“Your unfailing love is better than life itself;
    how I praise you!”

-Psalm 63:3 (NLT)

Wow! God is good. 

Tonight I am reminded of how blessed I am.  I am writing this from a hotel room in Ohio.  My parents, my brother Joel, and I are up here visiting my mom’s family.  My older brother Jonathan was in town this past weekend, and more and more I am realizing how great my friends are.  In five days I am leaving for a two-week trip to hang out with orphans in Ukraine, and God is blessing me in so many more ways that cannot even be seen right now.

Even in all that God has blessed me with, I still find ways to screw up.  Sometimes I feel like I just can’t do anything right.  The only thing that knocks me down and blows me away every single day is God’s grace.  He comes and finds me in my failures (and believe me there are a lot).  God’s ability to work in my failings shocks me.  Believe it or not, I used to think that I didn’t have any problems.  I had my life “under control,” but in the past year, I haven’t been in control of anything.  Plans have changed, people have died, and I have tripped up more times than I can count.  There is one thing that has stayed the same: God.  God rules the world, and He is in my corner!  No matter how far I run, God is already two steps ahead of me ready to reveal His glory!  How great a feeling it is to know that I worship a God who pursues me!  He is working for my good, even when I lock the doors and try to keep him out. There is nowhere that I can run where God doesn’t see.  God’s invitation will always find me, wherever I am.

And because of His unfailing love, I cannot help but praise Him!  My heart longs to sing praise to the God who never gives up and refuses to stop pursuing me.

“Lord, may my lips never stop praising You!

Let me not be defined by my failures

but by the triumph that is in You!”