"You love until there is pain, you love through the pain, until all that remains is love."
-Momma T
True love cannot exist without pain.
I guess I've always known that.
But lately it's like the Lord has been screaming that over me.
The World Race is unlike anything else.
In my opinion, it's pretty much an 11 month flesh kill.
Don't get me wrong, the ministries that you're a part of are extremely important too.
You get the opportunity to sew into 11 different ministries,
and show random strangers the love of Jesus.
You watch Jesus do some crazy stuff through you.
He moves through our broken lives.
But the God that we serve is so freakin good
that he doesn't want to just move through our brokenness.
HE WANTS TO RESTORE US.
He is about the business of reconciling his creation back to Himself.
And if he's going to do that,
then there's going to be some necessary pain.
See I find myself getting mad at God a lot of the time.
I hate admitting that, but it's true.
I don't understand why it seems like there's never-ending junk
that He continues to bring up.
I just need a freakin break.
But here's the deal:
He does it because he loves us.
I know I get so focused on the pain that it causes
to deal with all my junk and find myself questioning
how much he really loves me.
But what the alternative?
He could just let us sit in our mess
and tangle more and more thorns around our hearts
as we slowly choke ourselves.
I think I've got enough sin in my life.
I don't need more added on top of it.
The pain that I feel as God pulls me out of my crap
is directly related to the sin in my life.
Its pretty simple.
It hurts because sin feels good
and our flesh rebels against anything that tries
to take that good feeling away.
Thats why it's the most loving thing ever
when he continues to uproot everything that hinders us
from the fullness of joy found in him.
Thats what I love about his love.
He doesn't just remove a few things,
he goes straight to the root and firstly pulls it out.
It hurts like hell most of the time,
But in the end it's always worth it.
John 15: 1,2
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.
He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit,
while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful."
This is one of my absolute favorite verses.
I don't know about you,
but this picture is freakin beautiful.
Every gardener cares greatly how their garden will turn out.
They may spend hours fine-tuning things so that it's perfect.
The Gardener, God, comes in and removes all the bad roots
so that only the good ones remain.
I picture a holy anger when he sees the way
the enemy has taken root in our lives.
THIS is the God that we serve.
He loves us so much that he reveals to us
the root of all the sin in our lives
and provides us the means to overcome.
Bring on the flesh kills, God!
