Why does that last blog of mine say “I” so much?
The day we arrived at our ministry site for this month, Jesus gave me this verse:
“Strengthen your tired hands and weakened knees and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not become disconnected, but healed.” Hebrews 12:12-13
Then He clarified: I’m the “lame,” and He’s trying to keep me from disconnecting myself.
yikes.
A woman on my team this month said something to me the other day that finally made the stupidity of the questions I’d been asking, and the idea that I’m actually powerless to anything, click.
After an all-out breakdown one night she looked at me with both understanding and determination and said,
“You’re not broken. God is not trying to fix you, He doesn’t need to fix you. He’s molding you and that’s okay. He’s never going to stop molding you, He’s going to keep taking off parts of you that aren’t who you are, and re-shaping parts of you into what He made you to look like.”
…
“This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message. So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to Him.”
Jeremiah 18:1-4
The potter doesn’t leave the wheel.
He doesn’t shut his eyes for a second and miss how the pot becomes flawed, it isn’t an accident.
God didn’t fall asleep while I was on the world race and forget to conform me to His image. There were holes – cavities – in my structure, and He is shaping me as seems BEST to Him. Other translations say, “as seemed right to him.”
photo by Stephanie May
I had forgotten the promises of scripture. God is ALWAYS working in ALL things to conform me to His image (Romans 8:28-30).
I had also really begun to lose perspective on the positives of women.
I began to believe that groups of women are toxic.
I started to believe that I was failing the world race.
I was marred in His hands, and I didn’t understand why; I lost faith in the good and perfect plans that God has for His children.
I lost faith that He is doing what is best, what seems right to Him.
When it became apparent to that same teammate of mine how trapped in lies I was, she hit me in the face with another dose of truth that went like this:
“You have forgotten who you are, and you’re making ‘I am’ statements that are not actually accurate to who you are, and ‘I AM’ is God’s name.
You’re speaking incorrectly about God when you do that, so go ask Him how you’re supposed to accurately follow the words ‘I am’.”
Ouch. But solid.
I did what she told me to do, and when I asked God who I am, He gave me this:
I am WOMAN, the pinnacle of God's creation, and a reflection of God's glory.
I am, therefore, beautiful. I am powerful. I am strong. I am being transformed (transitioned from one form to an entirely different form) from glory to glory –
some A-Squad women (beautiful, strong, powerful women).
which means I am always standing in glory, even when I can’t see it, because I am being molded as seems best/right to God.
So, the world race isn’t a picnic, and it isn’t a constant spiritual utopia full of like-minded believers who only bring out the best in one another – it’s messy, and it’s real, and it exposes the ugliest parts of your flesh and insists on digging them out.
But if you want to look more like Jesus, you have to acknowledge the (likely, multitude of) ways in which you currently do not look like Jesus, and I can’t think of a better environment to show you than what the world race offers.
