So this week I celebrate my 32nd birthday, and less than one month from now, I will celebrate my second child, Holland’s, first birthday.

This last year of going from one to two children has taught me one thing:  I need God.

If we choose to receive God’s gift of Jesus–and then follow Him, we’re going to be led into a life that confronts our utter need for God, and assures the requirement of complete trust and reliance on Him.

My journey as a father has led me into an immersion of self-sacrifice, where I’ve been invited to focus on two little people, more than focusing on myself.  There’s continually circumstances that require me to uncomfortably decrease, so that I can take care of them and our family’s life accordingly.  This “decreasing” is particularly uncomfortable due to my growing passion to write, dream and build a career, and simply go where I want to go when I want to go there.  On top of all this, I feel simply downright incapable of being a father and head of a household–nearly every day.  At times, the feeling of being overwhelmed is simply unbearable.

And that’s when turning to Jesus’ presence is my only comfort.  It’s when I’m there, reality alters.

Each of us have things that others do not.  We’re all in a different boat.  But one thing is for certain.  Whatever specific situation you are allowed, you are there so that you can listen to God, so that your heart can learn to trust God as a good Father, and so that you can follow where He leads you.

There is a bigger picture for all of us; bigger than simply “making it” or “getting by” to the next day.  Bigger than coping, nursing our days’ wounds or entertaining ourselves around everyone’s status updates.  In trusting God as our one and only source, He allows us unfathomable peace and perspective that transcends this world’s normal feelings and emotions.  “Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life [identity]—even though invisible to spectators—is [hidden] with Christ in God. He is your life.” Colossians 3:3.  In receiving our identity as “righteous” and “clean” through Christ, we reign and WIN–from the inside–out (Romans 5:17).

Though so rarely seen, this is the universal solution for true peace of mind.     

In trusting Him, will God make the external things easier?  Yes, perhaps, in time.  But He will, without question, do defining things interiorly–in your heart, immediately.  He promises in his word:

“Scripture reassures us, ‘“No one who trusts God like this—heart and soul—will ever regret it.”’ It’s exactly the same no matter what a person’s religious background may be: the same God for all of us, acting the same incredibly generous way [abounding in riches] to everyone who calls out for help. “Everyone who calls, ‘Help, God!’ gets help.”  Romans 10:11-13 (MSG)

Do I love my children?  I absolutely ADORE them.  At the same time, the sovereign God knew that this quest of having kids would be more than “life’s motions.”  He knew that when Ben Avila began to get his hands dirty in raising them, there would a confronting of my utmost and desperate need for Him, cornering me in a way that I would have no choice but to rely on Him and receive from Him.  To put it plainly:  He’s used these circumstances to stretch me for His purposes.

Besides all that, as much as I love my kids, I could only love Hosea and Holland the BEST–by first building a life of intimately receiving God’s love for me.  And furthermore, if this is what it takes to keep me “seeing” God as a good God, the same “good” God I encountered and began to deeply trust in eight years ago–before toys, screams, stories, and diapers…so be it.  I need to be with Jesus, and I need his perfect plan for my life that will do more for me and others than my own plan.

What about you?  What is your situation that seems as if it’s unfair, hopeless, or as if it’s a perpetual “dead-end?”  Will you lay down your feelings and allow your heart to open to Jesus?  Please do, today.  You won’t regret it!  He’s waiting to take you to places beyond your own perspective.

God will always lead us to a life that requires ruthless trust in Him, because in terms of our relation to God, it was always about love.

“This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life.”  John 3:16 (MSG)