God showed me a lot on Sunday. He spoke deep to my heart and revealed more to me than I ever could have realized on my own.
I went to a coffee shop for quiet time. I had been here every morning around 6/7am to drink coffee and enjoy time with Jesus before the rest of the island woke up. I knew the employees fairly well at this point since I was the end of my stay, and it was the same girls there every morning: Marliny and Vienny. We were all on a first name basis. This Sunday morning, however, Marliny complimented my ring when I handed her the money to pay for my coffee. I told her thank you and explained how it was from my dad who passed away a few years ago, but it reminded me that i would see him again in heaven one day (I tried to use this as a ministry tool to talk about the hope I had in Jesus), but then I heard him say, “Give it to her.” I said oh heck no. This caused so much distraction in my head that I couldn’t even think to talk about anything else with her.
I then went and sat down, but I was so distraught that I said no to God. I said to him, “I know I surrendered all, but I can’t believe you’d ask me to give this up.” You see, here’s the deal, my ring means the world to me. It’s my purity ring from my dad that I got as my very last gift from him, but I didn’t actually receive it until the day of his funeral. So, needless to say, this ring is literally my most prized possession.
I said, “God, I can’t give this is up because it doesn’t show me that you love me. If you knew it would hurt me so much I can’t imagine why you would purposely put myself in pain. You already took my dad, took other friends and family members, allowed my family to go through points of hell, let my brother go through and cause us a lot of pain, why would you take this too? So, no. I can’t give it up because I can’t trust that a good, perfect, loving God would ask such a thing of me. “
I imagined during this conversation of a past memory I had with my dad before school one day. I woke up really sick and I was crying, begging him not to let me go to school that morning. Even though he knew school is what was best for me, and I probably could’ve toughened it out, he allowed me to stay home out of compassion that he felt for me because of how much he loved me. I said, “See God, I need you to do this with me right now. I can’t give up my ring because it hurts me too much. I know I said I surrender all and that I trust you with everything but I guess I’m not fully there yet. Except, I do want to have faith. I do want to obey you. I want to trust you, so if you actually need me to do this, if me surrendering my ring would bring Marliny to salvation I would do it, but I need a SURE sign, probably a full handful of signs that this is worth giving up. I will do it if you can show me sign that this is actually you telling me to do this.”
I tried to continue having my quiet time at the coffee shop I was sitting at but could not concentrate. Then I remembered a daydream I had a few days earlier of me worshipping on the dock, so I decided that’s how I was going to spend my quiet time that day instead of reading the Bible.
When I got to the dock, I was still pretty distraught. I tried to worship, but I still felt bad for not giving away my ring, and then felt worse of the idea of no longer having it if I would’ve given it away.
As my eyes were closed I continued to tell God how I couldn’t trust him. I can’t wrap my mind around how he’s good if he allows so much bad. I was simply honest with him.
Then after my monologue of trying to change his mind and freaking out that I had messed up by disobeying, when I finally gave him the chance to speak, he responded. He said, “This is all I wanted. I just wanted you to be honest with me. I wanted you to tell me the truth about how you felt. I wanted you to know you could discuss things with me. I know you don’t trust me, but I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me about it.”
Then he brought me to the throne room. This is what I saw:
A long hallway with wooden floor, like a dock. On one end of the hallway is a glass, bullet-proof door. On the other end was a giant white curtain torn in half, and through the curtain I could see a giant throne and only light came from there. I couldn’t see the walls on either side because I was dark. But I walked toward the light. I was also the four-year old version of myself- similar to when I first met Jesus. I was just a little toddler who seemed very confused yet surprisingly confident walking down this hallway.
As I approached, i notice a man sitting there. I got to the end of the dock. It ended right where the curtain started and I couldn’t get any closer to the throne. I stood there stunned. I was just speechless and even thoughtless. My 4year old self did not know what to even do but stare. He then stood up and started to approach me, I kept my eyes locked on him but every time he took a step towards me I took a step back. I stepped back out of fear, similar to when a stranger starts to approach a toddler and the toddler backs away because she doesn’t know who’s coming at her. He then had me look up and showed me another version of himself holding a child-like (toddler version) of my dad in his arms and then sat back down in the giant throne with my dad in his arms. It reminded me of a little kid sitting in Santa’s lap, being so happy and excited knowing that he’s going to get all the good things since he’s sitting on his lap. This made me feel confident to go in his arms too because I realized I’d get to be closer to my dad then, but when I looked down to take a step closer I saw the deep waters at the end of the bridge under me and I realized I couldn’t get across on my own.
Then my brother, in a 4 year old version too, showed up beside me, but then as God approached us he turned and ran as fast as he could in the opposite direction until he ran and face planted into the bullet-proof door and knocked himself out (I laughed watching this). He waited beside my brother until he would wake again. He then showed me other people, and how they ran away, how they even fell off the dock to the sides into deep water that they couldn’t get out of, but every time God reached over to try to help them out they backed away too. He did everything he could to help those who were hurting themselves, but they wouldn’t allow themselves to be helped.
God spoke so many lessons to me through this version of the throne room, and I know it’s probably even more complex than I realize with even more to learn from.
The main points were this: my dad is safe in his arms, loving life more than ever.
No matter how hard my brother tried to run away, God never would let him break through the glass that would separate them (along with other people who are saved but run away or try to do things their own way).
I learned more about his character: how gentle he is. How kind. How loving. How patient. How compassionate. Everything he showed me spoke to the nature of who he is.
I also learned so much about myself; that my own doubt and trust issues are keeping me from getting any closer to the father. No matter how hard I try, I can’t get from the dock to the throne to sit in his arms with out allowing him to carry me. I’m as close to God as I’ll allow myself to be because He’s not going to force himself on me, or anyone for that matter because he’s gentle and kind and wants us to choose him on our own. So even when he steps closer to me, I back off because I’m too scared of feeling betrayed or hurt by him again. (all things I need to work through).
The funny thing is, for the last month I have been asking God to show me how to find him. Because, I know the truth in God’s word when he says “seek me and you’ll find me when you seek me with all of your heart.” Except, my experiences weren’t matching up with his truth. I would do everything I could to seek him, but I wasn’t finding any more of him. I wasn’t getting any deeper with him.
So last month I had the revelation that I wasn’t finding him because I didn’t know how to seek him. It wasn’t that his word wasn’t true but that I was doing it wrong. I came o terms with the fact that it was me in the way of finding him because I’m so limited and so little that I didn’t actually know how to properly seek him. That’s when I changed how I was going to find him: I asked him to show me how to seek him so that I could actually find him.
Thursday night I had an idea to go stand on the image of the dock and worship God, (I now know that was actually an idea that God planted in my head to find how to seek him). I didn’t actually make time to do that until Sunday morning, and it was during this time that God revealed more of himself to me, but I didn’t realize he was actually showing me how to seek him until later that night. But when I did, I was overjoyed to see how God had answered my prayer that I prayed every day for the last month, and will continue to pray now so that I will never grow stagnant in my walk with him.
So, I never did give the ring away. I told God no, but I finally quit acting like the perfect Christian. I can put down the act of doing everything I can to be perfect, to be right. Because that’s not what will get me closer to God. He brought me to a place where I finally couldn’t do it on my own. I was honest with him and honest with myself and this allowed room for new revelation of who he is and how our relationship works.
Thankfully his intention was never for me to give the ring away in the first place, and he showed me he really does care about what I care about because he cares about my heart.
