Are you Normal?

  If you have a not so lovely past...you are normal. Everyone has things in their past they aren't proud of, wish they never did, will have consequences for.  

  I am no different.  Many reading this are even shocked that God is even in my life.  

For years, I did not think of Him, talk of Him or pretend to even know Him.  And for all practical purposes, I didn't.  

  At the age of nine, I saw a film on Hell.  I was shown that Jesus was the answer out.  I believed that I would go to Hell and I could not get to Heaven without believing that Jesus, God's Son, was the only way.  He loved me so much, he died for me and I could live in Heaven when I died.  

I believed it.  I accepted Him.  

  It wasn't till much later in my life,  did I surrendered me.  I knew that I had been doing things my way and it was against what I was learning from the Bible.  I was convicted!   My heart was broken for the junk I had chose to do.  I didn't know that I should care that my choices were unpleasing to the God of the universe!  

When you surrender, You.... 

• won't become perfect  

• still make choices everyday that are not pleasing to Him.

• should strengthen daily your relationship with the Lord.  

• can make life more about investing in others

   I seek His word as the guidance for the way to live my life.  I still deal with regret, guilty and shame from many choices.  It's a constant consequence, but I do not dwell on it.  
I do not let it keep me in a corner, crying about my shoulda woulda couldas.   

No, I'm up with my armour on....pressing forward for my Lord. For my family. For myself. 

"Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,

I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus".
Philippians 3:13,14