It's been months...and over these months I have traded in my running shoes for barefeet and raw grass.
Wasn't sure how to address such a gap in my blogging.....but it seems the truth is the best response.
I am not a writer, but I'm definitely a communicator of many words. I am insecure in putting all these many words together to express my heart in written form, but I'm very secure that when I do write, it drives down deep the things of God in my heart.
Running from God
..... that is where I have been the last several years. While running from the things of God, it left nothing of real substinance for me to write about.
Oh, I have run towards many things.....all things that in the end left me empty. A new town, new career, new relationships with men. I have chased after them. Just as Jonah ran the other way... and the prodigal longed for escape...I too thought I could out run God.
Angry. Bitter.
Those would not have been words I ever thought would define me, but they did. I remember in San Antonio...sitting alone in my one room apartment with all my boxes not even unpacked and with my big mattress on the floor....sitting in the quiet...realizing how very angry I felt. It was starting to ooze out of me. I just couldn't stop it anymore. There were no Christian words that I could muster to change my heart. I would stare at my Bible....knowing where the truth lie...but unable to take hold of it. I thought if I just got away......could pull myself up out of the funk.......a new beginning would mean a new heart.
Oh so wrong.
Somewhere along the way......I just couldn't keep up. I had busied myself with the things of God and forgot how to be the woman in relationship with God. I had questions and doubts. Instead of asking them or expressing them. My pride pushed them down deep. Hoping they would go away. I loved God....my relationship was real....but lacking. It was a list of all the things I had been doing. Just as Satan deceived Eve in the garden....so he deceived me with his age old line....."Did God actually say___?" Slowly the doubt crept in and my self-righteousness increased. Such a deadly combination.
The one thing I didn't count on in all my running....is that the Triune God truly had me. He would never let me go. Salvation is a sealed and done deal. The Father loves his children, and whom He loves, He disciplines. There is nothing more loving. Just as He was sovereign over a giant fish to swallow Jonah, and the prodical to squander all....so too He allowed me to come to the end of myself.
God brought me low.
I begged God just as Jonah in the belly of the whale....if He would just get me out of this place.....I would go back(Jonah Ch. 2).... I would return just as the prodigal. God heard my cry and rescued me. He brought me out of that place and into a place of rest for 10 months.
There was no job to be found.....there was a room that was not mine, but freely given.... a Bible to be read....a time to follow through on what I had commited. The questions that had been buried were spoken in the open. I don't think I have ever experienced such grace, nor gained a true understanding of what it meant to have nothing, but possess everything I needed.
I immediately tried to get into a woman's Bible study at church. It was full. I was determined. God determined more, so I got in. Sitting in a small circle with those women... I knew I had nothing left to hide. The book of James did not deal lightly with my heart and sin had no place to hide.. it's pages were revealing-illuminating. It's a book that already had a special place in my heart. God knew that.
God finally spoke and I knew that I needed to dive deeper into the mess of my heart. There was still the anger just below the surface. I signed up for our Steps program, a part of the recovery ministry at our church. The study was absolutely life changing.
I will never forget sitting in the class so filled with anger.....and my response to a question was just that. I am so angry and mad at God that I don't even have an answer for this question. I will also never forget a girl named Lo coming up to me after class, and asking me if she could be my friend, and my response is still painful to remember because it was so not like me. I had nothing left to give anyone.
This simple northern girl with the bluest eyes I'd ever seen.... offered to be my friend... and I didn't have to do anything. She offered some shade... a place to come and sit. She lent an ear and a story that resonated with my angry heart. Something broke in me. The gospel is always sweet like that. Sometimes it takes hearing someone else's broken angry story to realize there is hope. We are not alone. We all have questions, fears, and doubts. She offered a book...The Reason for God by Timothy Keller. I walked away with something I hadn't felt in a very long time..
Hope.
I found it, the book. It was the last copy in all of Lewisville that day. I devoured it. My heart began to find rest again in truth. As I worked through the gospel each week in class, heard the raw confessions of truth to my left and right. My heart was awakened to all the sin and idolarty upon the alter of self. I came to my senses. God's grace was right there waiting, embracing each cry of repentence. Washing my heart clean.
It has been such a journey, these past three years. I regret the time lost on my selfishness, but know that God has used it to mark me. He has driven His gospel of love and grace down so deep in my heart. There are still places of doubt at times and I am being filled up with His truth. I know to the depths of me that I am sinner in need of the gospel daily. We never arrive as Christians. I have known Christ since I was 3 years old...I will ever be in need of His saving grace till my last breath.
I am currently participating in a Discipleship Program at my church. I am studying the New Testament, Old Testament, and Systematic Theology. I have been so blown away by the grace of this beautiful gospel that I see every morning in my Bible. I am so blessed to walk this road with some very broken and redeemed hearts. I will be sharing my journey here. The things that God reveals to me from class, relationships, and my studies. Hope you might join me.
If you have never put your complete faith and trust in Jesus Christ. I would challenge you today...this evening.....to seek to know more of the Triune God. His great love for you and me. He sent His one and only Son...to die for us on the cross... to come alive from the dead 3 days later...fulfilling all that is written in the Bible. He did all this because He loves you and longs for you to know Him. Our sin has broken our relationship with Him....but God has made a way to be reconcilled to Himself...restored...brought back into fellowship with our Creator.
He desires a relationship with YOU.
It is only in our brokenness that we see our need....it is in our need that we seek something bigger and greater than ourselves. Look no further than the cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ...this is THE way to God. No one comes to the Father except through Christ.(John 14:6) I pray for you, anyone who reads this blog, that you might see glimpses of His love, grace, power, and might in this broken life. Something about this Triune God might woo your affections too, that you might find yourself humbled at His feet.
Grace and peace to you.
All for Him..
