“Remember this, had any other condition been better for you than the one in which you are, divine love would have put you there.” –Charles Spurgeon
I’m about to get really vulnerable.
No, I don’t mean right this second, right here in this blog, but just in the general sense… I’m about to get really, really vulnerable. It’s one of those “feel-it-in-my-chest” things, like how you can sometimes feel the rumble of thunder beneath your collarbone before you hear it. Or how you know that the next big wave is going to make the sand beneath your toes skid sideways, dragging you into the water against your will, before it actually hits.
I’ve been fighting with God about it for weeks now. He’s been leading me more and more towards brokenness, and I’ve continued to ask, “Really, LORD? Is this necessary? Didn’t we already fight through this stuff? Do you not remember the years of therapy? How many times are you going to have to redeem me?”
You know the funny thing about arguing with God? He’s got answers for everything and He gives them to me over and over until I listen. He started by leading me into a study of Nehemiah, which is all about how the LORD uses a servant-minded, broken-hearted, obedient man to rebuild Jerusalem. Want to know the funny thing about that metaphor? It’s the same one the LORD gave me in Guatemala, when—as I walked past a construction yard—He promised to rebuild me, restore me, renew me, as if I were a beautiful city on a hill.
The same day I asked, “How many times are you going to have to redeem me?”, the LORD brought me to Nehemiah 5:8, which asks that exact question. The next day, Nehemiah 9:28 popped out: “In your wonderful mercy, you rescued them many times!”
He’s been reassuring me that in my brokenness, He is still faithful. It doesn’t matter how many times I need redemption; every single time, He will bring it.
All I have to do is let myself break, trusting that when it happens, the LORD will be right there to start the rebuilding process.
