Daughter of the King

This post's topic is a special request by a dear friend of mine, so I am going to address it now. He wanted me to talk about what it means to me to be the daughter of God. So since God is King of everything, I have titled this post "Daughter of the King". So if God is the King, and I am His daughter, I guess that would mean I am a princess, and not in a snooty way, but in a royalty sort of way.

If you haven't noticed from my blog yet, I will just tell you. I have felt a special connection to God since I gave Jesus my heart when I was only 4. Maybe I have already mentioned that, but it is worth repeating. Ever since then, I knew I was God's little princess, or His valued treasure. As such, He has been very protective of me, not wanting His treasure to be tarnished. This doesn't mean He ever took away my free will or power to choose my own way. I know this is not the case for everyone, but it seems that I don't get away with any sin that I might try to commit. I am differentiating between mistakes and sins here. Whats the difference? Well, to me, a sin is more about intent and purposefully doing something to hurt someone else or yourself. Mistakes are just the bumbling things we humans do as we go through this life. For example, a sin is flat out looking your mother in the face and telling her you didn't break the lamp, when you really did. A mistake is not studying hard enough for a test and then failing it miserably.

 I have done my fair share of sins and mistakes. So what do I mean when I say that God doesn't let me get away with sins? I mean that He usually lets me get caught in the act of the sin, or that the consequences to my sin are so severe, it makes me think twice before I ever would consider doing it again. To me, instead of this being a sign that God has a big stick and is after me all the time, ready to pounce on me anytime I sin, this shows me that God loves me immensely. I would say that the biggest road block God has placed in my life to truly committing a "big" sin (although I do not believe in rating sins) is my own conscience. I see things so much in black and white, right and wrong, that it's hard for me to live in any grey areas and to think that things could be any other way.

Another protection God has placed in my life is my family and my Evangelical Christian upbringing. I have learned more about the Bible from my father than from any one pastor or church. For that, I will always be grateful. And my mother is the person who led me to the Lord when I was only 4. She prayed the "sinner's" prayer with me, and I knew from that point on I was "born again". For those of you who don't know what this terminology means, I guess I will have to write a post about it some day. Suffice it to say that this means I know Jesus is by my side every day, interested in every aspect of my life, and He will never leave me.

So now that I have told you how God has been protecting me, I guess I should get back on topic. I believe I was mentioning this special connection I have to God. I can usually tell how He feels about me at any given moment if I concentrate hard enough. For example, He is usually smiling at me. There have been times when I lost that connected feeling, and all I felt was guilt. Guilt about my thought life, guilt about things I wanted to do, just guilt in general. But I now know that God wasn't placing that guilt on me. I was getting that from either other people's perceptions of me, or just my own twisted perception of myself. In God's eyes, I am whole and complete in Jesus, and I don't need to do anything else but just be. There is such freedom in this. Now I want to serve my King, not because I have to earn my way into heaven, but because its a joy to serve the one who saved me and loves me unconditionally.

Overall, being the daughter of the King is a joyous experience. And its like being in my true home wherever I go. God knows I have tried to rebel and walk away from Him many many times. But He keeps lovingly bringing me back to Himself. I don't even get one foot outside the fence before he wraps the crook of His staff around me and tenderly draws me back to Himself. I believe that once He wins you over, He never lets you go, no matter how hard you may rebel against Him. I know my heart just in this past year has been dead set on leaving God. And within a matter of weeks, if not days, God softened my heart and just had me falling in love with Him all over again. I can't even begin to describe what that is like. I can try though. It's like a warm blanket you never want to leave on a rainy day. It's like you just know that in God's arms, its the only place you will ever be truly safe and at home.

There may come a time when my heart rebels against God again. It is my nature to do this. But at the very depths of my soul, God and I are so connected, we can never truly be separated. I am confident now that I need not do anything else except bask in God's presence to be accepted by Him and to go to heaven some day. I know being with God has always been my true destiny, and God wants that even more than I do, so it's going to happen. And to be with God, I know, will fulfill the deepest longings of my heart in the here and now, as well as some day in the future, as long as I keep looking to God for my source of hope. I hope this post ministers to you all. Because the truth is, God, and spirituality, these are the single most important things in my life. They take precedent over any other relationship, or any other issue. My whole life has been about God and church. True hope is found in God. I hope you all find this true hope and peace some day. Just more thoughts from the mind of Crystal.

by: Crystal Nylander