Because He Lives

This past month served as a strong and poignant reminder of all that this past year has held. Certainly for me it was one of the most tumultuous yet, though with each passing year the last seems more and more like some sort of wonderful and frightening roller coaster ride. Looking back on the ups and downs of it all, I was indecisive about the topic of my meditation for this month and felt I had little truly substantial words of encouragement to give. Still, the more I wondered about all I’d seen and learned, only one thing proved certain: the God that keeps us and moves us in this life for His glory.

There is one song whose chorus reads, “Because He lives I can face tomorrow, because He lives, all fear is gone; because I know He holds the future, and life is worth the living, just because He lives!”

This song always offers me encouragement and urges me to look upon the life of Christ; simply the fact that He came to earth and lived in full dependence upon the Father, through it conquering all sin and trials that He knew we would encounter—even death—offers us the hope that the Christian life cannot and will not be lived in futility. We have been given victory through the exchange of our flesh for His blood, and from this we can know and find comfort each moment that our Heavenly Daddy is not only keeping us in the present, but moving us forward to where He has called us, transforming us along the way. Psalm 90:17 says, “Let the favor of the Lord our God be on us; establish for us the work of our hands—establish the work of our hands!”

Not only is God establishing the work He has for us in the future, but He is also establishing us to complete the work He has laid out for us, day by day!

There are plenty of moments in the Christian life when we feel as though we have not the strength to move forward and must gather the discipline from within ourselves to do so. But looking back, I can’t help but believe that even within those seemingly impossible moments, there is one God who is truly feeding us the strength of Christ and moving us. Just looking back to one year ago I know that I did not change myself and move myself through all of those obstacles, big and small, nor did I provide for myself all of those moments that will forever be memories in my heart, moments where my soul was blessed and comforted in a way that only the Lover of my soul knows how to do. Still, there are so many times and places where the Lord has had to make me so uncomfortable in one place so as to give me the courage to move on to the next season of the life that He has for me.

By His grace I am where I am today, having been given the things that I have and seen the things that I was predestined to, in order that I might best “face tomorrow”.