When God blesses me with insight, the depth of my gratitude is unmeasurable. The one common message I have gotten for the last couple of weeks is one focused on being IN the world and not OF the world. There are always truths in life we don’t want to face, because oftentimes facing them means accepting that we can’t effect change over them. Truth is truth.

How many of us can sit back and look at our lives and say that we are choosing God before everything else? How many of us even know how to really DO that?? It’s a question I’ve been wrestling with for a really long time now. Trying to reconcile my relationship with God, my relationship with the world, and how the two are supposed to coexist, is an enormous challenge. Well, from what God has shown me very recently, it is my approach to the questions that has been the obstacle to understanding the answers.

My relationship with God has become one where I understand that I am part of HIM, He isn’t part of me…my perspective of Him simply being a part of me, as opposed to me being made as part of His greater whole, starts me off with the wrong impression of our relationship, which then leads to further misunderstandings of His role in my life. As part of HIM, my entire being is able to benefit from following His will. When a part of the body begins to behave differently than it was designed to behave, we call in physicians to identify and attempt to repair the problem. We do that because the misbehaving bits have us feeling poor and off kilter. It’s the same with me, being a misbehaving part in the body of Christ as a whole.

Allow me to paint you a picture…in the photo above, you see the bright center of the sun, the surrounding yellow glow, and yet another surrounding layer of beautiful, soft orange. Beyond all of that lay the landscape of the world. No matter what it shines upon, the sun always alters the look of the world, but the world never reaches that protected bright sun center. We are all points of light in that bright center, and we are surrounded at all times by the protective glow and soft embrace of God’s presence. We literally exist within it.

However, instead of resting within our place in that glow, we keep our eyes focused on the world beyond. We let our minds and spirits be impacted by the storms raging in the world beyond. We begin to keep so much of our focus on the world we see, we forget to live in the immediate surroundings of God’s love and rest. We don’t realize that our death grip is on the world and not on God where it belongs. We worry about losing the things and people we have in the world, because we place more importance on keeping and controlling those things than on trusting our entire lives to the Lord. We have to be able to take a step back and realize that we can let go of everything and everyone we have in the world, and accept that we’ll still be ok.

Every single thing in our human lives is temporary. Human life itself is temporary. Each and every situation is an opportunity to learn and grow closer to God. The pain and fear comes when we place more importance on what is happening in our relationship with the world, as opposed to accepting that we are completely safe in God’s embrace, no matter what storm is raging in the world beyond. God provides people in our lives to help us refocus our minds away from the world and back towards Him. He always makes provisions and ways for us to draw closer to Him. He won’t force us to take advantage of them, but He will constantly make them available.

When we push away the people in our lives who help us feel closer to God, we’re closing off an avenue for Him to provide us with love and support. When we feel we need to try and solve things ourselves, or if we just put in enough energy and dedication to making things better and more how we believe they should be, we are taking on the role of God. I can’t make anyone accept the love and friendship I have to offer them, nor is it my job to do so. It’s my job to live with the love God put in my spirit, and allow God to put me where He needs me.

We can morn losses, we can allow our minds to be controlled by our physical pains, we can hold on to emotional pain at feeling cast aside, we can harbor bitterness and jealousy because our lives don’t look or feel the way we want them to, and we can live in fear of losing whatever it is we have a death grip on in this life…but none of those choices bring us any closer to God.

What brings me closer to God is accepting my life as it is each day, taking time to thank Him for the abundance of blessings in my life, and choosing to give love, regardless of the circumstances. I pray each morning that God will help me stay mindful of Him and His ways, and to choose Him in each and every situation, because I know that it will ALWAYS be the focus that keeps me at peace in His restful embrace.