growin pains

it’s an interesting thing knowing that God will be with you. like, really knowing what that means.

shadrach, meshach, and abnego, (and daniel?) knew that God was with them. however, they didn’t know whether or not Jesus would be there in the fire to literally save them.

the apostles knew that Jesus was with them but they all died as martyrs (jesus didn’t save them from their gruesome deaths).

in both cases, God was with them. their physical lives were eventually taken away, but, jesus saved all of them from eternal death.

i’ve been through the good and bad in life and know that God is with me (a thought that i wish were nailed down in my mind but is usually elusive).

as a result of knowing that God is with me, there is a confidence that is sourced not on my own merit or wisdom (because, for all intensive purposes, i have nothing to be confident about - at least in my mind).

i once remarked to julia that if a husband had a good and completely supportive wife, then he could amount to anything; he could be SUPERMAN.  well, i’m moving further away from that idea and moving towards this (being refined) idea: that i can be who God is making me to be (and be confident in that) because He is with me.

as i progress into the knowledge of knowing that God is with me, my immediate resulting Peter’esque enthusiasm would incline me to believe that i can stop bullets with my bulletproof chest of faith.  however, i realize that this doesn’t mean that God will stop the bullets (He can tho because He’s God).

i feel like a kid sometimes (even as a 30 year old) in things that i do now.  i can imagine me in my cape and climbing the wall to the roof.  i can imagine me thinking that i really am superman and jumping off.  i can imagine me hitting the ground.  my heavenly father (ie. dad) is there to pick me up and wipe the grass off my clothes and bandage me up (or even take me to the hospital).

i’m a kid now and i’m making mistakes. and God is with me.  He’s growing me to be a man (will take some time) and i will make mistakes in the process.  God is with me.   He will grow me to be like jesus where i will reminisce about the mistakes i've gone through.  God is with me.

this is my confidence:  that God is with me in the good and bad;  in cancer and no cancer;  in life and death; in happy times and bad times;  in joy and in depression;  in wealth and in poverty;  in hunger and in pain; and in mistakes and no mistakes.