Your clothes do not define you.
Your house does not define you.
Your friends do not define you.
Not even your family defines you…
These things help shape and mold us…
But if your house is messy…
If your house is small…
If your kids are numerous, or if you have none at all…
You are not defined by our circumstances.
If your past was messy…
If your future look unsure…
If the present is unsettled…
And when we understand and accept the truth of His Grace being enough for us…
Then our lives are an extension of that definition of our joy being complete in Him.
Things of this world will NEVER, EVER make us feel complete.
Our circumstances and our surroundings do not define us.
We can still have joy in a mess…
Joy in uncertainty…
Joy in troubles…
Because our circumstances do not define us.
“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. But just as we have the same spirit of faith that is in accordance with scripture—”I believed, and so I spoke”—we also believe, and so we speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence. Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”
2 Corinthians 4:8-18
Can you read that without not being able to gasp?
Fix your eyes on the eternal…
Our “stuff” of this world will not last…this is not what defines us.
Our eternity does.
Joy comes from knowing that. Not from a clean house, well behaved kids, the perfect curriculum, or even from a spouse…
Those things can gives us happiness…make us feel gladness…
…but not the full, complete, contentment, knowing that by HIS grace we are saved.
NOT by anything we do on our own.
When we continually strive to “do good”…to “do right” without FIRST accepting that His grace is enough…we just keep running in circles of trying to do right…yet still feeling empty.
His Grace…
It is a gift.
And this life is just a small breath…and then we will have an eternity to spend with our Lord.
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