I just want to precede
this blog by telling you that I realize our attentions spans sometimes get the
best of our abilities. So, I have written this blog and it will be cut into 2
or 2 parts, just so I can keep you on your toes (hopefully J). I know all of you are so eager to read what the Lord is
doing! So brace yourselves… and now for our main feature….
I find myself in this situation so often, sitting before this
small laptop, just scrambling for words and some sort of coherent flow in my
thought structure. I sit and try to find all the right words and descriptions
of what I am experiencing and have experienced in these past few months. I
wouldn’t say that I am a person who processes on a daily basis or even on a
monthly basis for that matter. So for the last three months, the writing came
to a halt. I found myself with writers block, or processor block ;). As soon as
I hit Thailand the Lord knew, it was time for the last 3 months to come out,
hopefully not in word vomit (not pretty imagery).
So, I hand this over to Him right
now because I have learned that there is no success in gathering from myself.
That the very breath I take to continue life, is all God breathed, the very
source of motivation to rise in the morning is realizing the God I serve. The
very desire to resemble His son each day is woven into my very making. So what
has He taught me? Let’s just say it is going to be a long list, so don’t give
up on reading this just yet. I sat at dinner tonight with my amazing squad
leader Vanessa; her questions really got my mind stirring on some earlier
thoughts and revelations from this month.
Let’s begin at the part where Peter describes
what happens when you live for God. When we live for God, we choose to pick up
that cross, we choose to die to our self-daily, so in this long struggle to die
to my flesh daily I have recently come to finally realize how much of that
flesh has been suffocating for the sting of death. If I am honest with myself,
I did not actually pick any cross or choose to walk as Jesus did as soon as I
said ‘I do’. No, many failed and unfaithful attempts proved how much my flesh
had learned to thrive for 20 years of my life. So to say the least, the
struggle was an ongoing battle that ended in my failure one too many times. So
I kept beating myself up about it, the flesh would win again and I would go
about my own journey, my own created salvation, my own idea of what following
Christ meant.
Two years later, I feel like I
finally submerged out of the water after thinking I was going to drown for so
long. It was like the Lord snapped His fingers and I felt myself finally walk
out freedom for the first time in my life. This only happened a few months
before the race, don’t get me wrong, my struggles are still there strong as
ever, but for the first time, I have allowed myself to see the Lord as stronger
and victorious. To say the least, these past 6 months have been some very flesh
suppressed months and for the first time my eyes have really been open to the
suffering that I have taken up from denying myself. I have found my spirit
fighting and the Lord stripping (quite painfully at times) the flesh that has
tried to take control for so long. I have felt the attempts for it to feed off
any and everything possible, any memory has easily turned into, oh remember
that one time you did that… that was a lot of fun, or man look at that intense
love scene in that movie, that is how love really happens (those love flicks
really know how to grab onto your emotions!!).
So the Lord is stripping and
renovating and internally I feel my spirit fighting so hard for me, I feel the
Lord letting me know that He won’t allow the enemy to harm me, he can take this
life but in my death, there would only be gain and glory for the Lord, so the
enemy has lost. In all of this stripping, I feel like He has also shown me how
much of the physical He has stripped as well. In the past, what I thought of
myself was centered on the attention that I received from a guy because he
thought I was pretty, so really the physical is where I saw much of my worth.
Not that I have cared much about physical appearance but it never allowed me to
dive deeper into seeing the woman of God manifesting inside of me.
He is both breath taking and powerful.
to be continued…
