Skip to main content

Overcome


While reflecting on where I feel like God wants to take me in 2013, the word that came to mind  was-- o v e r c o m e. Overcoming feelings of failure, overcoming insecurities, overcoming limitations or disabilities that I feel like hold me back from living to the full extent that God has called me to. A couple verses that came to mind were John 16:33 and Isaiah 43:1-2

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. 
But now, this is what the Lord says—he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze."

As I was coming to a peaceful resolve around this theme, we "coincidentally" hosted a guest speaker at work on Friday. The speaker, Kyle Maynard, was born with no arms and no legs, but never let his given circumstance bound him. His dad challenged him from a young age to learn to live (and thrive) with his physical limitations, and as a result Kyle went on to join the wrestling team, play football, and even climb Mount Kilamanjaro. I was so inspired by his perspective, and want to share a snippet of ESPN's feature on him:

"Disability is the one thing that unites every single person. While some disabilities are obvious and visible, many disabilities are on the inside. Either way, vulnerabilities make us better—without them, we cannot grow.”- Kyle Maynard

God, may this be the year that I acknowledge the things that make me vulnerable and persevere through my fears and difficulties rather than maneuvering my way around them. May nothing stop me from doing the things You have set aside for me--


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

And just when you least expect it..

Today I went down to the food court with another intern and as I opened my box of sushi, I hesitated. Feeling as if there were too many eyes on me (I only ate with one other person -_-), I questioned whether I should pray before my meal, in fear of social rejection. After I prayed, she asked me if I was a Christian, and I awkwardly responded that I was. Then she said, "Finally! What a relief to know that there are other Christians!" WHAT THE.. I couldn't believe it. Here I was, sitting with a co-worker that I had simply exchanged cordial greetings with, now talking about God haha. Even though I was scared and honestly did NOT want to pray, God used a habitual thing like that to open up opportunities for me to invite her to small group and share my faith. Crazy how He works when you least expect it.
5 comments
Read more

Delirious

delirious (adj): marked by uncontrollable excitement or emotion; ecstatic; filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy (1 peter 1:8); me I don't think I had a personal relationship with God until 2 weeks ago. There have been a lot of formative moments and experiences in the past 6 years of me considering the existence of a higher-being, 3 yrs of being a Christian, 1 year of living by faith, 6 months of serving on church leadership, 1 month of dire circumstances, each of which have been challenged and supported by specific instances in my life.* But it's only been 2 weeks of finding pure joy, satisfaction, and freedom in Christ (alone). Though it's been 6 years since I first stepped into a church building and 3 years since I accepted Christ, I was always afraid to admit that I didn't know what grace, freedom, repentance, or Jesus meant--in terms other than the ones I had heard or read--it was always a theory and never a reality in my own life. After years of doing chur...
5 comments
Read more

Surrendering my career

"Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it." The concept of surrendering my career never made much sense to me because I've always known what I wanted to do, and was perfectly en route to achieving it. I thought I was better than everyone else for knowing what I wanted to do. In all frankness, I just thought I was awesome and gave myself credit for every accomplishment in my life. When God directly confronted me last year with how much I had been living for myself, I made all excuses to rationalize and justify myself. Somehow God changed my heart to be willing to let go of my perfect plan and insured that I would never find the type of security and identity that I found through a job title or company reputation. He took me through a whole year of rejections and dejected moments so that I would learn what it means to be satisfied with merely having a relationship with the God of the universe , not just praising Him or want...
2 comments
Read more