God amazes me every year in the things he does and the revelation he gives when his children seek his face earnestly.
And personal revelation...it's been much needed in my neck of the woods. (that's how we say it in the country)
Recently I haven't felt like me. It's been scary and weird...and honestly has had me down quite a bit over the past month. The new year is usually a time of joy for me...where i reflect on how i've progressed over the year, the ways I've seen God move...and it's a time for me to dream, which i love to do. This year, the changing of the year left me feeling detached and distant from my life. And scared to dream. And i've never before been scared to dream.
Most of this came when I really began looking back over the past year...expecting to see a lot of progress. What i found was digression in almost every area of my life. Mostly physical things...loss of my own place and a roomate i loved dearly...not living in the town where i spend most of my time...loss of most of the income i was accustomed to the previous year... But some was spiritual, which was even harder for me to come to terms with. Sometimes I get so busy trying to live my life and ignoring things i may see as problematic, that when i take the time to look up i often find that i've been believing something completely wrong about God. Or worse...I've lost some of my faith and trust in Him.
Which was the case here.
Last spring I began praying some things...some bold things. I asked Him to take everything out of me that was holding me back from more of Him. I asked Him to strip me completely bare of myself and anything that i believed i was "owed" in life and only give me things of Him. I meant every word of those prayers...and I still wouldn't take them back. But I believe that's what God has been doing. 2009 was a year that took away almost everything comfortable to me...a lot of the things that in my head "defined" me. And lately I've been struggling to reclaim a lot of that. Basically to no avail.
But what if that was his plan all along? That's it's not just the tangible, physical, comfortable things that define me. That what defines me...the only thing that defines me...is Him?
A couple of weeks ago I went away on a small retreat with several amazing people. During worship the first morning we sang a familiar worship song that at the end repeated "all i am is yours" several times. I've sung along to that song a thousand times it seems. Always earnestly meaning every word when i sang "all i am is yours"...meaning to me that everything I have...it's God's. But as I quietly sang along that morning a new meaning to it washed over me. Yes, definitely, everything i have is yours God...but what if that's all I am...Yours? All that I am, no more and no less...is only God's. Is that enough for me?
Not status or money or comforts or quirks.
Not "All i am = Yours+my dreams+my church activities+how people see me."
No...all i am...is Yours.
When I prayed the way I did last spring, there were several factors that led me to do so...but a large part of it had to with the fact that I had begun to sense a lot of pride in my life. I'd never before really considered myself a prideful person, and while i would pray for God to keep me from it, i never really understood how it operated in my life. But i began to sense that it was there...but couldn't really define what the source was. As the year progressed this pride made itself more and more apparent in my life...and as unchecked sin tends to do...the ways it was operating in my life began to fill my mind constantly. Mean thoughts i'd never thought before would pop into my head without a second thought. Jealousy became a regular occurrence. And slowly my joy dwindled down, lower and lower.
What I realized after singing that line at the retreat...all I am is yours...is that there exactly was the source of that pride i've been trying to track the past several months. I've always told God that I surrender everything to Him...that everything I have is all His...but somewhere along the way I fell under the belief that I actually need to make a major contribution to what God wants to in me and through me. Somehow I believed that simply being His was not enough.
And understanding that was a turning point for me. That I honestly and truly do not have to worry and stress and manipulate my way through life trying to get the things that I believe God has for me. If my dreams and desires in life happen, great. But what I'm finally beginning to see is that there is nothing outside of God that can satisfy me anywhere near as much as Him. And if God had to fully strip me of everything comfortable in my life this past year...of things that defined any identity outside of being only His...than I say it's all for the better if that's what it took to finally get me to realize how utterly small i really am when compared to his astonishing glory.
When I began to fully grasp that it's not about me at all...like, not even a little bit at all...you wouldn't believe the weight that was lifted.
And I came to realize...that there is nothing I could add to being "only" His...Because only being His? It's the entire world to me.
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