Now there are a multitude of ways you can take this next statement out of context but I ask you for grace.
The single most important transformation in life is choosing to move from "Strength to Spirit."
This concept has gripped me and shed layers off my eyesight. In the next weeks I hope to show you a little of what I mean and just how drastically significant this transformation actually is. In the meantime, you'll have to wait because I have a more pressing story.
In the previous couple of blogs I wrote a little about my past and upbringing. I left you at one of my first steps beyond myself: Senegal. This really was a large step out of living by my own strength to living by His Spirit. I chose to surrender my illusion of control and walk into a world where I had to rely on trusting Him to actually be good to me… and present playing an active role in my life. It was a dangerous risk to step into the realm of making my belief tangible.
This step led to another and another through country after country and situation after situation revealing His faithfulness all along. Years went by and tensions and hunger were added to my being. I didn't yet realize that He needed to allow me to get hungry through my choices in order to later satisfy my desires with His Spirit…in those days I just felt desperately famished and used my strength to strive after the answers.
There were times when I thought I had it all figured out. Other times when I felt surrounded, overwhelmed, abandoned and misunderstood. There were instances when I wandered out from His goodness only to find Him leading me back in…even sometimes breaking a leg like any good shepherd would…not so that I would be punished, but that I might learn how to hear His soothing, protecting, adoring voice in the midst of my inner turmoil.
Needless to say, there are a lot of close people in my life who haven't quite understood all the decisions I've made with my life…or even how I came to them. That might include you. Yup, the one reading this right now. You've been entertained, encouraged, challenged, confused and outright at a loss for words about me from time to time and that's ok. That was a hard reality for me to swallow at times in my life but I'm ok with it now. I know you love me and care about me and I'm encouraged by that.
The truth of what has happened is that I was slowly changing how I lived my life from my strength to by HIs Spirit. In fact I'm still going through that transformation now. However, I'm drawn because I know that He loves me and long to know the depth of that truth. If that makes me look a little crazy, then I'm fine with that. I've seen some truly crazy and miraculous things from a crazy and miraculous God and all I can say is that I'm starting to hear His voice and His words wreck my heart with tenderness…and if it takes further steps of crazy to get into deeper depths of intimacy with Him, then that's where I'm going and you're welcome to join me in that invitation.
I invite you to listen in to some of the conversations God and I have had this past half year that have led up to a whirlwind of a romance that's about to explode into all sorts of goodness…
That story starts next.
