Confessions of my inner brat

You know what scares me? That I don't know what tomorrow holds. That's what scares me. I know that God is holding me in His hands. I know that everything He does works toward my good. I'm just afraid that my humanity will get in the way of praising God for all He does. And sometimes it does. I'll grumble (to myself) about this or that, some situation that really isn't THAT bad in the scheme of things, but that is a minor inconvenience at the moment. How trivial is that? How petty am I? Oh, if I were someone else, I'd think "Geez, what a baby! Get over yourself! Who are you to complain? Look at all the wonderful things in your life!" I have an inner brat who is an eternal pessimist. Most of the time, I can kick her to the side and let my optimism shine through. But sometimes I need a little reminding, like today.

My devotional passage this morning was Phillippians 1:6... "Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." He won't just work on it. No, He will perform it! That word implies a continuing action, that God is always, ALWAYS there, performing the good works in my life. When I remind myself of the fact that God is constantly doing good things in my life, I see it. I can see all the wonderful blessings I have. Sure, we may be over a hundred dollars negative in the bank account, but my children are healthy, our pantry was stocked before we ran in the red and we have at least one running vehicle. I have a Bible that I can open any time I want and God's truth will speak to me. I can see, I can hear, and I can speak. My husband loves me more than anything (besides God) and I know it. I can tell it by the way he looks at me and talks to me. Do I have tons of friends? No, not really, truth be told, but the friends I do have are truly good ones. Do I have lots of jewels and fancy things? I have very few valuable items in this house. Most of it is junk and if a tornado wiped it all out, I would be perfectly fine, as long as my husband and children were okay. When I get so stressed about lack of money and deadlines and pressures, God is there to remind me, "Hey! Look at what you do have! Weigh that against what you really need, and you'll see that everything you already have IS everything that you need. You don't need anything else!" And it's true. So sit down, inner brat, and shut up. You don't know what you're talking about.