Identity...that is what I have been struggling with! And today on this day when love is supposed to come easy, it is hard! I have been so use to being "This Old House", and this renovation of the heart I am going through is changing that! I am having to change how I see myself, and let this new identity take it's place. I am learning to be His Beloved! (click on the word to see the best Valentine's Video/Song I have ever heard!) Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17 says "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation: the old has gone and the new has come! Although I have "been in Christ" for a long time, I have not allowed the Holy Spirit to do the work he needed to do in me to complete this changed life. I am realizing that the Holy Spirit is the HELPER! He not only is helping Jesus in his work as Master carpenter, but he is also helping to teach me and show me, and counsel me. He is here to give me joy, patience, peace, love, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, kindness and self-control. My flesh cannot do these things fully and completely on it's own, it will always fail. It is weak! But His spirit is strong in me, if I let him live in me and do it for me. He is he for the reconstruction work because Jesus is done with the demolition. He is teaching me about true joy and peace. He is showing me how to love! He is counseling me and telling truth to me when the devil whispers lies. (The devil is good at making a lot of noise and distraction around me though to try to drown out the truth. He causes chaos on the outside of this house so that the work on the inside gets stopped or disrupted just to see what is going on, but the Holy Spirit woos my attention back ever so gently, good man that he is!)
I've been at the beach for the past 2 weeks. I've taken a couple of walks on the beach on the warm days, and as I have looked out over the vast ocean, I think of how vast God's love for me is and I cannot even comprehend it! How he made the very tiniest of creatures to the largest and how everything fits together to make things work to the maximum potential. If we let him, God can do the same thing in our lives. He can take the tiniest thing and work it into our lives so that we can function at the maximum potential he planned for us too.
I want "This Old House" to become "This New House" and function at it's maximum potential. I want it to be filled with beauty and goodness and LOVE! I want the contents of it to overflow to whomever passes by and that they may stop and ask me who did the renovations. I want my identity to be known as God's Beloved!
