The One Where I Realized I Have Power

Jesus told us when He was on this earth, “In this life you will have troubles...”

One of the only guarantees we have is that this life will not be easy.  

Life is full of uncertainty.  It is often overwhelmed with troubles and struggles and frustrations.

So I’m just wondering how we still live well in the midst of it.

My last post was somewhat (ok, completely) a vent session and it doesn’t really help to get mad and verbal vomit and then just walk away.  So the night after I posted that, I laid awake asking God, “What do I do now?”

He repeated back to me what I just barely skimmed over last week:

Rise above your circumstances.

I wrote that this is one of the options when something is hard and you need to take action of some sort.  I said that I didn’t know how to really write anything more about it.  I guess God wanted me to dig a little deeper.

I realized in thinking over my life that most of it is really good right now.  Besides that one situation that was making me so mad, all my other relationships are healthy.  School is good.  My family is great.  I even know where I will be working this summer, which is amazing because I’m learning that I cannot really plan my life too far in advance.

Yet I was letting this one situation completely own me.  Completely dominate my emotions, my thoughts, my time.  I was letting it make me a person I didn’t want to be. 
I do have a say, I do have control; not over other people and the choices they make, but over myself and the choices I make.  I can choose to let something make me bitter, or I can give it over to the Lord.  I can choose to be a person of grace, or I can be mean and crabby. 

If our faith is real, and God is really transforming us, then these situations cannot and do not dictate who we are and what we do. 

We are not defined by our circumstances.  We are defined by Christ.  (repeat that to yourself.) 

We find our identity in His death and resurrection.  We find ourselves in His glory and redemption and in His name.  And there, we find power. 

There is power in the name of Jesus. 

Power to overcome.  To conquer.  To be victorious over that one, or several, situations in our lives that seem like they control us. It is just.not.true. 

Live in the freedom and the power of the resurrected God.  Find peace and the ability to rise above your circumstances in His Name.

The second part of that verse, it is where we need to live out of:
“In this world we will have troubles, but TAKE HEART, I have overcome the world.”