A Holy Necessity

Oh goodness. It’s hard to believe I am actually sitting down and writing this. I have not felt led to blog for quite some time, at least about what God is bringing me through and teaching me. I now do though.

I have been stripped. I have been emptied. I have been and am going through what has been the hardest spiritual lesson in my six year walk with Christ. I literally have nothing and am nothing. I have no control over anything anymore and very little idea of what is to happen in the future. My life’s strategy of having 5-year plans, analyzing and researching things to death, along with the whatnot is no longer. I am beginning a new major with no idea of what I am going to do with it except glorify God in some way. I am entering a new department with people that right now, I really don’t know how to relate to. I am in a relationship that stretches me in ways I never have been, in not just becoming the person God wants me to be, but the woman He has created me to be. God’s plans for missions in my life may be changing to an extent, at least for a period of time. And the promises Christ has foretold, I just wait in expectancy for Him to reveal Himself through the things He will do.

I have always been rather disciplined in my walk with Christ, and have flourished because of it. I know the necessity of these disciplines such as prayer, reading the word, fasting, solitude, silence, etc., are critical to maintain a thriving relationship with our Savior. However, for a period of time, it simply wasn’t the same. I didn’t get the same things out of it that I once did and I didn’t understand why. I became stuck to say the least. I had moved forward and got to a point where I got stuck as Christ called me deeper and further into dangerous territory I have seldom ventured.

I no longer see Christ just as the docile shepherd I have always seen Him as. I see Him as One fiery and passionate, not asking, but commanding that I give my all to him and follow, no questions asked. He is to ask the questions of me. I see the Jesus that Peter saw on his fishing boat, that after He filled up Peter’s nets, He called him to forsake it all and follow Him. Peter asked Christ to leave his presence for he is a sinful man. There’s a book I have been reading, Your God is Too Safe, and it creates the image of Jesus filled with fiery passion as He commands Peter to follow. Peter had a choice to allow Jesus to leave, or to leave everything he had to follow Jesus. That image of Jesus has scared me and made me uncomfortable. Jesus, the One who comes and fills our own nets, often does so in order that we may see He is the source, and then commands us to forsake it all. I have been blessed beyond anything I can imagine, and so my nets are full, if you will. However, Jesus has come face to face with me and has called me to leave it all for His sake. I am to truly seek out His Kingdom and His righteousness first and foremost and all things will be added to it.

And after this encounter with the true and full Christ, I became Jacob wrestling with God. God touched the socket of Jacob’s hip in order that he may understand that God has full power. The interesting thing is that Jacob was able to wrestle with God; God permitted so. One would think a God who can kill someone with a strike of lightning wouldn’t allow a mortal to wrestle with Him. However, it is through this wrestling with God that Jacob truly encounters Him and realizes that He is the source of blessing. Jacob is left with a limp in order that he may not forget, and gains the new name of Israel because he struggled with God and men and overcame (Gen 32:28). At the beginning of this summer I was fascinated with Jacob for I didn’t really understand him. The book I have been reading talks about Jacob on a couple of occasions. However, as I read it, I thought those chapters were the least convicting. Looking back I realize it was because I didn’t want to face or admit the fact that I too, like Jacob, was wrestling with God and myself.

