Expose to Ephphatha

Expose.
My heart. Yours.
Just You and me dear Lord.
What is deep within?
This way. I am
Created.
Yet You refine me like silver
A constant molding never ending
You say
Choose the better way.
If only there were words to express
This work that You do ever still
It would be simpler.
Not just a torrent in heart but
Words written on a page.
Somewhat clear. Maybe concise.
A means to understand
Yet it all remains within
A dialogue and interaction
With only You. My Lord.
You know the love I profess
This devotion of mine
The all I give to You.
But there is a lack. Still.
For You require nothing less.
Oh to love You but hate man
This cry You beat upon my breast
It is my response that You subdue or eliminate
All those that from my love for You
They pull away
Yet what a strange thing You call us to be
In the presence of man, Your creation
A jealous God You are
Desiring all our love and devotion alone
But You also say we love You
by the love we give others
Don’t our fickle hearts pull us away?
To walk the line. Show me how
To do so with grace and not fall
My heart. Yours.
This is deep within
Nothing simple. Complex
Expose.

I wrote this two weeks ago during a time in which God truly began exposing my heart before myself in His light. What a journey it has been and continues to shape into…that my heart would be known to me in its fullness, from the mushy sides to the more firm, from the ghastly to the somewhat presentable, from the shallowness and to the depths. How incredibly humbling it is to me to see where I stand just in that on my own.

But there’s a far greater purpose to this, and that is though my heart may be known for what it is, may it be known in the light of God’s redemption and grace. That is the journey I continue on in.

I haven’t been able to speak nor think in the way I am used to because of the intense refining being done, because in that refining, I have been losing those very things. My words nor my thoughts are to be my own…and even still as I come to write this tonight, I struggle with depicting what God has been doing and teaching me, as it is a profound work in so many ways. I say this not to glorify myself in any way, but to fully bring praise to my God. See, it is only Him and I that truly know where my heart has laid and how it reasoned, dreamed, thought, loved…and it is only Him and I that know the fullness of which it has needed and continues to need redemption. This is the work of only my God.

What a ghastly sin it is to think I have any right to anything that is not my own. I was bought at the most precious price and still I think I am entitled to something? No, it must never be so. For how can I demand something more of a Savior who has already given me His all? That is infinite and will ever be enough, until this fleshly heart becomes unsatisfied, eating and drinking of something other than the bread and blood of life He came to give that we may never hunger nor thirst again. The fact that I am here living and breathing, able to praise my Savior should be more than enough for me. And when one looks upon all that I have been given by my God in incredible excess of that, my mouth should never cease of praising Him and it’s as if I should die on the spot because of the sheer excess! I have been given abundantly more than I could ever need or want. This excess could very well be a distraction and hindrance if I allow it to be so, but the purpose of it is that I may know my Lord ever more! The problem comes when I begin to possess these things He has given me. They become mine, in which I exercise ownership and control over. They become something in which I think I am entitled to and deserve. They become something subject to my own emotions and expectations, and when those are not catered to or met, then it is me that has been wronged. I become so blind in this plight of self ownership and entitlement of things that were never mine to begin with that I horrendously lose sight of the wrong I am doing to my Savior. In making anything I have or anything I have been given, I am no better than those who spit on Him as He walked through the crowd on His way to Calvary. In that, I am saying that the prospect of You dying and giving up Your life for my sake is pointless because I don’t need to be bought. And if I were to be bought, it would be at a much higher price than one of a simple “man.” The act of self-ownership seems rather simple and not incredibly “bad” (in the terms of the world) but what ruins it can bring to the heart and how it can lead it astray. For how can I expect to live fully for my Savior when I am living in any way for myself? There is no way to do so. It requires the complete denial of self and any self entitlement, any expectations and desires I have other than for the Lord Himself.

Another thing I so often fail to realize is that when I look at the Lord Himself, all else fades…nothing remains. If I were to look fully into His eyes and let His gaze pierce my heart, I’d be past the point of no return. There would be no question of wanting to leave or escape. If I were to allow Him to pull me aside from the crowd and put His hands on my face, I would realize how long I have been trying to escape His grip. It’s in that intimate act of Him grabbing my face that I would have to look into His eyes…and with that simple act, everything would change and nothing would remain. It’s an expose in every way. I remember growing up and even still to this day, when my dad would want me to hear him fully, he would do this very thing. He always knew when my heart was hurting or when I wasn’t able to hear or understand the truth until it was said perfectly clear in front of me with no distractions. He’d first pull me by the shoulders to get closer to him that I may not resist him any longer. Once I somewhat relented, he’d pull me closer still. I knew his gaze was ever upon me, piercing me still. It was never a gaze of anger or condemnation, but one of the purest love a father can have for his daughter. I resisted this gaze so adamantly so. I didn’t want to look into his eyes for I knew what it would bring. It would mean that I would have to leave the whole aspect of looking at myself in whatever way I was and to see myself in the way that he saw me. This is why he would put his hands on my face and bring my head up so I would have to look at him. My eyes would still avert him but he would continue to lure me in with his piercing gaze. He’d continue to soothe me until I could trust him that his gaze would not bring about something I couldn’t bear. Slowly my eyes would look him in his. And there he would always be, smiling, looking at me with the purest gaze of love I’ve seen, and speak the truth over me that needed to be said. He’d pull me out of the trap of self I was in when I was in too deep. He would speak to me and look at me until being in his arms and in his gaze was no longer an uncomfortable thing but an altogether natural one, one in which I could rest in the truth of his love for me. The love of a father for his children is incredibly unspeakable, and until just now I didn’t realize how beautiful of a picture God has given me growing up of His love for me…oh how He desires to pull my face in His hands that I may see His piercing gaze and know who I am in Him and nothing else! Unspeakably beautiful…

