Jesus, I pray You use this piece in ways that my words will fail.
“More of You Jesus, and less of me. May you take anything within me that is not pleasing to You and rid me of it. Anything within me that is not bringing you glory, cut it off and replace it with YOU!”
“I want Your heart Father God! To have You replace my heart with Yours!”
This has been my prayer for the longest of times and ever more so as I have returned home. Adjusting has been hard. I came home, rested for a short while and then everything hit me: America, life, career, stress, sickness, and it all. New home, making new community, beginning to look for a job, living back with my parents after 5 years, not having my Race family that had been around me for mostly every second of this past year. The past year flooded me…the beauty and the hardship, the grace and the glory. My heart has been broken and is breaking…because He has captivated me and I can’t help but be filled with so many things that words don’t do it justice.
I feel as though the people in my life right now have not seen nothing but my weakness. But that’s okay. God shows me grace.
I came home and had panic attacks, anxiety, fears and so many things. Things that I never dealt with prior. And I am not saying this to receive any pity but to show just how weak, we as humans are. Because, I don’t want to rely on my own strength and come up dry. Seeing the world and sharing Jesus with the world is my passion-but its a lot to take in and Jesus is showing me that in my weakness, He is ever strong.
If I receive no praise for what I do in life, but give Him praise—that is enough. We live to bring praise to God, to love Him and others.
To the new friends in my life…I am weak. I am bold, free, brave, victorious and so many exponentially amazing things in Christ. BUT I am human and I am weak and I want to boast in my weakness, so I can have the power of Jesus working in me to make me more like Him. I have been learning how to extend grace to myself in this time and really understand all that God is teaching me.
I am praying to die to myself because I don’t want to rely on me, but rely on the goodness of Jesus. Because of His faithfulness, He is invading all that I am and it’s painfully beautiful. He loves me enough to not keep me the same. Because I am filled with pride about being perceived as perfect at times and I don’t want that. I am working on being unoffendable and taking every negative feedback and using it as a launch-pad for growth. It’s okay that I am restarting. I want more of Jesus so bad that I can’t even word it right.
I am weak!
At first, this really bothered me…having people see me as weak and not knowing me for me, when this past year-God allowed me to feel and own victory and truth that made me feel limitless in Him (all of which still remains because of the sacrifice of Jesus). This past year I have been healed and redeemed in ways that only Jesus could do: freed, victorious, bold, fearless. My identity in Christ was revealed in the most intimate of ways. I felt though that when I came home and began to experience hardship that I was letting Jesus down, that I was letting people down. I wanted to pick right back up where I left off but I have been remade and I am learning to walk in my newness in a place that held many of my darkest days. I can’t just jump back into my life and expect it to be the same…because I am not the same–I have been wrecked by Jesus.
God continues to show me grace upon grace!
I can’t explain why when I came home, all of this hit but I am done trying to explain it and feeling bad because it happened. I am just resting in grace. I am resting in knowing that God has plans that I can’t even fathom. I am not perfect but imperfect and asking Jesus for His help! He is my only hope!
Some days I had to cancel on people because I literally felt like I just couldn’t be around people. I had to take time to literally cling to truths as if my life depended on it. I went through anxiety and depression. But through it all, I gained more of Jesus because I lost more of me. Something that I believe the enemy intended for the worst, Jesus used for a time I will never forget.
Spiritual attack is real! But Jesus is so much greater.
God’s grace is so much stronger.
Our weakness is real…but Jesus again is so much greater.
Again, grace upon grace.
To Him who is able to abundantly more than we know or ask!
Jesus is the coolest!
-V
2 Corinthians 12:9-13:
but He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you [My loving kindness and My mercy are more than enough—always available—regardless of the situation]; for [My]power is being perfected [and is completed and shows itself most effectively] in[your] weakness.” Therefore, I will all the more gladly boast in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ [may completely enfold me and] may dwell in me. 10 So I am well pleased with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, and with difficulties, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak [in human strength], then I am strong [truly able, truly powerful, truly drawing from God’s strength].
