nagging v thanking

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My parents lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s, when it was at its worst. It was a time of grinding poverty and hardship for them and everyone else.

​Mum invented recycling and innovation. Mat-making was one of her specialities. She would collect the binder-twine used to tie the hay into stooks and crochet it into mats. The mats made for the dining room and bedrooms were of a much higher standard. I don't remember Mum ever buying hessian; instead, she would see what was available in the shed. A design would be drawn on the hessian, the colour scheme chosen. Old clothes dyed. Mum then cut the material into inch wide strips and, with a large crochet hook, loop the strips through the hessian. When finished, she would then trim off the coils and ends evenly, the results a beautiful soft carpet or mat. Mum spent the long winter evenings working on her mats; even wet days were filled in hooking rugs. The floors were covered with these lovely mats.

Adversity taught Mum how to create; conversely, she learned to nag, that, too, was her speciality. She dreamed – for the good life. Oh, to dress and have a house equal to her siblings and sisters – in – law.  ​

​Nagging never gave Mum the things her heart craved for; in fact, when Mum began to carp, Dad retired to the shed. Should he try to build something like the front veranda? 

It was only half-finished to please her. Dad was not a handyman nor a confrontationist.

I inherited Mum's gene for nagging. Ever since I became a Christian, I've been badgering God. 'Why haven't you healed me? I'm supposed to be dead to sin, but I'm still fighting my anger, my addiction. Why haven't you heard my prayers for my family and saved them?' Then come the 'I wants' dozens of them, a new car, new clothes, a holiday overseas, a better job.
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I suffered a camera flash of revelation that revealed I was a nagger. I had been harassing God for what I already had. He could not give me any more because he had given me everything that he had through Christ, and when I became a Christian, all that Christ had and was flowed into me. 'So you have everything when you have Christ, and you are filled with God through your union with Christ.' (Colossians 2: 10 LB) 

​The flash of revelation showed me I was harrying God for what I already had, Christ in me in all his fullness. My pestering was based on the fact that because I didn't feel Christ in me, I felt as guilty as sin, then Christ was not indwelling me, and I must strive to do better to live as I should.

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We are advised many times to not trust our feelings; instead, to trust God's word when he says he has 'chosen us to be his very own.' He decided, 'to make us holy in his eyes, without a single fault, we who stand before him covered with his love.' (Eph 1 4-6) Regardless of what we feel, can we accept what God through Jesus has given to us and what he has made us? Can we believe accept and what God has given us? And not continue to nag?
A great scripture from Colossians Chapt 2, 'then he gave you a share in the very life of Christ, for he forgave all your sins, and blotted out the charges proved against you… He took this list of sins and destroyed it by nailing it to Christ's cross.'
Nagging is a thing of the past. I'm thanking the Lord for what he has given me and praying with Paul the apostle, 'that our hearts be flooded with light so that we can see something of the future he has called us to share.' (Eph 1: 18 LB)