Posted by
L.
In:
Seasons of Our Life
Seasons...the word doesn't seem like it translates into real life. I know that our life is constantly changing like seasons, but really what this life is, is a constant molding process.
Have you ever felt like you are actually going backwards? Like the very ground underneath you is being pulled out, crumbling beneath you? Do ever have moments when you look in the mirror and wonder who the person is that stares back at you? Not because your outward appearance has morphed, but that your inward man is going through so much change its hard to keep up?
I get you, I'm there. Here is where the word season doesn't actually fit into whats happening in these times. Season in this moment of deep refinement that includes deep searing wounds that are painful is an insult to what God is up to in my life. This isn't about a "season" this is about a process, its not buying into a "season of time" but rather a life long process. It's not about learning something and moving into the next unit or season. Life isn't a video game of levels passed and dangers over-come and put away. No life looks different, and the process when going well looks like the biggest mess, the biggest failure to us. How strange is that? When its going the way its supposed to, it often doesn't feel like it is!
I have believed the lie these past few months that I am a big fat failure. That I am not good enough. That I'm not doing enough for the kingdom. That I am a fake, a fraud. That I'm the worst _______ .
Here's why: God spent the last year, the World Race building my identity as a daughter. Growing me in walking in that identity, operating out of that identity, thinking and loving out of that identity. Now I'm looking in the mirror asking who is that? I get offended when someone doesn't see that value, when I'm rejected. HOW CAN THIS BE?? I already know who I am, we spent a year stripping off labels, and identities. I am a Daughter! I am a princess! Why am I struggling with these lies?? Why can't I just be already who I am??
My conclusion: I have failed at understanding my sonship. I don't really know who I am. I'm a failure. I'm obviously not as close to Jesus as I thought. I obviously didn't get the lesson the first time, what a waste of a year. Repeat last season....
Hold the phone...wait...who is that? Where is that coming from?? hmmm...that doesn't sound like my Daddy.
Some food for thought...Immediately following his baptism, after heaven opening and the Father saying "This is my Son, whom I love, with him I am well pleased." What was the first thing the devil attacked in Jesus in the desert?? His identity. (Matthew 4:1-4)
- "Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil." Ok, whoa...the Spirit led him into a place knowing he would be tempted there. The Spirit was allowing the attack...
- "After fasting forty days and forty nights he was hungry" Jesus would have been weak at this point, the Spirit actually let him be vulnerable and weak, open to attack. In a sense the Spirit left him out to dry in our eyes. We would think what a cruel exercise! How can that be loving?
- "The tempter came to him and said 'If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread' Jesus answered 'It is written: "Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God'" When his identity was attacked even though he hadn't eaten and was weak Jesus battled it with truth the tempter could not combat. Truth always conquers.
Maybe instead of it being a season of learning and walking its a process that is tested and tried over and over no matter how old we are, or how long we have known the Father? What if its actually the Love of a Father that drives us into circumstances where our identities are challenged? What if those weak times, those times of desperation, those desert circumstances were orchestrated because of the things his has already spoken and worked in us, that he needs to set as steel in our hearts? What if the moments when we felt the most distant from the Lord, those moments when we felt dry, we were actually closest to him, that we were actually delighting his heart most?
There is no shame in the process, in the confusion, in the WEAKNESS. NO SHAME! It is a beautiful thing to feel weak, to be weak, to struggle! STRUGGLE IS OK! haha! It is! God LOVES struggle, he's ok with MESS!
I hear the Father speaking to Jesus and the Holy Spirit over me tonight. And you know what? FAILURE is NEVER mentioned. MESS UP is not a phrase even alluded to. NOT GOOD ENOUGH is not associated with my name. NOT DOING ENOUGH for the kingdom is never brought up!
