Searching For Jesus

"I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:14 NIV)

So the new year has begun and my thirst for a relationship with my creator is fully in place. I am so thirsty, hungry, desperate for a closeness between Him and I that will literally transform my life and those around me. I am ready this year to give Him my all,  my everything in pursuit of His Kingdom and most of all, His face. I am like an adventurer out on my mission to uncover the secrets of who I am in Christ and what Kingdom living consists of and I know it will be the most life changing, challenging and beautiful exploration that my life could ever hope to go on. I have such a deep aching within me, a pull on the innermost parts of my being to rise and find him, to look and to seek the treasures of being in a relationship with the one who made me, who made it all. Day three and I am fit to burst with the excitement of the months ahead.

Of course where there is glory in my life, there still seems to be the leftover remnants of sin. This is just part of my transformation. In the last two days, I have continued to smoke weed and to binge eat excessively, parts of my old shell that have re-emerged over recent months as coping mechanisms but also as a reminder of how much I enjoy self abuse. It annoys me that there is still a part of me clutching onto my past, but I refuse to feel too much guilt over it, that would please the Devil, making me start the chain of higher abusive patterns all over again. No, this time, I can see that I need more help in these areas so know that I can use these as part of my training. Exercising my power to say no to that which takes me away from my true calling. No easy challenge for me , but necessary to ensure I stay focused on the main goal of closeness between Him and I. I am ready to make the changes, but some of them are not yet ready to go. I want this year to be the year that all of the fragmented parts of my life can start to come together and work for the good of the whole rather than separate entities out to protect themselves and destroy the being inside of me.

This year I have to be much more present in my life. There can be no days off where I allow myself to drift like a wandering magnet back to the source of all my pain, the ignorance of who I really am. This year, I don't want the old coping mechanisms to come back in and reign over my existence, I want my life to be like the life that was always meant for me, learning from Jesus example and using this as a model for the type of life I not only want to lead, but know I'll be happy living. The coming twelve months have challenge pasted all over them, my past and future are to collide and I must choose whether to sink back to what I had or swim on and get what can be mine if I follow my true calling, the inner utterances of my heart. I am ready, I am focused but I am also aware of the changes this will make to everything I've ever known.

I stated before in a previous entry that choosing to follow God, means dying to the self every day. But this is not a negative plan to make me like everyone else, it is to find what lies beyond self, what reality is written within the tablet of my heart and what a life living from there can really be like. I am still learning so much and becoming acutely aware of habits and attitudes that have kept me trapped in a false sense of self for many years. The Bible says we become what we worship, so in the past I have worshipped pain, even unintentionally by choosing to engage in activities that destroyed my ability to find out who I truly am. Some worship fashion, approval from others, money, but they all lead to take you out of who you are and into someone else’s ball game. You can never be good enough, have enough, look good enough when you are chasing something outside of yourself. This is a hard lesson to learn, but a necessary one. It frees you from the bondages of this world and allows you to find that hidden you, that real you, the one that God chose before you were even born to come out in this world and leave a legacy of your existence.

I am relearning everything at the moment, what I like, what I love, what I hate and honestly looking at these, rather than going with what society expects or demands. In God I have found a standard by which to base my expectations upon and the main basis for this is love. Is what I do in life a sign of love flowing or is it not? If it is, then I feel it, I know it and I want to pursue it. The model of Jesus life would be a hard model to not fall in love with as I already have with the little I fully know or understand. It is a life that it easier for us to model when we really connect with our true selves, because it is how we were originally intended to live and can live. We just get caught up with the other demands that living in this world puts on us and soon we have formed ourselves to fit someone else’s ideal and forgotten about the perfection which already exists inside of us.

I am proud to be on this journey although I am nervous about the challenges I face. This is a dedication that will last a lifetime and one I had to be sure I was ready to make. Could I really say goodbye to the pressures and addictions of modern living and take it back to the simple journey of faith in God. Even more than that, do I really want to pursue God when so many people tell me that I am fooling myself, that He doesn’t exist, that if there was a God, I wouldn’t have been so ill and wouldn’t have battled with addiction. Iv spent nearly 26 years listening to the why nots for following God and in the end only my heart could decide which was the right choice for me. For the first time in 26 years, I really listened to my heart and thats why I know that I am making the right choice to pursue Him for the rest of my life. To pursue him with a hunger that can never be fully satisfied till the day I meet Him at the end of my life here. I will search high and low for Him, I will dedicate my days to Him and I will be the light that He wants to see in the world. I have never wanted anything so bad and know that this is the year that really will transform me.

Love Always.x