A New Light

The last few months have been hard. I think Jefferson Bethke best puts my emotions into words when he said "I was lonely, I was anxious, I had no motivation, I didn't even want to get out of bed...Its like this mist or this dark fog that you can't seem to swim out of. It's as if the more you fight it, the more it swallows you"

Over the last several months it seemed that all I had been doing was crying out to God desperately to take away this burden on my heart. My journal was filled with words like "hurt, lonely, confused, frustrated, anxious, sad, angry, hopeless, discouraged, disappointed, regretful, tired, and fearful" I felt broken and like nothing was going to fix it. 

Finally I said goodbye to everything and everyone for a short while to actually spend some intentional time focusing on the only thing that was going to help me at this point, my relationship with the Lord. I had a three hour quiet drive that was spent between me and God, and it felt like the first time in far too long that I could actually hear myself think again. 

November 11th after another quiet morning between me and the Father I wrote this in my journal

"Praise the Lord.

Realized so much today.

1. I was entirely relying on my own strength for every aspect of my life rather than Gods strength that he has promised me.

2. Rather than praying things through, I was trying to think things through because I wanted to hold on and continue controlling situations I desperately needed to give up. I truly became honest with God and found in Him, total surrender. He took my burdens away from me. 

The weight on my heart is gone along with my desire to walk a path of my own design for my life. 

God is sovereign, I will trust in his goodness.

3. People kept telling me I would eventually see the purpose of this suffering. The valley just seemed so deep and so dark and I truly could not see the end of it. I do now. I see the gospel and scripture in a new light. I feel the pursuit of God through His word in a way that I never did before. Maybe that was the purpose of this suffering. I have a new look on life now. Ephesians 1: 17-18 says "I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you" 

It was so hard.

But now I understand how much I needed to learn. I am thankful for this valley and I am so thankful for a God that teaches me and reveals himself to me. 

I Was Wrong.

I realized today that I have been doing my fair share of talking at God, but not doing much listening. God really showed me today that this was a lesson I have learned before, but forgotten, and neglected to put into practice like I should be. So today I took some time without distraction, to not just talk, but rather listen to what God wanted to tell me.

Often something I do when I feel like the Lord is telling me something is I just start scribbling it all down on a notebook. Today this was what got written down. "Keep your eyes on me. I have a plan for you, I am guiding you along that path, I directed you to that path in the first place, but you can not stay on it by yourself. I have only begun my work in you. In order to continue with the plans I have for you take your eyes off yourself and on your own hopes and your own dreams and place your eyes back on me. I can do greater things than you can even dream"

I saw what God was beginning to do in my life and thought I could take it from there. I could put it in my own power and my own control. God got me off to a good start and I could handle the rest. I was wrong. I can't. 

Following Gods plan for you fully and not just knee deep is not something to be done once and awhile. It is a life long journey. If you want Gods promises in your life to be fulfilled you have to keep your sight and trust in him fully, 100%, all the time. 

Patience?

For a long time, I knew God was trying to teach me patience. I knew it simply because trials I had faced all seemed to require patience to some extent, and dealing with patience was always the worst part about it. I began to get really frustrated like "why do I have to keep learning this over and over again? Its just worse every time" well obviously I hadn't learned it. I also want to add that I fully believe this will be something, like many other things, that I am going to continue learning for the rest of my life. There will never be a time that I will fully understand it, and God will continue to teach me more and more as I continue to walk with Him through life. Patience was always just a bigger battle. When I had to go through anything that required any kind of patience I would get anxious, frustrated, then discouraged. I wanted nothing to do with it. I didn't want to learn it, I wanted to be done with it. Finally something hit me that totally changed my perspective. I was viewing patience as basically being content with waiting around. Where as I think God allows us to go through seasons of patience that we are able to prepare our hearts, for something that is to come. As well as pursue Him in those times.

Patience is not just being "okay" with sitting around like a bump on a log. It is being content with what God is doing in your life weather or not you see it. It is about continuing to pursue your relationship with him, and trust in his plan for you even when it feels like nothing is happening. "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God" -Philippians 4:6 This verse does not end at "Do not be anxious about anything". That is just half of it, and I believe the second half is equally important. "but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God". We need to do this, and then we need to continue doing this. 

 1 John 5:14 says "This is the confidence we have in approaching God, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us." God wants us to approach him, and present our requests to him. That doesn't mean we can just ask God for anything we want and expect to immediately receive it. Gods timing is always perfect. Just because we don't get immediate results, doesn't mean God is not at work.

