For Us, With Us, In Us

Today was really a great day at church. God's presence was so awesome!  

One of the things God spoke to us just really stuck with me. God wants to move for us, with us and in us. To some this may just be a way to repeat the same thought for emphasis, but for me it was an eye opener.

For us - Brings me back to the song "You Are For Me" by Kari Jobe. (Okay a lot of things in my life bring me back to Kari's songs right now. It's not that she is anything other than a vessel, but God is really using her to speak to me at this time in my life.) God is working for our good. On our side. He has our back and the result of God's working for us is not disappointment or dissatisfaction, but just the opposite. When God is on our side fighting for us, there is victory and encouragement and the strength to go on, even when our current state feels like we are wading through the mud.  And when we feel lonely, God is still on our side and he won't back down or change his mind.   Because we are his chosen people, created for his purpose, and it is his pleasure to work for us.

With us - Often times we feel like we are so insignificant and that God doesn't really need us to get his purposes fulfilled. And he doesn't. Because he is God. And yet he desires to work with us. Not in a master-slave kind of relationship, where we are forced to do things against our will, but in a fellowship with us. As a part of his plan for us. God created us because he wanted to have relationship with us. Not as a dictator and lowly subject, but as a friend. I am not understating the awesomeness of God or making myself equal to God at all, but God wants to work with us, side by side, in unison to accomplish his great plan. God chooses to use us so we will grow closer to him. He delights in taking us along side him to teach us his ways and to build relationship with him. So we can trust him more and he can trust us more. The Holy Spirit is described as one who comes along side and that is exactly what God was saying. He will come and move and work with us, if we will just have our spiritual ears open to hear and learn from him and obey him. When God is with us, we are being taught how he works and being shown his ways.

In us -
He's still working on me. 
To make me what I ought to be...
How loving and patient he must be. 
He's still working on me.

That's why I am glad that not only is God working for our benefit, and with us to accomplish his purpose, but in us.  Because we are a mess, or at least I am. I have been a Christian for almost 25 years and I have certainly not arrived yet. This is a journey and every day I strive to be more Christlike and to let God show me where I fail him and strength to allow him to do some remodeling in me. Allowing God to change me is hard. Today Pastor said "it isn't easy being broken" and that is exactly what it takes for God to mold me into the image of his son and to make me perfectly fit for the plan he has for me. I have to continually have my way and my plans broken and replaced with God's perfect plan and his perfect ways. God working in us doesn't meant he's trying to make us all the same, like clones with the same personalities and abilities. On the contrary God is molding me to be the best me, the way he intended me to be for His glory. And you to be the best you. That is what is so awesome about God. He moves in us so we can fulfill the job he has created us for.

God is moving. For us. With Us. In Us. If we let him. He won't force us to change anything or do anything. But I want God's way. I've tried my own way for far too long. And it always ends in failure and disappointment. But his way is perfect and to me, its worth the pain of being renovated from the inside out.