Learning

"I can do all things through Him who strengthens me."

Philippians 4:13

One of the most quoted verses in all the Bible. Paul was using it in the context of being "content in whatever circumstances" because the one thing he could always relay on was the Lord. No matter what he had, a lot or a little, it didn't matter because the one constant was the Lord. Paul learned this lesson but by no means do I believe that he learned it the way he expected to. 

See the more and more I learn about the Lord it becomes painfully obvious that He rarely, if ever, teaches me things the way I expect Him to. 

To take that even further He rarely teaches me the way I want Him to. 

In my mind my life would be so much "better" and so much more "fulfilling" if God would just teach me lessons the way I want. Nothing painful, nothing too difficult, nothing that shakes my world or breaks my heart but that's rarely the way the Lord brings truth into our lives. He can but I think C.S Lewis put it best when he said "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." The very things we try our hardest to run from and escape from in this world, such as heartbreaks, trials and pain, can be greatest tools the Lord uses to reach our heartstrings.

I've prayed to the Lord countless times to teach me more about what it is to truly follow Him. To truly be completely surrendered in every aspect of my life. Do we really mean what we pray? Even when His answer is in the form of extreme pain or heartache? Growing to look more and more like Him rarely is a process we have control of and Paul learned this in a way he probably didn't ever expect to. Paul certainly had to question what God was doing at multiple times in his life but all those things, the good and painful, led Paul to write down this verse.