Redemption....

I love how faithful God is to answer us when we come to Him with our honesty. This last week my friend sent me the book "Redemption" by Mike Wilkerson. It has been such a blessing already. So many of the questions that I have written over the last few weeks have already been answered and I am encouraged that the Lord hears me...or at least reads my blog. heehehe.  I wanted to share a few of the gems I have uncovered already.

In reference to the Israelites in Egypt...
" When faced with the dilemma of either trusting God for their freedom or seeing relief by appeasing Pharaoh, they chose Pharoah. they hoped merely not to sink in the sight of the Egyptians, so that some of their suffering might be alleviated. Had they forgotten how this ruthless slavery had driven them to cry out for deliverance? What "normal slavery" was it that they hoped to settle back into?"

I think so often that I have turned back to my slavery (sin) because I thought it would offer some initial relief, and just like the Israelites I so quickly forget that I had cried out to the Lord in the first place. What I love so much about my Jesus is that He does no abandon us despite our disbelief.

"God answered Moses' cry by reminding the people who his is and what he had promised to do. He didn't propose a new and less painful plan or apologize for how much worse things had become. Rather, He assured them with the same words he had spoken to them at first. His message had not changed. he is faithful to His word even when his people are faithless (2Tim 2:13) he would deliver them: "I am the Lord, and I will bring you out... I will redeem you... I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God...I am the Lord" Ex 6: 2-8  Moses carried these hopeful words back to the people, but the people , because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery, would not listen to Moses. Their broken hearts resisted hope."

I feel like so many believers I know have resisted to hope because of their broken hearts, myself included. I would rather stay in the familiarity of my slavery then risk being disappointed by God. What if He doesn't deliver, what if He doesn't answer my prayers? How will I survive His silence to my cry for deliverance? OOOOh but wait there is an answer!!! I hadn't seen it this way, but of course now it makes perfect sense.

"The reasoning goes something like this: If God is trustworthy, and Jesus trusts him, then he wouldn't be hanging on the cross so shamefully; so it must be either that God is not trustworthy or that Jesus lacks faith. And those tend to be the very conclusions we draw for ourselves. We, like broken-spirited Israelites, find it nearly impossible to keep trusting God as circumstances worsen. (this does not fit my picture of redemption) We are tempted to believe that God has forsaken us and that all hope is lost. Or some naive Christian tells us that if we merely had more faith--if we just learned whatever lesson we're suppose to be learning---the pain would stop. But jesus experienced worse pain than you or I will everknow. We may fear the worst---abandonment by God---but He actually faced it. And he didn't stop believing."

Jesus prayed in the garden for the cup to pass from Him. He prayed to the Father to be delivered from the cross, but He wasn't. Why hadn't I seen the gravity of this example before? I have struggled with my prayer life for months now because I felt as though the Lord didn't hear me and He had 'abandoned' me. I had been praying so faithfully and doing all the "right things" why had God not saved my marriage or spared my broken heart. Jesus was perfect and he definitely did all the "right things" and God's will was bigger than what he had asked for. And God's will is perfect. I'm not sure what you might be facing or maybe even you feel betrayed by God but I know one thing....He is trustworthy. He didn't answer Jesus' prayer, the way Jesus had asked Him too, but in that He gave the greatest gift ever given in all of time. "We can be sure that our redemption is as certain as His resurrection." How exciting!!!! There is purpose in our torture, in our suffering, in our pain, in our time of being still. He has promised to work all things for our good to those that believe!!

Lord, help me to always believe.....

It is written of Joseph in the dungeon that "the iron entered into his soul".

"My soul, if thou wouldst be enlarged into human sympathy, thou must be narrowed into limits of human suffering. Thou canst not lift the iron load of thy brother if the iron load hath not entered into thee. It is thy limit that is thine enlargement."  -George Matheson