They say, "There is our little princess, isn't she incredible? She is perfect, exactly what I want her to be today. How is she doing? Ohhh I am SO proud of her, she is rooted in truth, in the things we've taught her. You know something else? She looks like me, and she sounds like me more and more. I overheard her the other day saying something to herself that I say to her all the time. She hears me, she knows my voice, she understands. She is my baby girl and I'm so delighted in her. She's so cute, she doesn't always believe she's pleasing me, or that she is doing good enough, but oh that girl, she is my FAVORITE! Oh she brings so much pleasure to my heart. This time of testing has been hard for her, harder than I intended, but she doesn't have to worry, because I'm not worried. I believe in her, she will be just fine, she'll get through it just fine. I know her. I trust her COMPLETELY. Oh how I love this one. Oh I wish she knew just how much I love and delight in her! She is beautiful just as she is."
You know what? They are speaking that over you tonight too. If we only knew how the God of the Universe loves us and is moved by us. Oh if we only knew the fullness of his affections!
Posted by
L.
In:
Surrendering Singlehood
Oh boy, well I've been dragging my feet on this post for awhile now, and for good reason, it's a little too personal, and a little too vulnerable for my liking, but King of Glory have your Glory. Here goes nothing...
Little girls dream about their futures'. They dream about what they are going to be when they grow up, which school they want to go to (or maybe this was just me), and due to a spike in the popularity of a game called MASH when I was in elementary/junior high school(if you don't know what this is, email me I'll explain it to you) who you are going to marry, where you are going to live, what your wedding colors are going to be and who was going to be in your wedding. Most of us have an expectation of marriage when we are young and one that we bring into adulthood.
I was no exception to the above rule, I played MASH willingly throughout my elementary/junior high years (and maybe for fun a couple times since then) inserting my crushes' names into the husband spot, I dreamed of my "prince charming", I prayed for my husband, and I wondered when he would come sweeping into my life and rescue me from ho-dum singleness. I remember half heartedly "giving" my desire for marriage to the Lord, but secretly winking inside as if to say, this is just a formality, a part of the formula to finding my perfect mate, right God? I mean after-all according to my 12 year old self I was supposed to be married by 22 and on my way to starting a family.
I did everything right, I didn't date around, and I was convinced, or maybe the word is determined that the first man I dated seriously, AKA the first man I called my "boyfriend" was going to be my husband. I just needed to wait for the "right one" to come around. The thing is while I waited I saw my friends start getting into serious relationships and/or getting married, and the rose colored glasses came off. I started to see how hard relationships really were, I started to see how much time they took up, I started to see how distracting they were, and I started to see how they changed people or how people lost who they were in the relationship. Relationships started looking less desirable to me.
Then a couple years ago I had a friend go through a tough divorce. It was a couple I never would have guessed would split a part, and he wasn't the type of guy I would ever guess to change as drastically as he did. My concept of marriage was shaken, to the core. I'm not a person that trusts easily, and I had a hard time trusting men as it was and this only added to that. Now I was battling in my mind; how could I ever trust someone so much as to allow them in so intimately as marriage allows, how will I ever know that they won't betray me, that they won't change years down the road? Satan was having a hay-day in my head, and I was allowing him to burrow lies deep in my heart.
Then I had my first relationship and experienced first hand all of the disenchanting things as listed above. That sealed it in my heart that marriage was not for me. After all I had given it a chance and surprise, surprise, everything that I thought would happen, happened. The thing is looking back on it all now, I had no business being in a relationship when I hadn't dealt with the issues brewing in my heart. Of course I experienced all the negative things in that first relationship because I had a tape inside my head that played the lies about marriage and men over and over and over again. Words are powerful things and they bring one of two things: life or death. There is no grey area here, just life or death. When you speak lies even if they are just inside your head they bring death, and I'm convinced that because I had that track of lies in my head I prophesied those negative things into my relationship and over that guy. No wonder they came to fruition!
After that relationship I found a deeper more intimate relationship with the Lord and was fixated on the concept of the marriage relationship between God and His church the bride. I had no problem getting on board with that type of marriage, after all God was dependable and unchanging. Perfect, no problems there. Unfortunately, during this time of intense depth and closeness with the Father, my fear of commitment and hatred of marriage also deepened. During this time I was definitely at the place of "Oh Lord I surrender marriage to you and I don't want to ever see it again, give me a release from marriage". Gone were the days of tight fisting my desire for marriage I was at the other extreme of "You're gonna have to pry singleness from my cold dead hands."
