"You Are Mine"

I got an interesting answer from God last night when I was praying. 

I was feeling a bit spiritually down because for the past couple of weeks, I've felt the urge to do more for the kingdom.  A year ago, I would have been ecstatic to have all the opportunities to advance God's kingdom that I have in my life right now...repeated situations to share my testimony and the Gospel to one of my entire classes, this blog's statistics revealing that it's reaching far more people (and internationally, too), and huge developments in relationships with three of my unbelieving friends.  But it seems like the more opportunities from God we take, the more we crave even more of them.

So as I was praying, I heard deep within my soul, "You are Mine."  There was so much communicated to me in those three little words that I fell silent.  Which, as those who know me in person can attest, happens rarely. ;-)

On one level, it was an expression of His love for me.  It was a reminder that nothing I could do for Him could possibly make me "more His" or make Him love me more.  That's the beauty of what we believe, and what sets apart our faith from all other religions - our service to Him is only a grateful response to His love; we don't need to continually strive to impress Him, because He's already adopted us as His precious children.

So, we should not mistake our longings to do more for the kingdom as a God-given guilt trip for not doing enough.  Rather, the feeling He gives to us is a longing deep within our souls to see more come to know and grow in Him, based on absolute conviction in what we believe and a desperate love for the souls we meet.

On another level, it was an expression of one of the truths I try to communicate most often on this blog (because most in our nation ignore it): That since He paid for us with His blood, He owns our lives now.  Romans 6:17-18 tells us, "But thanks be to God that though you were slaves to sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness."  We all need to remember every second of every day that opportunities from God are not there for us to pick and choose which ones to take and which ones to ignore...if we're truly following Christ in that moment, we will take every opportunity that we know comes from Him.  This is how we start to thank Him for taking our place on that cross - by saying "Yes" every time.  So, this was an encouragement to me that whatever opportunities came up next, to take them without hesitation.

Share a bit with us!  At what times or circumstances in your life have you craved more, more, more opportunities to further God's kingdom?  What opportunities has God given you that you've said "Yes" to?