4/21/10 Asking the question....

I am in the throne room. I wait. I am very aware of the awesomeness of Him... and the question weighs heavy upon me. I wait, and wait. I am certain He knows my question, and yet He doesn't answer. Nor does He look upon me with condemnation; just love and patience. Waiting for me to ask...and as I wait, I go through many emotions. I came in with pride, arrogance, and fear. As I wait, I start out feeling overwhelmingly awkward with the silence. Eventually I feel the pride and arrogance fizzle out. It is impossible to be prideful as you wait under the stare of the Maker of the universe. I then feel fear and insignificance. Fear that He doesn't care, or rejects me. Insignificant in His plan. Then the love emanating from the throne makes the fear run screaming, and I understand that He wants to know me. I then experience a holy and fierce desire to hear Him. Then simply peace and calm in His presence. It is GLORIOUS. It now seems silly and unnecessary to ask, but I do. "What do I do, Father?" What is your plan? What is my next step? Where do I go? Who do I be? What is my part in this world. Who do you plan for me? And my long anticipated answer: "Why do you want to know?" He shows me that spending this moment with Him is what He wants me to do. What I do, where I go, who I am, who will be mine; are so insignificant compared to being loved by Him, and loving Him in return. He asks if I just want Him to tell me what to do, and I don't. I want so much more, and so much less. I want to see what He sees when He looks at me. I want to FEEL His love for me. To experience His embrace. To fear His holiness. To know His heart. To spend time in His presence. To allow His love to penetrate all of my walls, identities, shields, and lies. Be Still. And Know.

Pride, my security gaurd

So this is something I wrote a little over a month ago, and finally decided to procrastinate to the point of blogging...

3-8-09

I push and push when ppl are close to me. I judge, and have expectations. They are only due to my self-centeredness...God is opening my eyes to a lot of sin in my life. A lot of idols... FEAR galore. PRIDE PRIDE PRIDE PRIDE. It gets in the way of everything that is good.God offers me so much and I refuse it due to pride. How much pride comes from being hurt? Why does pain make room for pride? Hm...stuff it with pride rather than allowing God to place His heart within your pain? Is that how it works? If you don't "clean the cut"...it gets infected with pride. Wow. Praise you God for revealing that to me.

And pride wants nothing good to be allowed access to a person. It's like a beautiful celebrity that was hurt or threatened...security is heightened and allows no one access to the celebrity. The celebrity is sitting in her dressing room lonely and scared. When her best friend comes to visit and comfort...security won't let her in. We put security there to protect ourselves, but it ends up hurting us. Pride is my security blanket. The celebrity may or may not know her best friend is trying to get in. She may either feel like no one cares, she's all alone, she may know her friend is there but can't trust that she won't get hurt again, or she's afraid that something bad could happen to the friend... She may simply think that being alone is what she needs, when really she needs love. So in the dressing room...the celebrity is spiraling down into desperation. People on the outs are trying to help her, but security won't let anything or anyone in. Inside she is slowly dying...

God, I know you see me as a garden that needs to be tended. I have installed barbed wire fences around my garden, and hired the best security gaurds (pride). I cannot tend the garden, only you can, but I don't always let you in. Please convince me to take down the barbed wire fence and allow you to replace my gaurds.

When you recieve a wound and bandage it without cleaning it...it gets infected. I think that this emotional/spiritual infection is pride.

Overwhelming Redemption

On Friday evening I went to a service called theMill. It is for college students and 20-somethings. I was impressed with how many people would come to a church service on a Friday evening. Yes! The pastor began his message with a disclaimer that some of us may get a Holy-Spirit-kick-in-the-face, and if we weren't open to that, we weren't in the right place. Bring it on Holy Spirit! With my sometimes blindness and often times stubbornness, I do need those kicks in the face to be brought face to face with my transgressions.
And why would I want that? I have become so aware that though it hurts and is humbling to realize our brokeness as humans, God rewards our honesty and ability to offer every part of our heart to Him. He touches places in our hearts that are not fully His if we allow Him to. When we expose the things that are hidden He looks us in the face and says, "I see exactly what happened and exactly what you did. My love for you will not change because of this. I understand how it hurts you even more than you do. I want to take it away, to fix it. Thank you for coming to me! I want to help. Will you allow me to?" And if we can so much as nod our heads, He embraces us. We are overcome with the realization of His glory that though we are aware of the pain of Him pulling the sliver out our hearts, it is in a way heavenly. He then fills the void with Perfect Love, and ordains the scar that is left as a sign of His redemption.
It seems to me that we often focus on feeling bad about our transgressions. This will lead to repentance and hopefully running to God with our slivers, but until Friday I missed the Truth about what happens after feeling the guilt. During the service I was presented the message to feel guilt for my slivers(sins). I looked into my heart and realized I felt no guilt. Then I felt guilty for feeling no guilt! I thought if I didn't feel guilty that no one would know that I knew that what I did was wrong. God then stopped me and made me FULLY aware that I do not need to feel guilt any more, because He has pulled out every sliver I have exposed to Him! They are gone and there's no reason for me to try to put the sliver back into my heart. I should feel redeemed and overjoyed, and that's how I felt! God's redeeming power is so great that no matter how much time has passed since I messed up, it is GONE as soon as I allow Him to pull the sliver out. He is glorified because I am redeemed! Our guilt does not give Him glory, being redeemed does. The more guilt we had, the more He redeemed us. We do not even need to hide our scars-because they glorify Him. I rejoice in what God has done for me, and though He will continue to reveal slivers to me, I can now bring them to Him with a lot less fear of the temporary pain pulling them out brings.
God has made me very aware of what happens when I hold on to my pain and guilt, so I welcome the Holy Spirit kicks in the face. Bring them on because then I feel the temporary guilt that brings me humbly to my Father who loves me with such a perfect love and possesses the heavenly tweezers. And I will allow the world to see the joy that comes from letting God fill every new area of my heart that I reveal. I humbly offer it all to Him.

Pulpit Rock

God is so rewarding. Yesterday was a struggle, but I praised Him for it. Today He has revealed so much to me. Flushing all of the false messages out of my system. Glory! I just got back from a short climb up Pulpit Rock. There's something about sitting on the edge of the rock, staring out at the vastness of nature with the sun beating down and the wind stirring, just allows you to forget all of the worldly clamors for a time and remember what matters. And what matters is that I love Him, He loves me, and He's in charge. My 'tour guide' Jim told me that the rocks are sturdy and I don't have to worry about them falling. As I was sitting on the rock that jutted out into nothing but atmosphere, I recalled that God has the power to move mountains. He could make those rocks crumble. I was reading in Acts about Peter and John proclaiming the Gospel. The priests threatened them not to do works in the name of Jesus any more. Peter, John, and the other disciples were praising God when the place where they were meeting trembled and shook. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak God's word with fearless confidence. (Acts 4 Message Bible) I pray that the Holy Spirit fills me and enables me to speak with the confidence of my Father who is able to crumble rocks.

Thank you LB for the encouragement to start a blog. I want to document this season of my life, because God is doing such great things. But...part of this journey involves a lot of reading so before I can expound to the world where God is leading my heart, I must let Robert McGee speak to me through black words on white pages. 132 pages to go...