The thing was during this whole time I never felt a "release" from marriage. In fact God wouldn't let marriage go, and every year around Fall he would seem to bring it up in some way. I came to the point of drawing up lists of things that he would have to give me in a man before I would consider marriage, and they weren't easy lists, I mean they had great detail. I would have yelling matches in the car with the Lord and would throw a lot of "Paul says that singleness is better anyway, so lets move on from this marriage sillyness", "lets be honest singleness is way more fun than marriage" and "think of the freedom singleness offers a missionary!." Oh yes I played the missionary card. I was trying to convince God that I was right to desire singleness and I was justified in my dislike for marriage. I was trying to convince Him to get on board with granting me "single" status for life and a "release" from marriage forever.
I started this past year out with 2 prayers: 1. To be committed to an organization for a significant amount of time by the end of the year, and 2. Be done with the marriage status thing either way by the end of the year, because I'm sick of dealing with it! Plus for a person who never enjoyed "playing the field" the idea of being off the market by either being in a relationship or having the excuse of "Oh I'm sorry I can't go on a date with you, because I'm never getting married" was very attractive to me. Wow, I had no idea that that prayer would fuel God's enthusiasm for this topic. I have to say as of November neither of those prayers have been answered in the way I was expecting, but God is working on them both I honestly believe, it just might not be my timing and the way I thought it would look.
God went into marriage over drive with me this past year, the sheer number of weddings I was invited to should have given me a clue that God was going to deal with me on this issue (15 in all thank you very much!). Then my pastor decided to do a series on 1Corinthians. Oh I thought the Sunday on 1Corinthians 7 was going to validate me and my view on my singleness. I thought for sure the only interpretation of this passage was to say singleness is better than marriage. I had a smug smile on my face that sunday sitting in the pew, waiting for the words I knew were coming. But then my validation never came, and my pastor didn't commend the single for staying single, and I was a little disappointed, but God had been working on me and the timing of this particular slap on the face was spot on. I was able to receive the revelation my pastor was offering on this subject because God had already done the work to make me ready for it. I never noticed before that Paul actually says in verse 25 "I have no word from the Lord about women or men who have never been married". The Lord never says that singleness is better than marriage or marriage better than singleness. The fact is God loves marriage, that's why he uses it to describe His relationship with us. What my pastor did stress about this passage is that life is a gift and how we live it determines if it is a blessing or a curse. I walked away slightly stunned, but desiring to live my life as a blessing. I came away with a new thought: Honor Marriage, marriage is a blessing, just as much as singleness (don't laugh seriously this is break through for me).
I am still a work in progress, but here are some things I have learned so far:
- It is possible to be on the other extreme and hold tightly onto singleness. This was a concept that was hard for me to grasp at first. I thought that it was a good thing because I was content in my singleness, but God wants complete surrender and trust in all things including our marriage status and that means holding loosely onto our life situation and trusting that the Lord knows what he's doing when he changes it or if he doesn't. Of course, it is important to be content with your "status" but really that content comes when you are content in Him, and trust Him fully. I have to admit I'm not there, yet. I can't say with all conviction that I hold my singleness loosely and am willing and trust the Lord if he decides marriage is right for me, but I'm getting there and feel close. I cherish my singleness, but I now realize there is a fine line between cherish and idolize and I try to remember the line.
- I'm learning to love marriage, and this will be a continuing journey for me, but I'm stomping out one lie at a time. My hope is to be completely pro marriage for myself and for all that are around me, and if the Lord decides to change my "status" that I will be able to fully be present in that status, just as content, but just as willing to trust and hold it loosely, surrendering it to the Lord.
- Lastly, I can't say this universally, but for me there will probably never be a "release from marriage", that being said I am called to be single right now and so I will live fully in that calling. I think this is what the Lord asks from all of us, he doesn't want us living in the future or the past and I think that's exactly what 1Cor 7 is all about. He asks us to be present in our calling for today and not worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself (Mtt 6:34).
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