Rags to Riches

Hello friends!

I pray this blog post finds you well. I pray that Jesus is doing things in your life that are far beyond anything you could have ever imagined. I know for me, God is doing some great things! Wow. He is so faithful!

This blog post is coming at such a timely point for me and I hope for you!

The title of this post is "rags to riches." This post came to me a few days ago during a worship time.

To start off this entry, have you ever had a time in your life where you feel like everything you offer God is not good enough? Ever had a time where you feel like what you are offering God is trash compared to what others can offer, or compared to what God deserves? Well the Lord put that on my heart to share with you all and for myself too.

I was worshipping and asking God to show me what He needed me to tell his people and what he needed me to hear. In the midst of the plea to Him, he showed me something so cool and so real that I could not help but share it with you.

In this image I got, I was worshipping the King and had my hands straight up in the air, but after a second of me just worshipping I realized that I was holding trash in my hands up to Him. I was so ashamed by it and was asking myself why I was offering trash up to Jesus. I thought that everything I was doing was great and so well thought out and all that jazz, but then I realized that it was not... Here's the catch of the vision, as I was holding up the trash to Jesus he waved his hands over mine and the trash turned to diamonds. Diamonds. Wow... I was in awe. What did this mean? Well.. I have realized that it means a few things.

First, we as Christians try really hard to clean ourselves up for God and try to show Him what we do well. We try to come to God and say "Look what I did God!" The catch here, though, is that no matter how much we "clean up" or how many great things we do in our week, without Jesus it's nothing. We as sinful humans can try and try and try to do everything we can, but without the blessing of God and the anointing of God it is not nearly to the capacity that it could be.

The second piece involves worship as a whole. When we offer our "trash," our sin, up to God, he takes it away and replaces it with truth. The truth being that we are children of a king. The truth being that we are enough. The truth being that when God sees us, he doesn't see our trash, but instead he sees the diamonds that Jesus gave us when he died on the cross. When Jesus died on the cross for us, out trash was taken away and replaced with beautiful diamonds that never end. We were washed white as snow and were told that we were royalty in the kingdom of God. We went from a people who were lost, hurting, and broken, to kings and queens, and sons and daughters of the one who saves, the one who loves unconditionally, and the one who tells us we are the apple of His eye.

Friends this is so important to understand. Your good works do not make you a diamond in God's sight, while he loves when we do good things and further his kingdom, it does not save us and cleanse us. What saves us and cleanses us is the blood of Jesus. The blood of Jesus is the one thing that takes our trash and replaces it with beauty. The blood of Jesus is what moves the trash aside and makes us focus on the purity we were given but did not deserve. The blood of Jesus is what tells us that we were created to do unique things, we were not created to be just like someone else. You were created to be YOU and no one else. You may look around and see all the good things others are doing and think that you are just lifting up trash to God compared to them, but God is saying that you just need to open your eyes and see that your trash can be diamonds in His eyes. If you have consulted the Lord and gotten his anointing, then never think that what you offer to God is trash compared to others. You are unique and the things you offer to the kingdom are much different than the things someone else offers. Always remember that! There are so many interpretations from this one image, it's crazy!

So, rest in the fact that when you feel like all you are is trash, when you feel like that the best you can offer is never good enough, know that Jesus sees you as a diamond. He sees you as beautiful and worthy. He is a good father. So good.

Till next time friends!
Austin