I am not my own

This past week has been a very interesting, and wonderful week. As I started out with a blog entry about simplifying, I had no idea the impact that following my own advice would make in my life. I have heard from friends, family and most importantly, I have heard from God more clearly than I have in years. I don't know about you, but for me, God generally speaks to me in themes. God will place something on my heart then reinforce it over and over again. I will hear the same verses over and over again. Every time I turn the TV on I will hear someone speaking about what God is trying to tell me.  Conversations will turn to the same theme, and so on, until I finally get it through my thick head that God is trying to tell me something. As I began to turn my phone off, and put my computer down a little bit more, I began to clearly hear the theme that God has been trying to teach me.

You see, I am constantly one step ahead of life in my mind. God has been screaming at me to slow things down. He has been wanting me to be more present with the people He places in my life. But most of all, He has been wanting me to really get the fact that I belong to Him. I am not my own. Every breathe I take is His. Every step I walk, every heart beat is His. This isn't a new way of living for me. But I never realized how distracted I have become from the life that He has for me.

The week ended with a spontaneous trip to the Smoky Mountains, Cades Cove to be exact. What an amazing day. I love God's beautiful creation. I love wildlife, and horses, and mountains, good conversation, my Honda Accord, donuts, and sunsets. This trip had all of that, and so much more. Oh, and did I mention, I turned the radio off in the car, rolled the windows down, opened the sunroof, and got the pleasure of listening to Lindsay sing "Earnestly I seek Thee", a new song by Aaron Gillespie. That's another moment I would have missed if I hadn't made the choice to unplug for a while. And the sunset was magnificent. The perfect end to the perfect week.

^{Philippians 3:7} But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. ⁸ What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ ⁹ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.