The Days Ahead

When things seem to get worse this time of year there is a reason. 
God's enemy loathes this time of year. All his plans to discredit, ruin, and kill Jesus were laid waste.  This coming Friday is good indeed for the believer in Jesus Christ. In that the perfect Plan of God the Father to save mankind came at the right time. 
Jesus promised all those who would come to Him for Salvation would never be alone. He would always be there with them.  In the Gospels you can see the fellowship between the Father and the Son. God the Father turned His face away from the Son but for that moment when all the sin of every human being was placed upon Him but He never left Him.
A love so deep that death cannot shake it.
That same love is there for you.
That very same love.
If you knew Jesus it won't guarantee you riches.
If you knew Jesus it won't guarantee you a perfect body, at least not yet.
If you knew Jesus it won't guarantee you that perfect job.
If you knew Jesus it won't guarantee you that your life won't be filled, at times, with troubles.

If you knew Jesus it does guarantee your adoption into God's family that can never be revoked.
If you knew Jesus it does guarantee that you will never be alone.
If you knew Jesus it opens the door to a peace you cannot explain when life doesn't seem to be going right.
If you knew...well...now you do.

I don't have a perfect life, at least not yet. I have a life that's with Jesus.  Do I have ambitions? Sure. Are they important? Maybe.  I don't see things like I used to.  The importance of things isn't really there much anymore. The importance of my time with Jesus is greater.  Jesus said "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it."
Matthew 16:25
That was one of the verses that I read yesterday.  As I grow older I am seeing priorities shift. Things that were important are not as much. 

Think about the word 'workmanship'. Workmanship isn't simply evidence of what you have done. Workmanship has many more implications. It shows your integrity. It shows what you feel about what you do. It shows others that there are or are not things that motivate you.  It shows craftsmanship. It shows intelligence behind actions. It shows emotion behind activity.
It can show many emotions at once or only one. In Christ we are His workmanship.
In spite of all the gender issues in the world today, God cannot and does not make mistakes.  To believe anything else is to believe a lie. In Christ, we are being made new. Into the person we were to be.  That will never include a change in gender.  It's Spiritual in its workings.
It's a careful crafting of truth with love. It's a careful extraction of unwanted and dangerous parts of us that truth cannot abide by.  It's a life that's being remade in the image of Christ.
I will say it's often painful at times, but honestly, so is physical surgery.  Faith and trust in Jesus means believing He knows what's bedt even if it means that I cannot see or understand the end result yet.
The change brought about in you may be twofold.  It may be that you, in Christ, can go through something because He knows you are strong enough. But someone else whose life you will cross paths with needs to know that in Christ, they can make it too. Much of what Job went through he had no clue about.  It's quite possible his ordeal went on for weeks or months.  In the end the Lord restored everything and then some. Now, in Heaven Job has even more. 
So when this next week gets rough remember, in Christ, you never go it alone.  If you don't have Christ, there is no better time than now to ask for Him to be your Savior.