The last night in Africa was spent in much reflection over our personal African journey’s. Living in community always provides for unique moments in which the Holy Spirit shows up.
Since it is difficult to find a place to have a personal conversation, Elizabeth Scaife and I found the bathroom at Alabanza to be the most comfortable and quiet location.
We found ourselves sitting in an empty bathtub to discuss the places we’ve been and the places the Lord is leading.
In talking to my buddy, Elizabeth, I was reminded that
identity is created in this birthing process.
It is key to coming out of Egypt being led through the desert to believing the Promise Land exists.
In God’s plan the process is key to what the Lord desires to accomplish in us.
Identity must be found in what God claims over our lives rather than the identity formed by our past circumstances, knowledge, relationships, and positions.
In this He uses vital parts of your life to create anew.
A week ago several of us had a conversation about how we have changed over the last 3 months.
My answer did not claim that I have necessarily changed, but rather I am more confident in who the Lord has created Jessie Pace to be.
My personality, character, desires, and gifts have been shaped by Jesus Christ not Jessie Pace.
With that I realize there are several places that the Lord is striping to bring about a holy confidence in His creation rather than a prideful confidence.
Over the last few years I have not walked confidently in the person God created.
Rather I have struggled to allow myself to wholly be that person creating pride or shame in the Jessie people celebrate or reject.
In this time God has brought me to a realization that this life is about learning to abandon oneself to Him alone.
By no means does this come easily.
The Lord brings us to the desert and through the process to reveal our true identity.
The Egypt once lived in may seem to hold your identity.
In reality you find it in the desert, a place abandoned to the Lord.
In the process the Lord takes you through, He often literally strips you of all the things in which you hold identity.
Initially it seems as if this is a place of punishment, purging, and pain.
In reality this is a place of pardon, power, and peace.
My dearest and gratefully most honest friend recently reminded me that we are not above the Lord simply bringing us to the desert simply because He desires to accomplish something and bring identity in our prayer to know Him.
She wrote…
“Perhaps it’s time to accept that for whatever reason God is permitting the desert.
Or even more, he brought you out there.
Is it completely out of nowhere?
Are you really all that surprised that deserts (even seemingly undeserved deserts) are a part of the journey?
And for the Christian who would ASK God to know him–to really know him–how much more necessary is it to experience the pain and suffering that the world has to offer.
Are we so great that God would spare us from that kind of hurt?
To love him still, even in light of his silence, that is a sincere love.
To obey him, even when you don’t feel loving, that is sincere love.”
Needless to say the Lord is striping me of the identity I have built up and creating an identity completely found in Him.
Gratefully I accept the honesty from my dear friend believing that God brings us through deserts for a life changing reason rather than dropping us off to wallow around aimlessly.
Lovin’ life in the journey…
Today…decide to believe the deserts in life our purposefully painful yet obviously intentional in order to find identity in Christ rather than Egypt!