In this season God has made me more vulnerable than ever before. I have long excelled at putting up walls in my life and not telling people my struggles. I finally realized much of why this is so today. As I was the only Christian in my family for almost 6 years, I didn’t have spiritual accountability and leadership from my parents like others may be used to. I have been the spiritual leader in my family for the majority of the time I have walked with Christ. One thing I have known is I have the tendency to feel I must be strong. Much of that has to do with what my family went through in high school, and because I had the hope of Christ, I was looked to and put in the position to hold my parents and my family together in many ways. However, after talking to my mom about a couple of things this week, I realize my parent’s resolve to fix all of my problems. They lift me up on a pedestal and validate everything I am feeling and going through, whether right or not. I couldn’t take this advice fully while walking with Christ. See, they were and still do live much more for the world than for God. I wasn’t walking in the same path. I know they have the best of intentions and they do it all out of love, but I needed more than they were able to give me. Therefore, I went to my best friend with my struggles and pretty much no one else. I wasn’t in the habit of telling people my struggles because I didn’t want them to give me a quick fix that wasn’t edifying to me. This habit is to be no longer though. God has brought the walls crumbling down time and time again over the last few months. Now He is cracking me open. He is desiring me to be vulnerable with those people in my life, but above all, to be vulnerable to Him. I need to be soft for the shaping, and if I have those walls up attempting to be strong all the time, I will never admit my abundance of weaknesses and needs for Him. I have long succeeded on doing things on my own efforts and including God in it. But that’s not what He wants. He wants to further His Kingdom and include me in it.

With that God has been working and shaping and forming my heart, sometimes in soft, gentle care, and more so with sharp, painful hammer blows. In this I have realized how much I hate being exposed. Sure, I could come out behind the walls and show myself a bit, but the hand would always be on the gate handle in order that I could go back in and hide. I actually have had a recurring dream throughout my life. It is that I am out in a public place and I need to go to the bathroom. So I go, pull down the pants, and sit on the seat to do my business. Yet as soon as I do that, the stall vanishes, and I am stark in the middle of the busiest place, such as a food court in a mall. People walk all around me and look at me wondering why the heck am I going to the bathroom in the middle of such a place, and I try to move and hide, but I am stuck, unable to move. The nightmare of being exposed continues and continues. I always wake up at this point.

I always thought that this was just one of those weird dreams that I’ve had. I’ve even told it to friends as one of those amusing dreams one has while growing up. However, I don’t view it the same anymore. Oh how much fear and anxiety I have in being exposed, and how much I have hated it. To be exposed to that degree reminds me of the ickyness of going to the bathroom in the middle of a food court while others are eating. So I have long since avoided it.

God doesn’t let these matters go. Yes, He has created us and fashioned us into the men and women we are today, but He is not content to leave us as we are. He is the ultimate refiner. It is not acceptable for me to just say that I hate being exposed and that is just how I am. God wishes to stretch me even more. What I may view as being “icky,” the act of being exposed, is the very way in which God will choose to reveal His light to the world, starting with the people around me. I am not to include God in my plans, which would probably be ones of avoiding that level of exposure, but He is including me in His, which means I will be exposed beyond anything my flesh desires.

Such is the war between flesh and spirit. Oh how I know that God knows what is best for me and following Him above all no matter what the cost is more than worth it. Yet, my flesh sees those costs and doesn’t wish to give anything up. It is far easier and more comfortable to remain in the boat and not walk on water. It is much harder to trust Jesus and begin to walk on water, but even harder still I think is walking on water and keeping our eyes on Jesus so that we don’t sink.

I have been remembering this summer when I went on project. Never before have I felt so spiritually alive and seen God move in the ways that He did. The reason for that was that I was constantly out of the boat, out of my comfort zone, walking on water with my eyes fixed solely on Him. Oh how profoundly amazing this summer was. As I left project, I was still walking on water, and I did for a short while. However, after going back to school and experiencing a culture shock of sorts, I tried to continue to keep walking on water but didn’t fix my eyes on Jesus. I began to sink.

I haven’t been trusting Jesus to be the same One who called me out of the boat and invited me to walk on water in the first place. I have never really learned how to let Him minister to me in the fullest. I would try to keep walking on water but I would look to those around me and situations around me and get distracted. That kept my eyes off Jesus and made me sink.

