A Word of Testimony

My days have been full of uncertainty about many things. My attempt to fast ( a money fast) had been failing. Things were looking bleak and then they looked as though they could get worse than ever.
Above every thing else that I was trying to do , but could not do successfully , hovered this horrible awful fear.

There had been assigned to me , by a person , to do a task. I knew he was right to assign this task to me but every time I tried to do it, I was afraid. A horrible , horrible fear would grip me .

I began dreading the next time I would have to do this task.

The dread of knowing I was going to have to do this task , coming up, even the next day, would ruin the very day I was thinking about it.

No wonder my joy was beginning to slip a way from me. It has been a horrible 3 or 4 weeks.

I can not remember exactly when this started , but it was only getting worse and worse.



Finally I decided fear was a sin and I was going to start confessing my sin to God. While I was at it I decided I'd confess all kinds of other sins too.



The hard part about confessing a sin to God is that it must be done humbly. I must admit that all sin can only be blotted out by His Son's blood and that I myself can not remove my sin for Him.



I know my parents meant well when they taught me to be sorry for something I did wrong. This is how most situations were addressed. "Are you sorry ?" "Yes" "Are you going to do it again ?" "No."
So what I learned about being sorry was , don't do it again. But with God it is not be sorry , don't do it again , in your power. It is be sorry and don't do it again in His power.

Even better is receive His grace for having done the sin , He has forgiven me.
That means the fear I have while riding in the passenger seat as my daughter learns to drive. Some times fear is healthy. What if I become so calm that I forget she still is learning to drive so I don't look to see if she has noticed the up coming stop light ?

However, this miserable existence that I had made for myself had to stop.
Finally I said to the LORD, "I know I should not be afraid. I know that it is a sin. I know that I have asked You to take this sin away. "

Then I thought about what really was making me so miserable. It wasn't the fear. It wasn't the list of things that I felt I should do but just couldn't do. It was that I was pulling back from Him. I was projecting that He should be waiting for me to say , "I'm sorry and I won't do it again." He was not doing that , this was my projected opinion of how a righteous and just God would be responding to my mess.

I told Him that I wanted to praise Him. I did not ask Him if it was alright. I just decided that He was worthy, is worthy and would always be worthy of my praise.

I know to obey is better than sacrifice. However, since I can not obey , I will continue to try , I will praise Him. He is still doing great . It is me with all the mess.
I will praise Him when I remember that I have to ride in the car with my daughter.
I will praise Him when I remember how much I dread it and how afraid I am.
I will praise Him when I am not sure if I am going to be able to stick to the money fast.
I will praise Him when the list of I shoulds don't get done today.

He is still doing a great job. I praise Him for creating the heavens and the earth. I praise Him for loving me. I praise Him for opening the eyes of my heart to see His light. I praise Him for opening the eyes of my heart and giving me power to turn away from the power of Satan. I praise Him for His river of forgiveness that runs beautiful and deep for me to drink of. I praise Him for the inheritance that I have along with all the saints who are sanctified by their faith in Him.

Also I have decided to read Psalm 91 at least once a day.