"Oh! May the God of green hope fill you up with joy, fill you up with peace, so that your believing lives, filled with the life-giving energy of the Holy Spirit, will brim over with hope!" Romans 15:13 (The Message)
This Season Is All About Joy...
In God’s Word sin is a word picture of an archer pulling back their bow about to shoot it, and they are off of the mark. The target is there (God’s will and heart for you) but you are missing it somehow. If we can see our decisions this way it helps us to get out of the ditch of guilt and shame that often keep us in holding patterns, confused and seeking God’s will in our lives with it seeming as if He is quiet and not responding to us.
We also have to factor in God’s gift to us, free will. It is a gift because love cannot exist without choice. If someone forced my husband to love me, that is not love at all! I would never trust his feeling towards me if they were forced. The fact that he gets up every day and chooses me, and pursues me, makes my heart flutter!
Although, this gift will get abused. If someone has the choice to choose God, then they also have the choice to not choose God’s way. Often, it is others’ choices that have brought great suffering into our lives. While we may not have made the decision we certainly are left to deal with the consequences of their decision. As painful as it can be, to enter into a journey to choose to deal with the consequences, even if they are not ours, of others’ decisions.
Personal power is what the solar plexus Chakra is all about. To tap into that power we must take responsibility for choices and decisions, again, even if I'm having to take responsibility for the effects of other's choices. I did not make my Mother's choices but I have certainly had to pay the consequences of her choices in my life. And you know what? I'm stronger for it. I'm wise and compassionate for it. I can have joy in tough circumstances because of what I've learned by doing it. I know there is a lot of gray here, it is not black and white, and that gray is painful. I just believe if we trust God with that pain, and the outcome, we get to reap the benefits of the hard work.