But as amazing as these pictures and common life experiences God speaks through to teach us things such as this, we must never take them to be the real thing. If we think that we can learn things of Christ through a common world experience without having any encounter with Him, we are incredibly wrong! There has been so much talk and thought lately about relationships and marriage. There is such an eagerness about to get engaged or be married, which I don’t believe is a bad thing in itself. The problem lies with other things pertaining to that; namely, that it hardly ever exists by itself. It comes with a plethora of other things because we are not content on waiting on God’s timing and preparation. We put ourselves in places we are not meant to be in. There are excuses made such as “we are in this place in order that God may stretch us” when it’s just a smokescreen for blindfolding oneself and walking into a trap known full well before the blindfold was chosen to be put on. We rush ahead of God and then wonder why He’s not rushing behind us in order to catch up. Our God is never early or late; He is not on our timetables. And surely He will not change Himself because we fail to be faithful. Rather, we must go through the probably painful process of being pulled back to where we should’ve been in the first place. We have to learn to walk in the correct pace again, with God as the leader and us as the followers. He leads. We follow. If that is in place, then everything changes. In that, we may then be lead into something that will stretch us; and the difference is that He led us…He led us, and we didn’t lead ourselves into it.

I was sitting for about four hours today in Solvang while my mom and her friend shopped. I sat outside watching people pass me by, and over and over again, I saw couples, either dating or married or whatever. To watch their interactions fascinated me. There’s such a variety in them that is only the result of our Creator God. But there was something greater that pulled at me. It is that it is created to be that there is male and female and that they are to be together. There’s such a beautiful union between two people in which they each come together in order to be one. We are made for these roles. It is something that I haven’t been doubting but rather questioning over the past couple of weeks. I see clearly now that the way God has created it to be is good. Granted, there aren’t a lot of good real life examples of such, but we look to creation.

In this there are two other things though. The couples I saw today in large part were married. There’s a commitment there and a union that has been made. Two parts have become one. That’s what happens as a result of marriage, and something that can only happen as a result of marriage. Without that vow and commitment, two parts cannot fully become one. I think we so often fool ourselves in “playing marriage,” and I think this definition needs to be expanded far beyond the traditional sense of living together before marriage. It’s when two people who are not married and are dating lose the individuality that God has given them because they try to become one unit before the time is right. It comes when they spend too much time together and lose sight of community. It comes when they become so in love and enamored with one another that they forget the love that Christ has first given them. Our love for others needs to look like hate in comparison to the love we have for God. It needs to look like hate in comparison to the love we have for God. I repeat this twice because it needs to be said more than once. We don’t get it, not just because it’s a hard concept to grasp, but because we aren’t willing to be taught. We aren’t willing to allow that gap to be made in learning what it means to love on those levels and in that way. If that isn’t learned before marriage, then how is it supposed to be learned during? There is such an urgency in the necessity of learning it before! We are forever bonded to Christ alone. Must we also neglect the fact that marriage is the picture of the love Christ has for the church? Marriage is so far greater than simply the love between two people given into a covenant, but it is a means in which God teaches our human hearts to understand one of the most divine mysteries. Let us not reduce it to human terms and limits. We are forever married to God.

There are many things such as marriage in which God gives us a picture in our lives to understand His divine mysteries better. The problem comes when we look to those pictures of things for all of the answers rather than to Christ alone. Though things such as marriage can teach us such incredible things about those divine mysteries, we can so easily neglect the fact that we can learn far more from the teacher. Would you learn more about the creation of the telephone and how it works from reading a book by Alexander Graham Bell or by talking to him in person, hearing his intent and creation straight from his mouth and mind? Such is true with Christ. To learn the lessons in which He desires to teach us, there is no better place to look to than to the teacher. Let us not underestimate those real life examples that He gives us, but let us surely not overestimate them either. In all things, let us look fully to our Lord.

The stretching is certainly not easy, but if we are firmly rooted, looking fully into the Lord, we will be able to do so… Today on the same bench as I watched the couples pass by, I was looking at the bushel of pansies sitting next to me when I saw a yellow caterpillar about an inch and a half long. He was crawling up the stems onto the yellow pansies when I first found him I took some pictures of him (which are to later be posted) and watched him a while. I was awed as God gave me a picture of what He’s been doing in me over this time. As the yellow caterpillar stretched himself precariously from the yellow flower to get to the purple one that laid in the distance, he had to trust that what he was clinging to would not fail him. Surely it didn’t, as his grip was steady and sure that he was able to stretch out further. He knew what he was clinging to.

And so am I in this time, similar to this yellow caterpillar. Oh how I am both being stretched and stretching myself in order that I may reach what God has for me both in this time and in the future. So often it seems precarious because there is absolutely nothing but God that can catch me if I fall, but that is the safest place to be. I know firmly what I am clinging to. I am confident that in the stretching God will catch me if when I fall. And how I praise Him that He is not dependant on my successes or my failures or anything of me that I could bring. Rather, He desires me to stretch and be stretched in order that I may know Him better and love Him more.

Such are the lofty prayers and inner workings of heart that have been occurring as of late…God is doing His work in the full in every way. Oh praise be to the One who has opened my eyes to see that He is the One and the Only! That I have no right to anything but everything is a gift given by Him! Though how piercing the light has been upon my heart, I praise Him that He is refining it into such that I love Him more…that He is pursuing me as a Father who desires me to know only His love for me…and that He is pursuing me as a Savior who desires me to know only His truth, only His way, only His presence, and only His miracles. For surely He pulls me away from the crowd to pull my face in His hands that I may see Him fully, that His commands may bring about full fruition. May His work be done in every way…

Ephphatha.