boundaries {blessed}

Friends, we will soon wrap up the holiday season and the year. How was your 2013? Maybe it was a year of overcoming great challenges. A year of loss. A year of newness. Perhaps a year of holding on.

As you might know our year began in faith & expectation, wavered in trust, and ended with great reliance on Him who is able. In the new year we prayed and prayed and prayed some more. We prayed for direction and new calling and favor. Then after closed opportunities, quiet heartbreak, and patience tested we had our new calling. A calling that suddenly seemed too big for us, too costly. One tempting to turn down the moment of long awaited offer. But we walked forward, scared and thrilled. And where once our feet were rooted, we had to learn to walk again once we were planted in fresh soil. Oh how we stumbled at times, doubted, trusted and saw God. What a year to hold God's hand, move on, and walk by faith.

When I haven't held His hand, I have learned doubt to be strong, tempting, cloudy, and consuming.

The serpent asks Eve, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'"?. What a line Satan. What a sneaky, convincing, seemingly innocent line tainted with death. Twisted lies. Birthing desire for what He has not given. 

The thing is no matter the doubt,  His boundary lines are not meant for {worthless} pain. Those boundary lines He has in our life are good. They are protection, over and over again. His boundaries for us are blessed. 

Psalm 16

¹ Keep me safe, my God,
    for in you I take refuge.

² I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;
    apart from you I have no good thing.”
³ I say of the holy people who are in the land,
    “They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.”
⁴ Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more.
    I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods
    or take up their names on my lips.

⁵ Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup;
    you make my lot secure.
⁶ The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
    surely I have a delightful inheritance.
⁷ I will praise the Lord, who counsels me;
    even at night my heart instructs me.
⁸ I keep my eyes always on the Lord.
    With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

⁹ Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
    my body also will rest secure,
¹⁰ because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
    nor will you let your faithful one see decay.
¹¹ You make known to me the path of life;
    you will fill me with joy in your presence,
    with eternal pleasures at your right hand.