve been realizing, lately, that this self-focus takes my focus away from God. When I start thinking about all my stress and everything I am not, I forget that God put me in this program for a reason and that He's not going to leave me hanging; I forget that He is Good and has everything under His control; I forget that God is actually and legitimately real; I forget that He is the Great I AM, that He is more than enough, and that this education is all about His glory. If I can’t remember anything, give terrible thoughts, fail my don rags, or am even asked to leave the program, but am growing in my relationship with Christ, what did I lose? As long as I am further developing my relationship with God, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that my salvation is not in threat. Don Rags is not a life and death situation, as much as I often try to make it out to be. I already have life, and nothing can snatch that away from me...

For I am convinced that neither death nor life [...] nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our LORD. -Romans 8:38-39

How refreshing it is to know that I don’t need to be perfect for God to love me or to save me… He already has! I am still learning to maintain this new mentality, but have found that everything is so much better when I shift the focus off of my inadequacies and on to His fullness. O thank you Jesus – How Great Thou Art!