Will There Be Daylight?

"Been sleeping so long in a twenty-year dark night. And now I see daylight..."

Anyone else obsessed with Taylor Swift's new album? Taylor Swift existing is a reminder to me that God loves me because of the amount of joy she brings to my life (I know you all have someone like that so don't even play!!). 

But those lyrics are how I feel right now. These past couple years have had me weaving in and out of darkness. Clinging to God for life, and sometimes also enjoying life (Amen).

Sometimes every little thing you can find hope in feels as though you've found hope in a twenty-year dark night because it just drags out. Demons are relentless, especially the eating disorder ones that want to come back every single time something questionable happens in your life.

I got to spend time with a friend I adore the other night, and pulled out a study I had made for myself on Truths about God. This one was that he is Unconditional. (Okay, if we're being honest… meaning if I'M being honest… that's the only one I actually did). It's amazing that I came across it, because I've been fighting lately with the memories of the people who have come in and out of my life. Haunted by those I've hurt, those relationships I've lost, those who've given up on me. Fighting with the question of why to bother trying when it takes years to find out if someone will stick it out with you. The way that you want to stick it out with them. If I am worthy as a person. If there's a hope for something better coming. 

Reading this, that I wrote a year ago in the midst of a really trying time, was daylight. I want to share it: 

  “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,  neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-38

Once we decide to be baptized and follow God, we can no longer be separated from Him.  There is nothing in this world that can take away the strength of His love and power of His love.  We can pretend that we think there is and that Satan is separating you, but he does not have the power to do that.  Nothing in ALL creation can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” -Hebrews 13:8

We change, and our circumstances change, as shifting shadows.  

Jesus stays the same.  His character, His intentions, His love.  They never change. People in our lives change.  They change their minds, they change the words they use with us.  Jesus stays the same. His love is the same and as overflowing and powerful as it ever was yesterday, or years before we ever sinned. His death on the Cross is proof of His undying love, one that will last through all.

“Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.” James 1:17

Your life is going to change and so will the people in your life, no matter how much you stand there and wish it to be the same, relationships change.  Jesus will not. His relationship to you will not. Everything good still coming from your life and out of everything in your relationships, is from Him. Your favorite things and qualities about your closest relationships, are all from God and you can get those from Him too.  Although you are upset that you aren’t getting what you want from someone that you just wish you could force to love you the right way, God loves you exactly the way you you need to be loved and fulfills you with every good thing you have. Some of the good things we have we don’t even need, He just gives them to us because He loves us that much and knows that we will be encouraged by Him.  What a blessing… as if grace wasn’t enough of a gift!

“Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” -Hebrews 13:5

There is nothing you can do to alter God’s love for us to be more or less. People in your life have hurt you and left you in the times you’ve needed them the most.  God has been holding His hand and extending His arm out to you, wishing to embrace you in each of these times. He made the ultimate sacrifice so He will never have to be away from you.  He even had to forsake Jesus so He would never need to forsake us (Matthew 27:46). He is always faithful, even when we are not. Can we be content in this?

“For if we died with Him, we will also live with Him;

If we endure, we will also reign with Him;

If we deny Him, He also will deny us;

 If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.”

-2 Timothy 2:12-13

Even when we are not faithful, God is still fulfilling His part of the relationship, and will always be to the same extent He always was as He waits for us.  He fulfills our righteousness. We should take it upon ourselves to fulfill His… and it will continue to fulfill ours.

God is UNCONDITIONAL! WOW!!!!! Only relationship you’ll EVER HAVE that will NEVER 

CHANGE in love or circumstance!

I see daylight. I will always see daylight.