The longer I walk with God, the more I see the need for people to understand His grace and mercy, along with His guidance and direction, and His blessings and favor...and how they all fit together. Often we talk about all that we want from God, that blanket of protection and forgiveness and the feeling of His blessings falling on our life, but do we talk enough about what it might take to truly walk in His favor, knowing we are going in the direction that He has for us?
When I think about the picture of all of these things working together I think about a puzzle. A puzzle is one thing made of many pieces. In order for it to come out right in the end you must have all the pieces. You would never be able to open up the box to a puzzle and say "I only want to uses these pieces, but I expect this to come out like it's supposed to when I'm done". It won't. It might resemble the picture on the box, but there will be empty spots where the maker of the puzzle intended for things to be. It will not be whole, and it will not be complete. You could be "satisfied" with the end result being partial if you wanted to be, but you won't be able to complain if it doesn't turn out right. Picking and choosing the pieces you want to use will never give the puzzle a chance to be complete. It may make working on it easier because you just skip the over difficult pieces and "maybe" come back to them later, but without each piece connecting as it was designed to, the picture will have voids in it that can NEVER be filled with anything other than the missing piece.
Sometimes the hardest thing for people to accept is that God has a plan for their life. There are many reasons for this, but all of them come from the enemy playing games with us. He tries to convince us that God is not that concerned with us, that our life isn't "that" important, that God couldn't possibly use someone like us...and even that our past, and the sins of our life (current or past) are too deep for us to us to find our way back to the path that God once had for us. All of these things are lies. The enemy doesn't want to us to realize that God has a plan for us because then we just might start to seek it. And once that happens, and you begin to experience the fullness of grace and mercy, correction and direction, and blessing and favor all working together, you will NEVER want to go back to the places satan once had you. And then he has lost his grips on you for good. So of course he would rather keep us ignorant to it, to stubborn to change, or even to blind to see the pieces that are missing in our life. If he can keep us there, then we will never be that complete puzzle that I mentioned earlier.
John 15 talks all about what it takes to live in the fullness of God. How Jesus is the vine and we are the branches, and the fruit that we produce in our lives is a direct reflection of how much we are walking in all the things I have mentioned. In order for you to even understand that you are a branch connect to the vine (Jesus) then you must accept and receive the grace and mercy part. In order to remain a healthy branch, then you must receive the pruning that God wants to do in your life, the guidance, correction and direction part. And then once these things are in place your life starts to produce good fruit, the blessings and favor part. We can't miss this, we can't rush this and we certainly can't skip over some parts to get to parts that sound attractive. As I have stated many times before, God sees our hearts and He knows when you are all in, and He knows when you are just walking through the motions. He wants a committed relationship with you and He wants fullness in your life....not to look like a puzzle of missing pieces that someone gave up on.
There is no better time than now to ask God how well you are connected to the vine, and then allow Him to show you where you are doing good, and where there may still need some pruning. Don't allow the enemy to cause you to focus on the pruning part....give God full access, then let Him show you His fullness. Don't be the one that settle for the puzzle that is missing pieces and almost looks complete, and don't be the rose bush that never quite bloomed to it's fullness because it never got pruned properly. Trust God and let Him show you what it really looks like when it all works together as He designed it. Grace and mercy, correction and direction, and His blessings and favor.
God, thank You that you are the designer of our lives. Nobody knows what is best for us better than You. Holy Spirit help us learn to surrender our ways to God and trust the things He wants to do in us and through us. And let our changed lives be a living testimony of how truly amazing and powerful You are. In Jesus name, Amen
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