Come However You Are

Can January really be almost over? The older I get, the faster times seems to march on.  If you dwell on it too much, it’s sort of disturbing. Time stops for no one, for nothing.
I made my goals, to strive for more in 2014, to be better - to do better. Whether I see these things come to fruition or not, time marches on. As I read about Saul today and looked down at my goals, I couldn’t help but be comforted by the statement that rang true in my head -

God meets me where I am 

Saul, who later became Paul, was far from striving to do better. He wanted to do harm to anything or anyone who represented a faith in Jesus Christ. He threw Christians in jail and had many executed. Yet God intervened, He made the wicked holy. How refreshing and humbling is that? I look around me and even into my own heart and I think we forget what great power is held in the mighty hand of God. Even on my bad days, on days when I feel that I cannot be used, God meets me there. 

God wants to use you, he wants to meet you just as you are. 

I recently stumbled upon a song [by City Harbor] that is new to me and the words were so perfect..

To anyone walking down a hard road
Worn out with blisters on your feet
To anyone with a heart that's shattered
Doing your best to hold it together
With no prayer to pray and no song left to sing

Whatever pain you're dealing with
Let me offer this

Come however you are
Come with all your heart breaks
Come with all the mistakes you've made
Lay them down at the cross
Give them to the God who loves you
Hurt, scarred, falling apart

Come however you are

In the Bible, time and time again God uses the hurting, the least loved, the rejected - God will meet you at the foot of the cross. Grace brings us there, we have only to be still and listen - He will meet us, just as we are.