A Kind Of A Devotional (sort of)

Sorry about not getting any devotionals up lately. Busy with packing for our move on Saturday. But I just wanted to check in and let everyone know that life goes on.
It seems like in most peoples lives, they grow up in whatever neighborhood and it's not altogether uncommon for them to live out their lives there. Others move but it's usually not too far from the birthplace. And still others move states away but most people generally settle down and put down roots; raise a family; watch them grow up all and watch it from the comfort of the home they will probably live in until they die. That is what seems to happen to most people.
Sue and I are not most people. I'm not into competing for who has the most problems because we all know of people who would gladly trade their problems for ours. Well, at least a few people anyway. And I'm not at all into the woe is me perspective, looking for sympathy for the plight of the lives we live. That's not what either of us are about. You get past the point of "why me" eventually because you never get any answer to that question anyway. No, where you eventually get to is a place where it just don't matter anymore how you want your life to go. I know this sounds negative; a throwing in the towel, massive resignation scenario but I believe there's more to it than just that. And believe me that internally I have been in a very negative place about all of this, but as my previous posts noted, I don't see my emotional states as being anything real. My emotional states are far too transitory to put any real value into and besides, the God I believe in instructs me to not live my life based on my emotional states but instead on the truth of Him and His word. This is very challenging, especially when my emotions are at a fever pitch and I want to throw my temper tantrum. Now I know that the worlds wisdom tells us our feelings are of paramount importance and that we have to express them and process them and go on Facebook and explain all of it to everyone who will read about it in between of playing Farkle in order to be someone who is understood.
Well I don't really give a rats patootie anymore if anyone understands me. Heck, I don't understand me! Why would I expect anyone else to. Well, God understands me but He's got the capacity to understand all of our foolishness combined. Think about that one for a second. That will blow your mind.
Jesus talked about how He had no place to lay His head. The Bible tells us that we are pilgrims, strangers, that this is Not Our Real Home (get the clue?). It tells us that we are just passing through, that we are on a journey and that how we live our lives here has everything to do with how we live it out in the real home, the place Jesus promises us in John 14, the eternal home.
Paul talks about in Acts 20 about how he doesn't count his life as being important enough to care about what happens to him in this life, as long as he is continuing the journey that the Lord has set for him and that he chooses to not to let anything that happens in this life to move him away from God and from what God has ordered for his life. And if you know anything about Paul's life it was not a life of wealth and worldly success resulting in material prosperity. But Paul was probably one of the most prosperous people you would ever want to meet because his prosperity was in knowing Christ. Jesus also stated that it we really want to follow Him we must deny ourselves, pick up our cross daily and then we get to follow Him. John the Baptist knew what was important was less of me and more of Him.
In other words the message of the Bible is not a feel better about yourself, be all you can be, get rich quick scheme; as many today (Joel Osteen) present the Scriptures to be. It is a message of sacrifice to the point of death of the self that can only be accomplished through the power of the Holy Spirit guiding someone internally to put those emotional states into their proper perspective and in their proper place. The proper perspective is to understand that these emotions cannot be my guiding force that instead it must be God. The proper place it to take the emotions along with the flesh that clings to them and nail it to a cross, daily, every second of the day if need be.
There is no way I can call myself a Christian, spend time with the Lord in prayer and encounter Him in the Scriptures and come away from that thinking that I am to be guided by my emotions. Emotions have their place but as a Christian they are never meant to take the place of God and His guidance.
And in order for God to transform us by the renewing of our minds and to mold us into the image of His Son, we must know a little something of what it is like to be Him. Not in what we would consider the more glorious aspects of His being but the parts of His life and being that we would rather do without. I am speaking of course of His suffering. If I am really interested in getting to know Him I need to get to know something of His suffering. And I don't have to get out of bed in the morning looking for it. It just happens. And it seems to happen in ways where it strikes deeply; as in the aspects of it coming into our lives through those who are closest to us.
In order for me to truly love I need to know the pain of rejection and even abuse. I have come to know these things. In order for Christ to dwell in me and for Him to work through me I must know the experience of suffering and not just something I heard in a sermon. And so He has shown me. And then He says, "love them as I have loved you". To which my flesh immediately replies, "you must be kidding". To which He immediately reminds me of a place called Calvary where His Son stares down at me through a bloody and torn face radiating mercy, grace and love to me. And silently He speaks to me about how He is not at all kidding and that this is love. And then He points to the ones who have caused the rejection and the abuse and tells me that if I want to truly follow Him I must be willing to do the same as He has done. To forgive them, to have mercy on them, to bestow grace upon them and to love them.

I thought I was just going to check in but something takes over my fingers as I am typing.
What I'm saying is there is no way I can call myself a Christian, study and teach the word, seek the Lord in prayer and come away from all that thinking that my feelings really matter when it comes to this move or anything else in this life that I'm not too crazy about. And God all along is providing His grace. Which for me is more than sufficient.
Turned out to kind of be a devotional after all.