The Loving Killer

The other day I had a half-day off, so I sat beside a little pond in my neighborhood for a while. I took one of my old journals from 2006, back when I was in college and still trying to deny I needed or wanted God. It was amazing to remember my mindset then - so blind and willfully wrong. But what was more amazing to me is that every other entry is about God - the dreams I recorded, how much I agonized over what truth could be if it wasn't Him, the events that obviously lead me back without me knowing at the time, and sometimes even small admissions of how much I missed Him. He so obviously had His hand on me then, and equally as obvious was how much I wanted Him even if I pretended to myself that I didn't. 

It is amazing to me how able I was to recognize exactly what I needed (I always wrote about how I know what the truth is, but am outside of it), and still run away from it. Why does the human heart have such capacity for fear of what they know is good and true? Maybe because we don't want to give in to such kindness. We feel unworthy, we don't want to be important to anyone especially God, we would rather continue hiding with our wounds because it has become our comfort zone. And from there it's a vicious cycle of feeling unworthy, so we sin, then we feel even less worthy, so we hide from our friends, then we feel alone and unworthy, so we think we deserve more of the same, and then we sin, and then it starts all over.

The trick here is to realize that I am worthy. (Scandalous - I almost want to take it back, but..) Who spoke the heavens and the earth into existence? Who upholds the earth by His word? And who said over us that we have been given a new heart, called children of God, given the fullness of His delight now, while I am on earth - not when we die, later on, when hopefully we make it into heaven and can then be good enough? He said that when our hearts condemn us - which they do all the time - He is greater than our hearts, and knows all things (1John 3:20). So, He knows what the actual truth is about us, and we do not.

Shame, guilt, the inability to live how God made you - those are not who you are. Those things just take you out and defeat you. But they aren't even real.

I mean - God made the literal reality by His word...that chair you are sitting on is only there because it's being upheld by His word...And God cannot lie...So is what He saying about you that you will never measure up, that you are afraid and cowardly, that you'll never be who you feel you are beneath all the junk piled up on you? His word about you, which is more true than anything you believe about yourself, is not condemning you. All my unworthiness, all my beliefs about what I'm not brave enough to do,how I can't measure up to that horribly high standard - all that is irrelevant. It doesn't even matter in the face of how His word can change me.

AND - I'm very excited about this one - He is coming back to avenge us against those who try to put us to shame. AND WHAT DOES THAT INCLUDE? Our own hearts. He's going to avenge us against ourselves. He avenges us against self hate and fear, self destruction, the things we speak over ourselves, the beliefs we have about ourselves. That's how He loves me: He kills the parts that aren't good for me, that aren't really me like I was meant to be. He gets me out of that comfort zone.

Wonderful Humiliation

Today, I realize that in three days I will have been officially in the prayer movement for one year, and committed to Christ for one year and four months. One entire year of daily prayer for hours, of asking God to come and open up my heart, of asking God to make me dependent on Him, to let me hear His voice. Honestly, it doesn't feel like it has been that long - feels more like I just started. Thank the Lord that I never make any "progress", that I'm never "good to go," that I never get a revelation that enables me to move beyond the dependency on Him that I had at the beginning of my walk! Here is a confession: So many times in the past year, I've gotten caught up in thinking that by now I ought to be good on my own, that now I'm righteous enough and that things should level off from here on out, or that I've got enough of a feel for God that I won't fall anymore. Stupid? Yes. I will never be good to go! I hope someday I will be able to quit thinking I am! I guess I have learned one thing: When I realize I'm thinking that way again, it's time to search my heart and whip it into shape before I get so dull from trying to do everything on my own that I do fall. It's the Lord's kindness to me that I get a daily realization of how horribly not good enough I am for His love. Otherwise I would think I could deserve it. Of course, that's coupled with the knowledge that He loves me anyway - Why? I ask Him all the time and I still haven't figured that one out, but I'm really, really glad. Depending on God even to have any scrap of love in my heart, for any bit of righteousness, and for everything I own - that is what this year has been all about. It's a wonderful humiliation, realizing I need Him so much; realizing how little strength I have on my own. It's an agony that leads to real love.

Blessed is the man whose strength is in you, whose heart is set on pilgrimage. Psalm 84.