||SELF-RELIANT||
Have you ever been in a place where you feel like you are just surviving?
You wake up, go to work, spend time with family, and friends but left feeling tired, alone or sad. Maybe you are in different place and you are happy, you love your job, you love the time you have a with friends and family and you don’t necessarily feel alone but when it comes to your spiritual life you feel stagnant. You may be in a place where you don’t know how you feel because you haven’t slowed down enough to check your heart and make sure you are where you should be.
So often, I hear people say things like, “I don’t feel God, “ or “God feels distant.” If we are not careful we make decisions based on these feelings. Time after time I have seen people leave a ministry, a church, a job or a relationship because they don’t feel like they are growing, or feel like God is present anymore.
I woke up this morning with all intention of putting $5,000 dollars into my account for the World Race and thought I need to pray first. I prayed and “felt nothing.” I pulled out a journal that I have had since I was 13 years old and read through the things God has done in my life and still felt nothing. My first reaction was to think how God is not present, he must not want me to move forward on with the World Race.
I stopped and checked my heart. I thought to myself where am I at emotionally, physically, spiritually. The very first thing that came to my mind was “self reliant.” Immediately I knew why I wasn’t in tune with the Holy Spirit.
The last year has been an interesting year of ministry for me as a stepped into a new job. On a daily bases I see everything from abuse, neglect, drugs, mental illness, sex trafficking, poverty, crime and domestic violence… the list could go on. You can imagine the toll this takes on me emotionally, physically and definitely spiritually.
When I first signed up for the World Race the very first thing God revealed to me was how self reliant I am. I was defensive at first. I thought of course I am, I have had to take care of myself,I began listing all thing things I have done and how it was me and no one else. Signing up for the World Race meant taking things out of my control and putting things in His. Suddenly, I had to raise $18,200, needed to resign from my job, move out of my roommates house and give up every thing, “I had built for myself.” I am walking into an extremely vulnerable season because I love to control my life. I am comfortable with my biweekly pay checks and have prided myself on how far I have come. In reality, there is no way that I accomplished this all alone but even past that God doesn’t want me to rely on myself. He never intended for me to do it alone.
Earlier, I mentioned feeling like you are just surviving.It doesn’t necessarily mean you are happy or unhappy. Well, survival mode is exactly my go to. When I am at work and I am dealing with a case that is unimaginable, I go straight to survival mode! I’ve caught myself so many times functioning weeks at a time on survival mode. I wake up, go to work, smile, laugh, go to that barbecue at my family’s house and feel fine! But it’s that moment that I see a bruise on someone, the moment I hear a child cry, my body tenses up, my mind goes to a thousands different places and I realize I AM NOT FINE. God didn’t call me to just survive this year and so see what I see so that I go unchanged and become a zombie that is unmoved by anything because if I am not careful that is exactly how I live. Living in that place of survival is me being self reliant. I am relying on my own strength to process instead of surrendering and seeking God for his strength and healing.
This morning when I “felt nothing,” I was was able to identify that I had not surrendered and sought after God because what I did this week was build a guard around my heart so that I could continue working with that victim of domestic violence without breaking down.
July 20, 2018 was my first deadline with the World Race, I could have easily stepped out and said nope, I don’t feel God today so I am not doing it.
Check your heart, check where you are at before you say GOD is distant because he is never far. There are so many scriptures on this, Palms 9:10 says, “And those who know Your name will put their trust in You; for You Lord, have not forsaken those who seek You.”
Maybe your survival mode looks different than mine. I am not writing this post because I hate my life, hate my job and am telling you the story of why I am going on the World Race. It is actually the exact opposite. I love my job and life here in Albuquerque, its actually going to be extremely hard to leave. I felt like someone needed to hear this. If you are in a valley and feel alone reach out to community, and most importantly run after Jesus (Matthew 11:28). The audience I really want to grab is those who are content. Contentment is not a bad thing but if we are not careful like myself, I become self reliant. We stop seeing the world the way God does and we become blind to the hurting people around us.
Now, I am not saying give up your bed and job, pack your backpack and travel the world sharing the love of Jesus, no! If that’s where God is calling you great but just look around right where you are and you will see the hurting. We cannot live in this world and go unchanged with the amount of need there is.
I realize this was a long blog and thank you so much if you read all the way through. Please comment below any input you have. I would love to talk with you!
With a vulnerable heart,
Rocky
