Sometimes blogging is hard.
I have all these profound thoughts rolling around in my head and then when I try to type them out it ends up sounding like a third grader trying to teach theology. But I'm going to give it my best shot today.
I spent the week between Christmas and New Year's in Denver, CO with Cru (Campus Crusade for Christ) at their annual regional conference. DCC, Denver Christmas Conference, brings together 1,000+ college students for a week of teaching, worship, breakout sessions, outreach, and discipleship. As someone who doesn't often interact with people my own age, this week was a great break and refresher before jumping in to 2015.
We had the privilege of hearing from Libby Swenson, who works in conjuction with Cru and the International Justice Mission. She said something that I wrote down and then dismissed, but it would later come to my mind throughout the week.
"Satan wants us to believe God is not good and God is not in control."
Duh, Emilee. That's basically the whole concept of Satan. God good, Satan bad. Got it.
I've always understood that Satan tempts us to sin blah blah blah *insert churchy statement here*.
But it never in a millions years occurred to me that in my own personal life, Satan was using my love of control to skew my view of God's goodness.
I, your resident control freak, felt abandoned when the Lord wrestled my "control" away from me by throwing me some big curveballs in life. Instead of recognizing that HELLO God is in control, I lived in constant fear of losing control.
"You are not being forgotten, you are being redeemed." -Paul Tripp
In the future I will affectionately refer to this quote as 'the time Paul Tripp smacked me in the face with the Gospel'. I mean seriously, this quote rocked my world.
God is not forgetting me when He removes my false sense of control, He is redeeming me from idolizing being in control.
"For God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self-control." -2 Timothy 1:7
While I am still figuring out how to live out this truth, I know without a shadow of a doubt that the Lord will take what Satan meant for evil and use it for good.
