Remember when??

I remember when I could just skate by. I could give the 'pat answers' and keep everything looking okay on the outside so that it was easy to go unnoticed. I could manipulate the conversation to be about you instead of me, and make you feel connected to me, even though you really didn't know me. I remember when I thought it was so easy to keep my 'la-la' box of reality all neatly packaged with its pink and white polka-dot bow. Oh how I remember... But God wasn't content with my games, my manipulations, or my pretty pink box I called reality. He has called me out to be a new creation, yet again. Having followed Him most of my life, it feels pretty weird to be starting over. Yet, I know that there are seasons of change, seasons of growth, seasons of pain, and seasons of drought. My God is still the same as He was yesterday... today... and tomorrow; but He doesn't want ME to be the same. In my ever-pursuing heart after His, He wants me to be renewed, refreshed, and reborn. It's a daily act of putting off the old self and putting on the new. I'm thankful for a God who pursues me, even when I think I've got it all figured out, a God who isn't content with my 'pat answers', a God who cares enough about me to see beyond the manipulations and games...and to call me on it! (In all reality, I probably didn't have everybody else as fooled as I'd like to think...but many were willing to accept my brush-offs.) What God has for me is way more than I have for myself. The relationship He longs for I can't even begin to comprehend. It boils down to something I heard Miles McPherson say at THRIVE this past weekend: "Do I want all that God has for me, or just a little more?" I remember when...I would've settled for just a little more.