"God never hurries. There are no deadlines against which he must work. Only to know this is to quiet our spirits and relax our nerves" -A.W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God)

If you are feeling like nothing in happening, or nothing is working out, be patient by seeking and following after the Lord. He will show you what he is doing, you may just have to wait. At the end of it He will take you on a journey far better than we could ever plan for ourselves. 

Loneliness

Last night, was a hard night. You know those days when everything just seems to crash and burn so hard you are just walking around with a pit in your stomach not even really sure how to feel? Well, that was me last night. It was not a fun situation.. After some talks, and many tears, and frustrations and all that, I went and sat in my room and just got praying "God why do I feel this way? Why is this happening? What is the purpose of this? I feel so alone and have no one to turn too" and I felt like God was pulling at my heart saying "I will never leave you nor forsake you. If you have me, what more do you need?" And then it hit me.... maybe I was feeling alone by the World because God was just trying to bring me back to himself, and remind me that when I have the Lord I have all I need. Maybe I needed to feel alone for awhile to be reminded that my relationship with the Lord should be the most important of all. So why was I turning to other people for comfort, joy, and peace, and getting left unsatisfied neglecting to turn to The Lord who guarantees me all those things and so much more than I can even dream!

I think the feeling of loneliness is something everyone struggles with at times. whether your physically alone or not. You can be surrounded by people and still feel alone. The fact is God is the only one that satisfies that void, this is why we have to learn to rely on him first. The way we talk with friends about everything, spend time with them, care about them, and put in effort with them, and just generally want to be around them is the way we should want to spend time with God. He wants not just to have a relationship with us out of convenience, but wants to know us deeply and intimately. Timothy Keller said it perfectly in his book The Meaning of Marriage he says "To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretence, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us" This to me is a perfect picture of the way God truly loves us, and all of our deepest desires are satisfied by him.

If we never strayed from the Father, there would be no Fathers voice calling us back to Him. But that is one of the most wonderful things about the God we serve! He desires to have a deep and intimate relationship with each and everyone of us. And so He does continue to call us back to him. In Romans 5:1-2 it says "Therefore, since we have been made right in God's sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God's glory." And it doesn't just stop there either, it goes on in Romans 5:5 to say "And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with love." ...... When we place our trust in The Lord.. there is no way we will ever be disappointed, because God gives us his love. His perfect love, even when we are undeserving of it. When we have the love of Christ, it is the greatest love we will ever have and know, and His love is the only love that will truly fill every void within us.

God Is Our Power

I love this verse. The reason I love this verse so much is because it reminds me that God is our power. He gives us all the power and ability, to glorify and honor him. 

Something I tend to get really cought up in, is worrying about what I need to do next and where I need to go, in order to do what God wants me to do and be who he wants me to be. However he tells us simply to "be still and know that I am God". This is so comforting. I don't have to worry about doing anything. Because its not me that will do it anyways. The Lord will do his work through us and all we need to do is let him, and be still. 

Trust- Jeremiah 42:1-2

Jeremiah 43:1-2 (NLT)

When Jeremiah had finished giving this message from the Lord their God to all the people, Azariah son of Hoshaiah and Johanan son of Kareah and all the other proud men said to Jeremiah, "You lie! The Lord our God hasn't forbidden us to go to Egypt!"

When I read this, for some reason it really stood out to me. And I think that reason is because it reminded me of my own attitude allot of the time. The way it describes the men who were accusing Jeremiah of lying, was "Proud" and I think we all show that attitude every now and again. But the biggest thing that stuck out to me was that just shortly before this, they are all wanting to hear to from God (Jeremiah 42:5-6) and after all that, once God gives them a message through Jeremiah, they accuse him of lying. RIGHT after they were anticipating hearing from the Lord. I think this is simply because they had said that they would obey the Lord, whether they liked it or not, and once they heard it, they decided that didn't like it. It wasn't what they wanted to hear. So they assumed Jeremiah to be wrong so they could continue doing what THEY wanted to do. If they could blame him, it would justify their actions.

I think I do this much more than I would like to admit. I think we like to say that we will do and go whatever and wherever God tells us to, because WE already have an idea of what that looks like. But sometimes God's plan is different that ours, and rather than trusting him, we try and control it and do it ourselves.

Joy- Jeremiah 31:9

Jeremiah 31:9
Tears of joy will stream down their faces, and I will lead them home with great care. They will walk beside quite streams and on smooth paths where they will not stumble.