The world I live in is loud and and blurring and toilets plug and I get speeding tickets and the dog gets sick all over the back step and I forget everything and these six kids lean hard into me all day to teach and raise and lead and I fail hard and there are real souls that are at stake and how long do I really have to figure out how to live full of grace, full of joy—before these six beautiful children fly the coop and my mothering days fold up quietly?
Ann Voskamp, one thousand gifts

Have you, like Ann, wished that the clock could just stop while you catch up spiritually.
I feel her urgency as she looks at her children growing by leaps and bounds and inches and years right before her very eyes.
Wondering if her maturity in Christ will arrive in time.

So I’ve been praying and asking God about our lives and our spiritual growth, about the tyranny of time and the importance of getting it right before it’s too late.

And the truth began to flow through my thoughts.
His glorious truth that brings light and life and blessed freedom because it sprinkles grace over everything and everyone.

It really is all working together for good.
That’s His promise.
It’s a promise that calls our fretful hearts to come to rest on it;
to take a deep breath and lift our faces to the sun shining down with the warmth of God’s own love.

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
Roman 8:28

We seem continually to underestimate God.
If He says all things are working in concert for good then they are.
If He promises an good outcome why are we stressed?

He’ll give us everything we need to keep growing.

May you know more and more of grace and peace as your knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord grows deeper.
He has by his own action given us everything that is necessary for living the truly good life, in allowing us to know the one who has called us to him, through his own glorious goodness. It is through him that God’s greatest and most precious promises have become available to us men, making it possible for you to escape the inevitable disintegration that lust produces in the world and to share in God’s essential nature.
2 Peter 1:2-4

In His promises are everything we need to live Christ-like lives.
Yes, there’s that much power, wisdom, grace and peace in the truth God’s given us.
We don’t need to flail around like fish out of water trying to be what we aren’t, to do things we can’t do.
We just need to gather the manna and take it in day by day.
The Holy Spirit will know what’s best to do with it when it reaches our minds and hearts.
He’s in the business of making us like Jesus.

He wants us to know that we’re made accepted in the Beloved.
What does that mean?
Focus on the word made.
It’s another gift of grace.
Another thing the Father did for us.
He made us accepted in the Beloved.
Accepted in the Son of His love.

This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.
Luke 3:22

Loved by God as He loved the Son.
It pleases Him most when we believe what He has said.
He said He loves and accepts us.