So, I feel that most if not all of my blogs in Cambodia will be about the spiritualjourney that I am on. Leadership puts you in a lonely place sometimes which forces you to look inward. But to say something, Cambodia is great. There is a wedding seemingly every day here (all with the same cheesy pink and yellow theme), and there is such a unique history and feel to this country. There is a flat rooftop on the building that I live in, and from it, I can see most of the city. I like to go up (for the breeze) and look over the city and just let the Lord speak to my heart. He has been revealing so much to me these past couple of days…
Looking back on my life, I have had a certain view of God, not at the fault of anyone, but I am seeing that it was somewhat wrong. I have never admitted it to myself, but if I’m being honest, I know that I have always felt that I needed to be in a good place with my own life to hear from the Lord. To clarify, I believe that living in sin is wrong, and I am not justifying living in that sort of mess. But,I find myself though, in a different sort of “mess.” I have been absolutely wrecked by all that the Lord is, and He has left my high places in complete shambles.
In aching for the past and walking steadily onward to the future, I am stuck in the middle and forced to cling only to the one thing in my life that is constant, and that is the love of God. I feel that the way we are shown love on the earth messes up our view of God’s love, and to say the least, His is more unconditional than we know. We all have junk in our lives, and we change and move, but God’s love is solid, it does not depend on how we are. To quote a sermon I heard once, “He will not love you better when you become better.” He loves you right now, just the way you are, and I have a hard time with that.
I tell God often that I am ok with being in a mess as long as I can get it together soon, but truthfully, I am realizing that I will not ever have it all together enough to be able to do this on my own. The closer I get to Him, the more that I surrender, the more of a jumbled, fumbling mess that I am, and I am starting to think that that is right where He wants me. Being here leaves me with one choice: to helplessly lay at His feet in complete dependency on Him for even my next breath. There is nothing that I can do but lay in His arms and pray that He carries me. This is the truth that I am finding.
“The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.” This is what Psalm 51:17 says, and I never really understood this until now I don’t think. I hate that I am not enough sometimes, but God is teaching me that He really is just a big, strong, jealous, restoring, wonderful, majestic MESS of love that I can absolutely just get lost in. There is nothing that I need to have except the sacrifice of just being broken before Him.
