I don’t even have the words to say. Come Father! Make Your path clear. Let us rekindle our hearts to one another!…
I’m caught somewhere in the middle. The past tugs and whispers and pleads…it is like a tempting mirage in the desert. The voice trembles with passion, “Remember when we had so much fun?” It pulls at my heart, my fleshly desires quake under the touch, my body weak, and my heart feels hollow. My mind is playing cruel games on me again, a game I try to win through perpetuating fantasies. The old is choking the new. If I surrender will I lose all control…
Praise Him that I’m not where I was, that He brought me further than I ever thought I could or would dare to go. I thank Him that He is still pushing me further and further. I want Him to become so real to me that I can feel His breath on the back of my neck. I want to be quick to listen to Him and do His abundant will, to be slow to speak my desires to Him, and slow to become angry with Him when I don’t get my way (James 19: 19-20). Can I really sacrifice my dreams for His? I want to apprehend and hold onto the Word with all my heart. I want to revel and reveal His truth to others.
He is exceedingly, abundantly, immeasurably able to do more than we ask or imagine (Ephesians 3: 20-21). Oh, how I desire to stand on that truth. The questions assail me…
I have gone through an extreme amount of sifting through the last year and there has been much about my faith that has been tested…
How do you deal with fear?
What do I really believe about my Christian faith?
What does the Sovereignty of God really mean?
What does it mean to live in truth?
What is the truth of a woman’s real beauty?
I think the biggest questions that I’ve been asking lately are:
Does God really love me?
Lord, do you really have a purpose for my life?
What does it mean to have a relationship with Jesus Christ?
I’m seeking…I know that God is indeed Sovereign even though I don’t fully comprehend the depth of what that means. I know He has a divine purpose for my life, but I’m hitting some walls and fear I’ve missed the mark. I keep praying to live authentically, when it truly isn’t about me and about Him. I want to know His love and not only rest in that, but love Him back…deeply. I want His word to be shut up in bones until it is too much and I must share it with others. I keep praying that He truly does show me the real Kingdom.
I believe…help my unbelief!
If I never get the answer I will still serve Him…He has proven Himself to be so true and faithful in the past. I cannot stop serving Him, seeking Him, loving Him. It doesn’t matter at all what I do, His love for me is endless…I must remind myself unnumbered times of day on that one. My heart aches for Him. He has to work in me before He can work through me.
Questions have profoundly affected my relationship with Christ. If you cannot or do not question your faith, I don’t really believe that you can have a faith of much substance. I’m so glad that God has allowed me to fight with Him, question Him, stomp my feet at Him, even stick my fingers in my ear when I didn’t want to listen. I’m so thankful He has always wrestled with me and in the end, even though I might be a little weak or injured from the fight, He always blesses me.
So, I hold my cup out. I cannot make it without you Lord fill it up to overflowing or I will surely die. I am to do everything as unto the Lord. How I desire to hunger and thirst after righteousness.
“The day of the Lord is near for all nations. As you have done, it will be done to you; Your deeds will return upon your own head.” – Obediah v. 15
Neutrality is nauseating to God!
I feel as if I’m standing still and saying I’m walking with God. I know what it is like to be outside His will, and I know what it is like to hear His voice and be in the presence of the almighty. I know what it is like to feel so far from Him I cannot breathe, and doubt His existence; I know what it is like to sit with Him beside the shores of rest and forgiveness. I’m discovering I need to rediscover who He is and just rest in that, quit trying so hard.
I wrote this awhile back…
It will be a year ago this July that God woke me out of a slumber and began to show me glimpses of His glorious kingdom. Childlike giggles floated from my lips and my heart pounded with the beating of a thousand butterflies as I stepped out into the bright sunshine and away from a job that I had been at for nearly 5 years. I was fresh out of college with a fledgling career and big dreams. However, those dreams slowly and painfully began to crumble as the soil of my heart was being tilled exposing the rocks and weeds I had let pile up from years of planting my own desires deep within my heart. The Lord asked me a simple question, “Will you…?” As if a thought, barely a whisper, I agreed to seek Him and give Him more of me, and so the stripping began.
I don’t really know how I got here. One moment I was off to chase a dream, the next I was standing, heart exposed, in a charred wasteland of ruin and rubble. It is amazing how three months of unemployment could extinguish the remaining embers of my desire. By the end of the experience my fire would be reduced to nothing but a heap of coals and ashes. God was getting ready to kindle a new fire, a consuming fire, one that blisters, hurts, and heals. He had to destroy, cut out, tear down those things that barred His blood from my soul.
I always felt it easy to live in this world and serve the Lord. Lukewarm wasn’t only a state of being for me, but a rare art, and I defended it at every turn. The heart can be easily calloused and bruised by the rationality of the mind. I thought I could have my cake and eat it too. I was set to be a big movie star, producer, director. I had plans of pushing the envelope in the art I produced. There wasn’t even a question of compromise. I was holding onto God and all my treasures too. He needed to fit quietly in His proper box and not disturb the rest of my life. I was happy, I was excited, and like a two year old child I stuck my fingers in my ears and sang, “Tra-la-la!” whenever He would speak my name. I became so good at it that soon I didn’t hear His voice anymore.
The Lord began to cut me off at every turn. The doors, windows, and cracks of this world were being sealed and I felt entombed. Then, He began to cut away. I remember the first thing He asked me to give up. It was a set of shows on DVD that had made an indelible mark on my teenage years. These little gods had become a part of my identity and were deflecting His light in my life. This time, no matter how I tried, I couldn’t silence His voice. “Remember…” I didn’t want to remember what I promised Him. What about me? Didn’t He love me?
The first relinquishing was horrible, but in the months to come the stripping became less painful. There was much to be taken, but far more to be gained. I began to see Jesus in a very different light. I began to realize the way I was living was not only lukewarm but unacceptable. I began to realize that this life is not about me, but completely about what He can do through me. I began to awaken to His deep and passionate love for me. For the first time in my life I wanted to serve Him with reckless abandon. I tried to go back to the way things were before, but it was as if I saw with new eyes. I couldn’t even believe the garbage I had allowed to stain His sacred temple.
For the first time in my life I was completely and totally reliant on Him. I had to trust Him to provide for me financially, spiritually, and physically. There was nothing I could do but surrender. It was exhausting, heartbreaking, beautiful, glorious, and amazing. It is beyond me to fathom why He chose to wake me up and use such a vessel as myself. I am nothing special, but He chose me for a purpose.
What am I doing now? I have the distinct pleasure of working with children, a dream that has bloomed and grown into a masterpiece of grace and mercy. What will I do in the future? The only career goal I now have is to follow my Savior wherever He leads. He is far to shut-up in my bones and I cannot keep quiet. Yahweh, show me the real Kingdom.
Oh how I desire to do great things for God, but greatness can come in both big and small packages. I need to quit defining my greatness by what I think, and rely on Him to place my feet where I need to step. It is the art of surrender that I seek, as the room gets smaller, and the cost grows higher, I pray my heart will submit to His perfect and complete will. I do not want to go back, only forward, to reach that horizon and rest in the rapids of His love.
…teach me what it means to be reckless in You.
Yours Completely,
Melissa
“For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.” – 2 Corinthians 4: 6-12
“In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” – Ephesians 2: 21-22


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