Here's what I've come to know.
God is good. He is loving. His ways are the best. He is enough.
Really, I believe those things. But sometimes I surprise myself. Like, if I know these things, then why do I choose other things so often? How can I align my flesh with what my heart now knows? I know that I know my heart knows it, but something in me keeps choosing something other than him.
I heard the song “Give me Jesus,” today…this one line stuck out to me, “You can have all this world, but give me Jesus.”
Can he really have all this world? Will I really give it up?? I mean, I think the answer is yes…but then I don't give up my desires, which is annoying, because I want to.
Romans 7. Align my soul with my spirit, so my flesh may die.
Romans 8. Choose life.
I went home for 2 weeks recently. I've lived in 9 countries this year, in ministry homes, in orphanages, on floors, in villages far away, in a flat on on the beach, in a church sanctuary, and in my tent. I honestly didn't mind it. It wasn't too hard to see God in those places actually.
But at the Mall of Georgia, I mostly just saw boots and leggings. At my house, I mostly just saw all the things I needed to do while I was home, and all the people I wanted to see and talk to. I could go an entire day without thinking of God.
Why is that? I'm not knocking America, I'm honestly perplexed with my own heart, because it's with me wherever I go.
Your crap follows you wherever you go, but I wonder if new countries are less covered with conditioned responses to hundreds of personal triggers to old habits. I'm grateful, because the places I visited last year offered me a kind of blank slate to really sort through some things.
But here I am. Nearly 28 (like, how did that happen?) and that blank slate has been filled with lots of good things–The truth of God's goodness, his heart for justice and restoration, and the sovereignty of his ways.
That's huge! It's so huge! But then I got home, and it's like I forgot. My heart is bound to his, but I couldn't see through the fog or through my own conditioned responses .
I had coffee with a friend while I was home, and he talked about this fog in his life. He says he doesn't deserve for the Lord to talk to him, but that it seems like when he gives The Lord time to speak, even if it's brief, the Lord is thankful and will speak. The Lord seems to know the world we live in, and is willing to speak to us whenever we just turn to him.
Maybe that sounds like bad theology, but you know what really is bad theology? What I do–When I feel bad for not talking to God for a period of time or for pursuing my own flesh desires above God, I hide. It's like I'm naked in the garden, ashamed, running around just looking for a way to cover myself up.
I really don't deserve to look God face to face after turning my back on him. I'm embarrassed. I feel like a fraud. Why can't I just stick to what I've learned? Why can't I just abide in what the Lord has revealed to me about his heart?
I mean, I don't have the answer to all of this. I apparently have a few more things to learn about grace, and also about obedience. A friend of mine messaged me in the thick of some of this, and said, “Your decisions from yesterday don't have to define your decisions today.”
Everything I learn about God tells me he is there waiting whenever we just want to turn to him. It's really embarrassing to do that when I've been so wayward in my life, and so unfaithful to him, while he is so so gracious to me always.
“The double-minded man is unstable in all he does.”
I just want to only want God, because when I feel double-minded it literally makes me sick. I feel like a fraud on both sides, and I can hardly bare it. Sounds dramatic, but it's true. I think we were made to be authentic and true people, and it messes with us when we aren't true to who we claim we are.
So here's the truth–I love God. I believe He is the best good there is, and I want my life to be fully his. A lot of the time I still manage to pursue my own flesh, and am learning how to abide more with him, and not sit with my back to God because of my own shame.
I'm learning how to accept the grace I truly truly do not deserve, and allow the realness of his love to hurt a little because I know how much I haven't done anything to earn it.
Funding update: Raised $500 of $2,550 to serve at the Long Term Discipleship Base in Guatemala through March, I need $2,050 more.
