You – Whose Property Is Your Life Really?

 I fully accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and my personal Savior when I was 41.  I experienced the Holy Spirit drive in and expel all my sins from deep inside me, leaving me clean.

Unfortunately, then I was still addicted to porn and even after my salvation, I still sinned. I looked at sexy women and I fantasized about having sexual intercourse with them, thus having committed adultery in my heart even though I never touched them physically.

Today, I still read the Bible. I pray on my knees to God, I think of God a lot. Yet, I still suffer some suicidal ideation, of fleeing circumstances that make Life feel overwhelmingly burdensome to me, such as when Life circumstances knock at my door and make demands of me even when I am fully unable to meet them. Money problems, health problems, work problems, crime, poverty, war, relationships broken, etc. all sorts of problems come and go all the time. Still, none of us created ourselves, none of us could have arrived at adulthood without caregivers feeding, clothing, and sheltering us. And we were created without having asked to come to the world. None of us signed up for being born, being subjected to life here with all of it's good, and it's bad, and it's beautiful, and its ugly parts. And no one owed us a request if we wanted to come, we were simply created by the same God who does as He pleases and owes us nothing at all, not even a reasonable explanation of why He made us. I wish He had spared me a lot of the negative experiences that Life put me through.

 

But He allowed them.  And He owes us no courtesy to spare us such negative experiences.  Instead, we were born in sin and need a savior. We were created and came to the world as debtors to Him for being born in sin. But Life wasn’t fair to Jesus, either. He committed no sins, and yet He paid for our lives with his own life. Then, if that wasn’t enough, He went to Hell for us too. No, He didn’t go there forever, but He went to Hell nonetheless.

 

So, we have no right to complain. I have no right to complain.  I spent a good number of years complaining and protesting my having been brought into the world with some of the limitations I was born with. Furthermore, I have a congenital flaw that interfered a lot with my development, although I am physically well-formed.

 

I eventually got a lot of medical help and was brought up to a position that although the congenital flaw is still anatomically there, it doesn’t interfere with my living a full life, although I still wish I had been spared a lot of

 

So, if you face some or many obnoxious situations and limitations and still have Life bearing down on you and making unreasonable demands of you regardless, remember that you don’t own you’re the life you are living, that it is legitimately owned by your Creator, God, and it is not yours to take or destroy or abuse.  

 

So pray in times like these.

 

I am going through a very obnoxious situation that I haven’t been able to overcome. But I have God, the legitimate owner of my life, walking next to me in my struggles. And I can call on Him any time I need to talk to Him in prayer, and He answers. And when I stumble and commit a sin, like I did yesterday, I confess, and He forgives me knowing what my human weaknesses are.

 

And nothing and no one can separate me from His Love for me, ever.  And the same things that apply to me, they apply to you every bit as much as to me.

 

What does it take for me to not give in to suicidal ideations and seek escape in times like these?

 

It’s such times that I am reminded by the Holy Spirit that my life is not mine to take, regardless of how tempting escape feels. He, the Holy Spirit tells me that even though I am experiencing my life, this life that I am experiencing belongs to Him, to God, to Jesus Christ, to the Father, to the Holy Spirit, and that I am no one to take what is His by right.

 

There are times when I see other folks do things with their lives that make them rise above us all financially, professionally, relationally, in every way possible, and in my 65 years of being alive, I haven’t achieved any, or only a small fraction of what others have achieved even though the same God who created them is the same God who created me.

 

And again, the Holy Spirit tells me to mind my own business and look ahead at the distance that my race has to be run still before my race, the race that He delegated for me to run is run. 

As for the song, It’s My Life, sung first by Talk and then by Gwen Stefani of No Doubt, that song is a rebellious claim that holds no water.  I love its music, melody, and beat.  It was written by a songwriter who made money and performed professionally, and videos were made of it. But it’s not applicable in objective reality. 

If you take your own life and say that you’re the owner of your life when you show up for judgment in front of God, what do you think He’s going to reply to you with?