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 ”KEEP GATE CLOSED”

Doesn’t this look ridiculous???  They have a gate in the middle of nowhere and it is even chained and locked shut!  Asking someone to keep the gate closed is ridiculous.  Even more crazy is someone who would stand at the gate and wonder how they would get through to the other side.  We would think they are a few french fries short of a happy meal, a brick short of a load, …

This is what Satan does in our lives.  We are walking along doing just great when he throws up a gate.  Not a fence – a gate.  He even shuts it, puts a sign on it and locks it.  Some of us stand there in disbelief as to why there is an obstacle in their way!? How are we going to keep moving in life!? What am I going to do!?

We are immobilized and stopped dead in our tracks.  And the enemy scampers away in joy knowing that we will stand there and not see that the gate isn’t keeping anything back except for us.  It is so simple to just walk a few feet around it and keep moving.  But sometimes we stay there because walking a few feet away either isn’t in our line of sight or seems just too hard.

Don’t let the enemy throw up a gate to try to stop you.  Be smarter than that! God has already won the battle.  Jesus took the keys to Hell and you have a way around.  Just keep your trust in God and know that there is always a way to keep pursuing and following Christ.

“Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ,….!”  2 Corinthians 2:14

I came across this photo a while back.  I haven’t used it until now.  It is a picture of a couple who lost their cottage in Hurricane Irene 2011.  I found it…well, sad.  Not just sad, but a little disturbing.  I understand the whole thing with “closure” that we as people feel we need, but this was sad and left me with questions.  First is the obvious:  Umm… How did they get there?  I don’t see a boat that took them there, do you?  Have they simply been sitting on the steps of their cottage since it blew away?  I doubt it – so that means they somehow got their by boat, or maybe they swam, but they look too dry to have done that….

Anyways I find it interesting because they had to physically make a decision to go back to where their cottage was and sit on the steps that obviously lead to nothing they can use.   It is pointless.  Sad, but pointless.  They can do nothing to bring back the cottage that was once there.  There is no function in what is left of the past.  It doesn’t even resemble what it once was.

So now for the obvious question:  How many times do we do this in our own past?  Maybe it is a relationship that was from the past that we always try to return too?  How about a lifestyle that isn’t where God wants us to be?  There are hurts that we often revisit for whatever reason… resentments, “feelings”…. whatever it is:  it is the past.  When we turn to God, He erases our history and rewrites it for us!  There is nothing left and even if we TRY to make something out of it there is still nothing left.  It is gone.

I’m making this year, 2012, a year that my past, present and future is changed.  What I HAD I don’t want, what I HAVE I want from God and what I’m going to OBTAIN is in Gods hands.  I am giving it all to Him – not just a little bit or a few things, I’m done trying to make life on my own terms.  I am thinking God is much better at being God then I am.  So, 2012, here’s to having nothing left to go back to! I’ve never wanted “nothing” more!