Good morning everyone,

Deuteronomy 29:5-I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandals have not worn off your feet.

One of the most difficult things to do in life is to keep a perspective that sees your life as a whole, rather than fragments of hyper-intense moments of pain, pleasure, success, distress, joy, etc. Last night I woke up dreadfully at 2am, but then stayed up until 3;30 in thankfulness to God. I truly believe God woke me up to make me reflect on how He has perserved me all my life until now. Helping me take on the perspective that faith in God has a lot to do with gratitude to Him for everything in life.

I don’t believe we really seek to live for God without "restraints", until we recognize it was Christ that has perserved us through the good, the bad, and ugly shame of life. He was "the good" in giving us the ability and shaping it to be succesful in what we may do now. He was in "the bad" to show us that He is the better way of life to live, and perceive life in His way, to keep us from inflicting the same sinful experiences on someone else. He was in "the ugly shame" of life by perserving us, and forgiving us, and cleansing us from any bitter vengeance or shameful guilt we feel from those experiences.

Until we as believer’s can see our lives through the whole of what God has perserved us from in our entire lives and be thankful, we will live in fragments, not knowing who we are. Denying things that happened to us that ultimately make us unique, and able to minister to people who need our specific testimony. Silent bitterness towards God stops us from being healed, and keeps us from seeing that whatever we came through was "sculpting" us, while He all along was perserving us to live for Him and bless others.

In His Love, Ld