stepping in your fathers footprints....

Philippians 4:12-13

It didn't happen overnight, these things never do. But I slowly began to feel the release, the release from the things that have held me back.
Like the chains across my shoulders and legs were falling of...link by link they were breaking to let me free. 
Free into the arms of someone who could hold me up with one arm, with the strength of an army. 
And while he held me he passed his strength onto me. 

Like the clouds from the sky were being blown away to reveal the most perfect sunrise, with all the colours you can imagine. and it was freedom...freedom from the pain and the struggles. 

And then we move on and he tells me that I have his strength and his strength is mine when I ask, his armour is mine if I ask, his power is mine if I ask... and I know his way is the way that is right. 
His footsteps are the ones I want to walk in, like a child stepping in her fathers footprints. 

And he doesn't leave but he puts me there, right on the front line of his army and he whispers run...run with my strength and my power and know that my words give you the ability to defeat all evil. 

So I choose to run and I do, with him steering my feet in whichever way he needs me to go, I run. 

I don't know where I am running, but I know it is good. It feels strong and right. It feels like freedom. And we will not be defeated. 



I read Philippians 4 on Tuesday with some friends and I found it really hard to listen to. Everyone was getting excited about the fact that Paul was content in every state and that we could be the same. It wasn't easy but we could and we could know the strength of God in it all.

I struggled... Tuesday was a hard day for me, there was one thing after another piling up and I felt drowned by life. I did not want to hear that we had to be content in each situation and each stage of life because we have God and therefore everything is okay...

Then I read it again tonight and I wrote the italics above. God moved, he whispered to me that my problems were not with the world, they were not with the people around me or the situations I was in.

My problems, my discontent was because of him and me, because I wasn't making him my first and foremost, because when my relationship with him isn't right then nothing else seems right.
He whispered that I needed to stop focusing on what I want the world to be, on what I think is wrong but I need to focus on him and his ways and rest in that.

And so he began to release me from the pain and confusion and I got excited again.
Excited about the things he has for me, about the way that he wants me to live, about where he wants to send me.

And so maybe we need to focus on us and God more often. When we are discontent we need to go to our relationship with him and see if that is what needs fixing.
Because he tells me that I have his strength and his strength is mine when I ask, his armour is mine if I ask, his power is mine if I ask...
So are we asking??