Now as I turn my eyes back to the Jesus whom I fixed my eyes on as I walked on water, I find a different, fuller Jesus than I had before. This began the wrestle with Him like Jacob wrestled. God is calling me to be exposed, vulnerable, have no control, become a woman, submissive, and all these things so foreign to me. I didn’t want this exposure of my heart in which I no longer had control. I wrestled with God in giving this over, in fixing my eyes upon Jesus so I could walk on water again. And in this process, I made an idol out of my relationship with John. It was easier for me to think the true issues with my vulnerability, submission, exposure, emotions, needs, etc., lay with him. I had a bit of control over this, whereas with God all I can do is fully surrender. An idol is so easy to hide behind and I understand why Jesus came into the temple courts raging with anger to wipe those away. Such disgrace they bring to Him. This struggle with God finally became clear as I realized through my actions, I screwed up the one thing in my life I never wanted to. I took it into my own hands and embraced that idol so I wouldn’t have to come before Him just as I am. Like God touching Jacob’s hip so he would know it was Him, God has touched my heart so I will know it is Him. I am left with a strong memory that brings a bitter taste to my mouth of how I took control and screwed up things, and while it might be nice if it would go away, I am thankful it remains. Like Jacob’s limp, it reminds me that God is all powerful and I am not to be in control; everything falls apart when I do so. It reminds me of my struggle with Him and how I must surrender.

It hasn’t been an easy one. Like I said earlier, I feel completely emptied and humbled. I wrote this in my journal a couple of days ago as I was at the World Prayer Center coming before God finally allowing Him to do what He wishes in me. “Dear Lord, I don’t bring things to You in the way that I need to. I have been basically mocking who You are and Your character because I don’t allow You to be who You are to me. I don’t have enough faith for you to be who You are to me. You are the God whom I proclaim to others, yet I don’t let You be that same God to me. I complain to You of the state my heart is in, when I put myself there. I have been looking to the world for its definitions of things rather than to You and to Your word, because it is in that that I think I am okay when I really am not. I wonder why am I hurt and why am I struggling, when I don’t allow You to heal. I have chosen a stagnant way because I won’t let You be who You are. Again and again, I try to carry the pieces and put them together, but over and over again I full and stumble and drop them all. Dear Lord, I claim that You are the Lord of my heart but I haven’t been living it. I have been hypocritical in how I have been living. Dear Lord, I don’t know why You have endless mercy on me, because I don’t deserve it.”

How He met me there...how He has always been there. One thing I understand fully is that it has never been His lack of coming or being there; it has been my choice not to come and let Him be who He is. I am emptied in order that He may fill. I am humbled that I may always remember the roots of who I am, a sinner and in desperate need of God. Psalm 32 has spoken to me greatly in this time. God also reminded me of how intimately personal His pursuit of me is by bringing me back to my snow covered field from a year ago, in which He spoke and showed me how my sins, scarlet blood red, are washed as white as snow, only by Him.

He is beyond faithful. I have everything I could ever need and desire in Him alone. He covers my abundance of weaknesses with His blood.

I am remembering and learning. I am finding a deeper significance than ever before in seeking God. It is not something I am simply to do, but it is a Holy necessity. I sink without it.

God is so gracious and yet so dangerous. As the Chronicles of Narnia state, “He is not safe, but he is good.” He is so good.

I can’t see much beyond the waves of my life right now. I know there are going to be times when the ocean is more still and times when it stirs like crazy. There are going to be times in which it will be easier to walk and focus, and times in which I will be stretched beyond anything, struggling to keep my balance and not stumble. I know that the Jesus who calls me to follow Him—his path is uncertain, but established. I know the risks of walking on water—it is so easy to sink, as I already have. But I have experienced what it is like to stay in the boat and know how spiritually dead it feels. I am as vulnerable as Peter, walking on the water to Jesus. The water is temperamental, fallible, unpredictable. I am exposed to the elements of the ocean and storms around.

But as long as I keep my eyes on Jesus alone…Dear, dear Jesus, with a fiery passion in His eyes and a consuming love in His heart that captures me like no other…I will not sink.

As long as I keep my eyes on Jesus alone...

I will walk on water.