Preeti
Priscilla
Electrical
and Electronics Engineering, 2nd year
SRM
University
“Giving up is not an
option.” I’ve heard these words many, many times and I’m pretty sure, so have
you, but it is not until recently that I started to take these words to heart.
You might ask, “What changed?” and that is precisely why I’m writing this-to
tell you what changed.
You know that phase in your
life when things are easy, you can sit around and relax, do the bare minimum
and get through life easily? Well, I had all of that till my 10th
grade, everything came easily to me - marks, appreciation, attention. I never
really gave it much thought nor did I consider as God’s favour and suddenly, in
11th grade it all vanished. I was among new people and my marks went
really low. Basically, it was a complete 180° shift from my earlier life. This
is when my dry spell started. I developed low self-esteem, lost my interest in
studies and lost whatever little interest I had in God but then, God never lost
interest in me. Despite everything, He brought me to SRM University and my life
changed again.
Here I realised that God’s
love for me does not depend on what I do. He loves me just because He wants to,
no ulterior motives. His love does not come with an asterix saying, “Terms and
Conditions Apply”. His love is free flowing. It consumes everything - broken
hearts, broken dreams, broken people - and makes them whole with no scars to show
for the brokenness. Everything’s made new. Now you might think, “Yes, she got
to know about God’s love and that changed her. Let’s get back to our work.
Show’s over!” But, I’ll have to ask you to stop and read on.
Yes, God’s love is
everything it said it is and so much more. Yes, it has the power to change
everything. Yes, it makes everything new. But all this is possible only if you
allow it. Now you might be wondering “Why would I not let God’s love make
everything new? Why would I stop it?” Yes people. We do stop it. We stop it
when we continue to hold on to our failures and let them define us. We stop it
when we find our identity in the world and not in Jesus. We stop it when we let
the fear of our future control our present. We stop it when we don’t trust Him
completely. That is when all the doubts start to crop up, when everything seems
to be crashing down, when we feel nothing good can come out of our lives and
that is when we feel like GIVING UP!!
The human mind believes a
lie so much more easily than it would the truth. If someone tells you that you
don’t look very good or that you don’t sing very well, you immediately believe
it and spend the rest of your life, trying to match upto that person’s
standards. We choose to ignore or should I say we choose to forfeit God’s glory
upon our lives. God has been shouting, “You are beautiful and amazing! I have
created you in My image.” Do we believe this most of the time? Nope. We
consider the words of a human superior to the promises of our Almighty God. We
fall right into the devil’s well laid trap.
The devil’s sole aim is to
bring us down to a position where God cannot use us. So, we need to decide who
defines our identity - Jesus or the world. If Jesus is our identity then what do
we need be afraid of? We can declare just like Paul did-If God is for us then
who can stand against us? We need to stop letting our failures or our past
define us. We need to BELIEVE that we are made new in Christ. I’m not saying
that this battle is easy or short. It’s a long battle that we will be fighting
till the day Jesus comes back but are we alone in this battle? Absolutely not!
Jesus is here. We might not see him or feel Him at times but He is always
there, watching, ready to pull us out when we can’t take it anymore. He’ll
never give us more than we can handle.
Lastly, I just want to quote
a few lines from a song that I heard recently. It’s by Holly Starr.
He
changed my life by changing my mind
He
healed all that was broken inside
I’m
loving what I can see with
His
Spirit alive in me
I’m
finding beauty for the first time
Looking
through my Father’s eyes
You want to know what
changed? Here it is - I started looking at my life through my Father’s eyes and
realised that giving up is not an option.
GOD
BLESS YOU!!