I got an alert on my phone today that my voicemail box was full so I started weeding through the month old messages and I came across a message from my dad. I can't even type the word without a lump forming in my throat. Sometimes i feel like I just have pretended that he's dead, because it's easier. I forget how much his absence affects me until I'm reminded that he is somewhere out there in the world not calling me, not talking to me. Shit....I can't even write about him now without wanting to fall into a heap of tears, which I'm sure the kind folks of starbucks would not appreciate on this beautiful Saturday afternoon. I don't think it would be as difficult of a reality to swallow if he hadn't been such an awesome dad when I was a child. Something broke him...life broke him. I get it now, as an adult. The human heart can only stand under so much. It's easier to just check out, shut off and become the rock and island that feels no pain. (Simon and Garfunkel knew what they were singing about). i don't even blame him anymore......my dad. I just miss the memories we didn't create and the conversations I wish I could have with him now. I wish I could ask him about my broken heart. I wish he would know what to say to reassure me about my relationship with Jesus.
I never thought that I would come out of the darkness that I felt after my divorce. i wondered often if laughter would ever enter my bones again. It did. Slowly the pain wasn't all consuming and waking up each day didn't feel so awful. In December I met someone that I thought was "the one". Silly me! I prayed constantly that the Lord would protect my heart and keep me safe from any more hurt. i lamented before Him and told Him to just show me in some way if I should back off, or move on. I even felt like I could surrender him if it meant avoiding more pain and heartbreak. When one prays for these kind of things it is assumed that whatever you hear is absolutely jaded by your desires so of course you cannot trust your own thoughts or voice in the matter. I left the fleece up to God. I told Him that He would have to make it obvious that I should let my heart feel what I so badly wanted to anyway. After a night on my bedroom floor, tears in the carpet, begging the Lord to show me what to do I went to see a friend the next day that I knew I was going to talk to about it so I prayed He would use her to speak to me. Before I had even mentioned him, or my eternal struggle she says to me, "I had a dream about you last night, and I feel like the Lord wants me to tell you." WOW, I thought, God heard me! The dream was exactly what I wanted to hear. I was given permission to feel about him freely. Two weeks later he broke up with me and told me that I was "just not the one." Silly silly me! The part that I can't recover from is the "dream" that I felt was out of God's desire to have relationship with me and make His presence known. My one true comfort in life has been my prayer time with my Lord. I have prayer journals from the last two decades of my life; page upon page of my heart poured out before my savior, my beloved. I even thought He would talk back to me sometimes. Our 'time' kept me going in times I thought I wasn't going to be able to. Where does one go from here? Did I make our entire relationship up? Does God even talk to us? Is He the creator and I am the clay and I am only here to be used for His purposes? If so, then i have reconciled within myself that is still more mercy then I deserve. I guess I just always thought He wanted more between us. i don't know how to pray anymore. It's been so long since we have talked. I feel like I have put God in the same place of my heart I put my dad. It isn't anyone's fault, it just is what it is.
I feel like all this conflict within my heart and head has reached a fork in the road.  I met a man a few weeks ago. He is kind at his core and so good to me. He says the things that every girl only dreams about hearing. I feel like if I could reenter into my body and stop watching, analyzing from above I could possibly find a happiness I have never known inside of a relationship. Instead I am stuck, stuck in the in between. If I'm in place where I can't even trust God, how could I ever trust a man.
I had a dream a few nights ago, a nightmare really. I was in a village in Africa and there was a women being raped in front of me by some rebels holding guns. I couldn't do anything about it, I just was forced to watch her innocence and faith disappear in her eyes and she silently took their abuse. I woke up disturbed, but let it go. Last night I had another dream. i dreamt that there was a man who was working in an orphanage and he was discontent with where his life had brought him. I was telling him that it was just the season he was in to prepare him for the life that he had been called too. He needed the "iron" to enter him. I woke up in that moment and the first thought i had was the woman in the village and the baby she would carry, and I wanted to help her. in my half awake state i thought about delivering her baby and helping her love the child that was conceived in the moment she lost all hope. I thought about the iron within me, and the love I would so easily feel for her. I feel like the man in the orphanage. Why am I here, battling my desire for my own piece of the happiness pie, if I'm suppose to have a place somewhere else? Is God just going to break my heart again? He's entitled, but my hope feels deferred and my heart a little sick. I can only muster up one prayer....that I will Love and worship Him all the days of my life.

Sometimes I wonder if there is a point in which you just can't go "there" again. You can want to, even try to will it, but it's just unavailable. I always knew that if I got married it would be forever and now I think I knew myself better than I even realized. I know now, more than ever, that I gave everything I had; "had" being the opportune word.  I don't have the room for error and failure that comes with a healthy sense of self and is needed to be in a relationship. It's strange because this lack of tolerance exist in no other area of my life. I have resilience and fight left in me to struggle, but with matters of my heart  I am completely worthless. My heart shuts down like a reflex and I have no control over it. I'm not necessarily sure when my brain created this survival technique but how does one overcome a reflex? i can here the naysayers, shaking their heads in disapprovement and to them i would have nothing to say. How can you explain to someone else the very pain you avoid at all cost. It reminds me of  the movie cast away. How can Tom Hanks rejoin a life when no one can possibly fathom what he has overcome and how it has forever changed him? He is stuck in between the two worlds, and neither can really be home. C.S. lewis described it in , "A grief observed" as a thin film between himself and everyone else. I can talk to you about the shit that i have endured but how can any of us possibly begin to understand how another's heart has weathered the storm. I wonder what Jesus thinks of it all? Is this how he can tolerate our wickedness, our adultery and  pride. Is he able to see through the bullshit of our weakness and join us in the abyss of our fear, or does He expect in our faith to overcome? I lean towards Him having the expectation of faith.