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Topic: COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS (Don't write about the song) (04/16/15)
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TITLE: "You are not the Savior, I am." | Previous Challenge Entry
By Lilly Grace
04/21/15 -
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I try to count my blessings instead of focus on the challenges of this life. Mother Teresa of Calcutta once wrote, “Never let anything so fill you with sorrow as to make you forget the joy of Christ risen.” When things are bleak, I hold onto those words and remember Christ is risen and that knowledge alone reminds me of what is important. It’s all about God, not me. I wish I would have known that earlier in life or at least really knew what it meant.
In Sunday school as a child, God seemed like an unapproachable figure up in the sky somewhere. A distant person that people told me was my heavenly father. I was afraid of my earthly father so to have another one up in the sky watching my every move was not comforting. Growing up, my family went to church on Sunday and would say grace at dinner time and that was the extent of my relationship with God. We prayed the same dinner prayer every night, over and over again, there was no interjecting with a special prayer request or praise.
Somehow I knew there was more to God than just reciting words to Him. I was saved in my early twenties and when I had children I wanted them to know God better than I did growing up. The family I grew up in was strict and we were expected to obey with no explanation as to why things were done certain ways. I wanted to be more fun-loving than that and let my children make up their own minds about God and church.
Although I was a born again Christian when I had my children, I was still a baby Christian, so it was like a baby raising babies. There was a lot of stumbling and I was not always sure what to do, except love them. On dark days, depression would set in because I knew I had just ruined my children because I wasn’t as strict as my parents had been. The Lord reminded me that I had been praying continually without ceasing for my children from the moment they were born. 1 Thessalonians 5:17 NIV and if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 1 John 5:14 NIV
All of a sudden the blur became clear and I remembered that I did read Bible stories to them, brought them to church sometimes, maybe not every Sunday and they were baptized by their choice before they were teenagers. Train a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not turn from it. Proverbs 22:6 NIV
I am so grateful that I can give my burdens and worries to the Lord. When I count my blessings, I thank God for my children, husband and all of my loved ones, but most of all I am grateful that it is not up to me to save them - thank goodness, correction thank God. I love to hear “You are not the Savior, I am.”
The quote from Mother Teresa comes from a devotional entitled “Joy” from the Women’s Devotional Bible 2 NIV
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