Which one most characterizes your life and why does it?

  • Calm confidence or frantic living?
  • Prayer or pouting?
  • Humility or honor?
  • Contentment or control?
  • Listening or lecturing?
  • Wise words or wasted whining?
  • Binding hurts or breaking spirits?
  • Crown of beauty or piles of ashes?
  • Freedom or bondage?
  • Love or Legalism?
  • Righteousness or religion?
  • His presence or your performance?

Are you who you wanted to be? Do you even know who you are? Do you want more?

Angela Thomas puts her wants into words like this: “I want to be courageous and brave. I want to be hospitable and gentle. I want my children to be glad I’m their mother. I desire to be captivating and intelligent. I want to be quick-witted and friendly. I value common sense and lack of pretense. I want to be confident and spiritually secure. I want the clean heart that comes from quick confession. I want my life to matter for the kingdom of heaven. I want to know real grace and give it as freely as my Savior has. I absolutely love that it’s never too late to become the woman I have dreamed of being.” (Do You Think I Am Beautiful, p. 124)

It is not too late for us, either. I recently read Psalm 51:1-12 in The Message and was amazed at how much God loves me. A phrase in the passage says that He is after “truth from the inside out.” He is rich in grace and mercy and loves me to the core even when it is rotten. He reaches down as I confess and gives me a fresh start.

The Message says it this way: “God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life. Don’t throw me out with the trash, or fail to breathe holiness in me. Bring me back from the gray exile, put a fresh wind in my sails!”

Don’t you love that Psalm of truth?  In light of it, have you ever just felt your life was too chaotic to be used? How about just feeling like you are in the gray exile of existence? Have you longed for a fresh start?  Are you sick of yourself? Are you sick of living a frantic, controlling, pouting, lecturing, whining, ash-filled, broken, legalistic, religious, performing bondage of a life? Are you done with weak-willed living, existing in fear, shame, or covering? Are you sick of just “doing church” as a show?

We can live differently. Psalm 51 promises that God is generous, full of grace and mercy. He is our God of a fresh start and a clean heart. Remember: no bondage is too big, no ash heap too filthy. The key is we must find ourselves poor and needy and ready to surrender. God never moves. He is always the Faithful Father with his eyes scanning the horizon and His arms open wide.

Run to Him!

-Michelle Sterling