Baggage

Baggage, Luggage ~ whatever you want to call it...we all carry some as part of our lives. Sometimes its essential like your personal backpack you take with you on vacation, other times its the four pairs of shoes that are way too heavy and you end up not wearing, but still carried them around.

I have carried baggage of my own for years and wonder how or why God loved me. I am from a single parent home and why did I deserve to marry such an awesome guy that had two loving parents that are soon to celebrate 44 years of marriage. Why would God never leave me or forsake me when my own dad abandoned our family. How could I receive this blessing?

I have over the years decided the qualities that I want to have and the ones I don't, I have grabbed my backpack of essentials and left the four pairs of shoes I don't need, but only by the grace of God and having people around that believe in me!

We all have a story to tell so...

"Don't let your personal baggage keep you from enjoying this intimacy that both your spirit and God's long for." Francis Chan - Forgotten God

Romans 8:31-39 (The Message - Bible.com)
So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn't hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn't gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God's chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:

   They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
   We're sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one. None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I'm absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.