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. 

I find it a little telling that I am anticipating some sort of disaster or heartbreak. My life right now feels peaceful. Which makes me nervous. I have become so accustom to the battlefield that I feel out of place   when I'm not 'surviving'. I feel like I am just waiting for my car to break down or some ailment to strike me.  Jeremiah 29:11 just seemed to manifest differently in my life. I felt that the 'fire' i endured would be my blessing and this side of heaven I wouldn't really get to understand it. The part that is hardest for me to wrap my mind around is that I haven't been praying lately, or reading my Bible. Is this just the enemy keeping me luke warm? My friend the other day said to me, "Christians don't think it's from God unless they are totally suffering or don't want to it." I laughed cause it is so true in my own world. I miss my time in the word and journaling to the Lord, but I still haven't been able to define what "relationship" means between Jesus and I. What does He want out of it? Otherwise aren't we then only pursuing in vain. Pray for me to have understanding, because I miss Him.

I will become what I desire....

"I have been worrying that we all live our lives in the confines of fear."

What if my father had told me as a young girl that I was beautiful? Who would I be if my mother held me without fear or restraint? Who would she be if her mom had touched her face gently and told her she could be anything? These pathways that have carved their ways into our brains and stubbornly they refuse to relent of fear. I listen to this song and I want to dance wildly around the room and fight for the freedom from the thoughts that press down and keep small. I want to desire MORE! I want more than the daily grind, my insecurities, the finite of my faith and the obsession with fading beauty. Apathy has become America's coping mechanism to avoid all things scary and worthy! The little girl I once was use to be so on fire for life and what it might unfold into. I was broken, like most of us. My parents became human and disappointed me like inevitably they would.  I realized that nothing in and of this world would be "enough", which was a reality I was never going to be prepared for. The rubber met the road and my hope in Jesus had to be the "all" i was needing. 

I have been worrying that I am living in the confines of fear.

I'm afraid of failure, I'm afraid of loneliness, I'm afraid of vulnerability and I'm afraid of my desires. 

I'm terrified of not breaking out of my fear and being who I was created to be apart from the sin of man and my own weakness. This may not necessarily look extreme on the outside, but within I want the storm to leave nothing untouched. I pray that it manifests into my world and others notice a change. 

I have felt so loved by the Lord lately. I know that feelings are not necessarily indicators of truth and as with any relationship there are highs and lows, but I am basking in this season of warmth.  Many of my friends and family are struggling through some pretty dark times and I am just so grateful that I can be available to them and not stuck within my own sorrow. One of my favorite quotes sings, "I know that I am filled to be emptied again, the seed I received I will sow", and I feel as though the Lord is giving me a season of peace to sow His love and light into others. What a blessing. There has been a long winter in my life and I feel the ice beginning to thaw. I love my new job, I have found peace in my singleness, and I'm excited for what the future holds.
I'm currently walking through a separation between one of my friends and her husband and it has been a not so subtle reminder of my own dissolution of marriage. The grace of God is the gift of time that allows for those wounds to heal and fade, but lately the memory has felt more than close. I remember laying on my bed soaked in sweat and tears, surrounded by my closest friends and Melly wrapped herself around my fetal positioned body whispering over and over in my ear....this will not be your story. I didn't believe her at the time, because the pain was so palpable, but she was right. God is faithful to redeem and restore and even bless. I am so thankful to Jesus and those that loved me in His name, for baring the burden with me; during a time that felts so hopeless. I want to give this same gift back to as many as I can. So, how can I pray for you? What can I believe for you when you can't believe? What truth about yourself have you forgotten that you need someone to call you daily and remind you of? It would be my honor to love as I have been loved. After all we are the body of Christ and when one member of the body is weak is it not the job of the rest of the body to pick up the load until full healing is reached. If you are one of those who is in a season of summer then I implore you to be available, be sacrificial and in humility love as you have been loved. I'm adding to my prayer from my last post....I not only pray that I will love the Lord with all of my heart and all of my life, but that I will also love others in His name. How funny that 31 years of life and it took me that long to start understanding the greatest commandment. Every day I am in awe of the simplicity and equally the complexity of my God......oh how I love Him!

He loves you.....

"When He heard therefore that he was sick, He abode two days still in the same place where He was." (John 11:6)

In the forefront of this marvelous chapter stands the affirmation, "Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazurus," as if to teach us that at the very heart and foundation of all God's dealings with us, however dark and mysterious they may be, we must dare to believe in and assert the infinite, unmerited, and unchanging love of God. Love permits pain. The sisters never doubted that He would speed at all hazards and stay their brother from death, but, "When he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was."

What a startling "therefore"! He abstained from going, not because He did not love them, but because He did love them. his love alone kept Him back from hasting at once to the dear and stricken home. Anything less than infinite love must have rushed instantly to the relief of those loved and troubled hearts, to stay their grief and to have the luxury of wiping and stanching their tears and causing sorrow and sighing to flee away. Devine love could alone hold back the impetuosity of the Savior's tender heartedness until the angel of pain had done her work. 

"Who can estimate how much we owe to suffering and pain? But for them we should have little scope for many of the chief virtues of the Christian life. Where was faith, without trial to test it; or patience, without nothing to bear; or experience without tribulation to develop it? -streams in the desert

As I grow older and further away from the magic of innocence and naivety my heart longs to reconcile God' love to the incredible amount of sorrow I see each day. I struggle with finding the purpose of my prayers when they seem to go unheard and unanswered. My small brain and little faith cannot grasp God's plan or His love in it. I hadn't thought of the discipline it must take to "abode longer". We being evil give good gifts to our children so how much more the heavenly father gives good gifts. I know as a friend I want to rescue, save, heal and spare and I just can't imagine the restraint our Father must have to hold back and allow the pain to do it's work. I once heard a pastor say that the thing he was thankful for that thanksgiving was a strong heart. Tears just flooded my eyes because I knew how much he had endured and suffered and so the richness of his gratitude was priceless. I'm thankful for the strong heart that the Lord has given me, and the vastness of His love. I pray to the Lord that whatever His will be that He would grant me the mercy to love Him all the days of my life, with all of my heart. I pray this for you too friends who are struggling to understand why He 'therefore'  abodes. He loves you.