So, shockingly, it’s Five Minute Friday again.  Where in the world did this week go?  It’s the last week of summer vacation for my daughters and it’s been filled with back to school shopping and visiting our local fair.  So new clothes and a livestock auction and sparkly school supplies and a blindfolded tractor competition.  Yes.  Blindfolded.  While driving a tractor.  I’m not even kidding.  Welcome to Amishland!

 

Lots of changes are upcoming in our family over the next few weeks and while it is a bit overwhelming at times, God is sovereign.  And I am glad because I am most assuredly not in control.  

 

With that said, let’s hit it on to Five Minute Friday…..

 

CHANGE

 

GO

 

I love the praise and worship music of Brian Doerkson an awful lot but one song that never fails to touch me is “Change Me On the Inside.”  In it Brian shares these words:

 

I long for freedom to live in the truth
I want to be more like You
But every time I try to bring about change
I only touch the visible me

 

Isn’t that the truth?  How often do we look at ourselves and try to jam some percieved God-demanded change into our lives?  We try to kind of ramrod things into our lives.  And we do it out of our own power.  And it never works.

 

Or maybe it’s just me who has experienced this.  I want to do better.  Be better.  Live better.  I hear the Word and I seek to employ it in my life.  So I try to fix what is broken and messy.  

 

 

ANd suddenly I’m on the outside of life.  Looking in.  Because on my own, I can’t maintain those changes.  And sometimes I forget that God didn’t ask me to make changes so I’d be better or good enough.  No, I forget that my job is to LET God do His good work in my life.  To heal me.  And take those broken and messy places and redeem them.  To redeem me.

 

In my own power, well, I’m not likely to get it right.  Maybe by accident sometimes.  But my need for change really highlights my need for a Savior.  I need Him.  Oh how I need Him!  

 

So change will be necessary.  And it will be good.  And probably hard.  But change brought about by performance is rarely going to last.  Letting God do his thing in my life, letting Him IN, letting Him be the change He wants to see in my life, that’s freedom.  

 

Then the barriers come down.  And my life is full.  And rich.  And changed eternally now for the better.

 

STOP