This beautiful blonde is my oldest daughter, Karlea. I dedicate this post to her. :)Success in and of itself doesn't mean fullfillment. Life is about experiences and God uses our experiences to encourage others and the added bonus is we find satisfaction when we serve God and serve others. This brings meaning to life. What you are is God's gift to you and what you do with yourself is your gift to God.
As a child Karlea loved to go around the house singing. She lived from her heart and seemed to enjoy blessing others with her smile and her song. She hugged and expressed love to others because she wanted to not because she had to. She knew from a young age the music that played in her heart. God had given her a gift of compassion and that fits her nursing career very well.
Most of us settle for what life brings us; I know for me it seems at times I just live life the way it comes. I don't think that is what God had in mind when he weaved us with such care and detail while we still were inside our mother's womb. He has woven into our heart a special purpose, unique to us. It is important to find that dream and began persuing it. This dream is not just so we can be happy. And, it's not so we can feel significant or have the satisfaction of knowing we are living out our destiny. Those are all benefits of living out what God had in mind, but they are not the motivation and reason behind discovering it. Our motive is to fulfill the call that God has placed on our lives and live out for Him what He intended, for His glory.
God is the dream giver and he doesn't want to keep it from you. That is God that put that desire in your heart to make something of life, to accomplish something. Desires in the heart are put there so we realize we have a dream to discover.
Our assignments usually are just as much about the formation and development of our heart as it is about what is needing to be done. Most have a dream on their heart that they feel at one time or another they will not be able to live out. We stumble through the journey but God's arms are always reaching out, waiting for us to reach back. When we allow negative messages to interfere we need to take a heap of positive encouragement to replace one single negative message. Wounded hearts can heal and you can become whole! Focus on the solution and not the problem because you cannot change any part of what happened by reliving it. Getting hurt is inevitable, but to be a victim is your choice. It takes the same energy to choose forgiveness as to choose bitterness.
I took my life over some bumpy roads and made some bad choices that have had lifelong consequences But God restored my hope and reassured me that He promises in His word to work all things (even the bad things) together for good in our life when we love Him and are called to His purposes. I heard a Pastor once say, we all love chocolate chip cookies Umm Umm, but how many of us like the individual ingredients that go into them? God mixes all the bad stuff together and makes a delicious cookie.
"Life is like a canvas, make yours a masterpiece!" This was the theme of Karlea's 6th grade graduation. Have you ever thought of your life as a masterpiece? We are God's masterpiece! The dream weaver is also a master artist. He specializes in taking corrupted canvases and repainting them into magnificient masterpieces. No matter how badly I have messed up, no matter what mistakes I might have made, God has redeemed my life, restored it, and renewed it into a beautiful masterpiece. It is never to late to become a blessing and to leave a legacy.
We all come into the world the same way, sinners trying to paint our own canvas. When we make a wrong choice in life, a bad brush stroke appears and we try to hide it or make it blend into the overall picture of our lives. A big mistake looks like a spill of paint right through the middle of the canvas. We mess up that painting every time we screw up and sometimes it looks like there is nothing we can do to salvage the piece. Give God the brush and let him do what only he can do with your life.
Renewal is the ministry God does best. God takes what seems to us completely unworkable and makes it of utmost value. Grasp the wonder of God's love for you as you surrender your life to Jesus.
Find out what makes your heart sing and let God touch the deeepest part of your soul. The worst thing in the world would be for one to die with unplayed songs in their heart.
