Do you have the guts?

This post could be particularly meaningful for:

1. Someone who is at the crossroads of changing their life, one who recognizes that "hole" in their guts, the one that tells them something is lacking--a relationship with God and Jesus.
2. Someone who is yielding to apathy or complacency in their walk with Christ.
3. or, someone who is feeling like a punching bag, sensing that God has abandoned them.

There are several schools of thought about reviewing our pasts.  One discourages it out of the fear that such a review will open old wounds.  Another encourages it based on the thought that to do so allows one to see how much better a person they are now as compared to their past.  A healthy look back can serve either to beat yourself up or to build yourself up.  Obviously, any opportunity to build oneself up is never a bad thing.  Case in point:

He had realized that his days on the other side of the river of life were over, that where he had been traveling led him further and further away from an eternity with God in Heaven.  He found a church that became a church home.  But he still had his horrible past that he carried around in his mind, and the guilt that came from it.  In time he shared some of that past with a godly man and was surprised to find that he wasn't rejected, but rather embraced.  Over time he shared some more, and still wasn't rejected.  Rather, that friend encouraged him.  He encouraged him to take his time and as he remembered stuff, as things came to mind, to write it down.  Twenty two pages and several months later he felt that his journey to the past was over, that it was all there in black and white.  He shared that with his wise and godly friend.  And when he did so, all he got was a question.  "Don't you see how God's Hand was all over your life...even when you didn't see it, or know it, or want it?  Can you see how He protected others from you, and you from yourself through all of this?"  And, it was true---there in black and white were multiple instances where God's Hand had indeed been always present in the life of a deeply flawed sinner.

Once we see the hard cold evidence of God's Hand in the totality of our lives it becomes really difficult to doubt His love for us, just as it becomes difficult to not want to trust Him as we move forward with our lives.  There is something enormously cathartic in having the guts to expose oneself for the purpose of not beating yourself up but for the purpose of seeing how God worked in your life in your darkest times--those times when you rejected him.

He created all of us.  His Hand is always there.

Bottom Line Thought:  If you haven't done so, do you have the guts to show all of yourself so that you can see, and fully appreciate, the Hand of God in your life?