Somethings about to give...

The service at church yesterday was phenomenal. I mean, it usually is, don't get me wrong, but it was amazing in so many ways.

It was like God was looking into my heart and answering questions I had not yet asked. This was the 2nd time in the past year that someone I completely didn't know spoke life into me. It was first Sunday, which at our church is Baptism Sunday. My best friend Nikki was getting baptized, and we were all excited about it. After the baptisms, our church went into full praise and worship mode. You could just feel God's presence there and I started praying. The scripture reading for the day had been in Psalms 107. So I started reading further and was struck by what I read:

(vs 8-15) Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men,for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.Some sat in darkness and the deepest gloom, prisoners suffering in iron chains,for they had rebelled against the words of God and despised the counsel of the Most High.So he subjected them to bitter labor;they stumbled, and there was no one to help.Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble,and he saved them from their distress.He brought them out of darkness and the deepest gloom and broke away their chains.Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men...

I could see myself all in this passage. I was that person who had rebelled against God's Word, and didn't want to hear anything he was trying to tell them. I was that person who was stumbling and couldn't find help anywhere. And then suddenly, here I am calling out to God for help, and he swooped down to save me.  I'm praying and crying and the woman next to me just starts praying for me and speaking to me. I won't repeat everything that she told me (because a- I don't remember everything & b- something things I'm not ready to share) but essentially, she was telling me how much God loved me. How much He just wanted me to trust Him so He could work in my life. How he had great plans for my life that I wouldn't be able to even understand.

Her words echoed the words that a lady spoke to me at a conference last fall. I knew that it was no coincidence, and that God was really speaking to me through this lady. I've been so scared to trust God, not sure of what His plans for me would be, not sure if I'd be able to step up to the plate and do what He wanted. Scared that I would mess up more than I'd succeed. Scared that my messed up life would overpower anything I had to say about God. But even after the past year of disobedience and me being a mess- God was still telling me He wanted to use me. And that I didn't have to do anything to "fix" my life except trust Him.

Right now, I'm looking at my life with a clean slate. Much like the Life of Paul that I have been reading. I messed up like he did- but God is calling me like He called Paul (I am in no way saying I'm at the same level as Paul- please don't get it twisted, I'm just saying I was a hot mess like Paul.) Paul didn't try to fix up what he did wrong in the past. He just moved forward in the new life God gave him immediately. And that has been my problem, not moving into what God tells me immediately. I just kept living life as I had been doing, not making any type of radical change. And of course, I ended up in the same state as I was before.

But this time, I want things to be different. I plan to be a new person. I don't care about who I was, or how I messed up my witness by all the sin in my life. I am not the same person anymore, and I'm going to prove it.
All I can ask is for you to pray for me, that I will be comprehend God's "unfailing Love" and see the work He has planned for my life. And that I will grow in my lifestyle of Trusting Him.

~Kallista~