As I go through a difficult time in my life of growth and change I find myself drawn back to this little blog of mine. I need to write things down, to process - but my hand can never seem to keep up with my head. The keyboard can't either but at least I can go back and add and edit. Writing my thoughts has always been difficult for me. It needs to sound just right and where do I even begin?
But really, I just need to start. Start where I am - without justification or explanation. Just start.
So, here I am. Still dehydrated from a weekend spent mostly in tears. Feeling entirely overwhelmed by the lies the enemy tells me and the enormity of my sin that continually allows it. It is a pit I feel very much at the bottom of. But also there is hope. Hope of leaving the pit. Of freedom from sin, from the lies.
So it starts here. The vulnerability. The willingness to admit that not everything is okay . To expose the ugliness in my heart in hopes of changing it. Tonight I will walk with a friend and confess my hardened heart towards her, the lies that I have believed about not being needed and how truly I have not loved well because I am too busy self-protecting. I pray I can say the right thing. I want to tell the truth but I want to do it gracefully and kindly. I want to share things that have hurt me without casting blame. I want healing, I want a deeper friendship. And that may mean crying my eyes out as we walk around the public park. But God will meet me there. I just keep telling myself that.
This weekends sermon seemed tailor made for me, for my place here in the pit. First he talked about Moses being humbled. How we all carry around an incredible amount of pride which manifests itself in different ways. The more obvious version of pride is arrogance, but on the flip side self-pity is also a form of pride. It's me saying I deserve better, that what God has granted is not good enough. I would definitely say there are days of self-pity around here but really where I fall most of the time is somewhere in the middle, which he called an insidious and wicked place. The place where so much time is spent in comparison. Of saying "I'm not arrogant like them, and I'm not sad like them"- throwing stones at both sides. It sickens me to admit how much of my time is spent throwing stones trying to make myself feel better. Trying to glorify myself, feel accomplished, feel worthy or better than. All stemmed from some distorted view of self and a complete lack of remembering who I am in Christ. I know I need to find true humility, not lack of self esteem, in order to really be used by Christ. To be able to love unconditionally even when it costs me something and gains me nothing. Because this is what Jesus did. His love for me lead to his death for my gain, not His own.
This leads to sermon part two. God tells Moses that the people's suffering is not unknown to Him. God feels it when his children hurt. He just wants us to be honest with Him, to express our pain and hurt to him. He can handle it. He is the only one with shoulders big enough to bear it. No person or thing on earth can do that, they will always fail me. He never will. And He knows my name and has given me the only thing I will ever need - Himself. He meets us right here where we are.
So this is where I am and this is where I am trusting God to meet me. Right here in this pit with a heart tightly entangled in sin and lies. Needing to be vulnerable and have difficult conversations. And to submit to the Lord my plans and my ideas of how life should be and desperately in need of his deliverance.
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