What happens when you look at someone you Love and realize you don't know them? With a marriage, a friendship, or a relationship it often means that they're over or that really hard times are ahead if both are willing to work through them.
What about our walk with Christ? What happens when we find out that how we've been pursuing God is off course, how we think we understand His Love is flawed, or what you've always held as His desire is only your own idea of what God wants? It's a hard question and one I've wrestled through this past week.
What makes you feel furthest from God? Is it pain, is it loss, is it being wrong, or something else? I know that for me I feel furthest form God when I come face-to-face with the truth that I don't know God. I don't know how He Loves unconditionally. I don't understand His plan for me. I don't, I just don't some times and it's then that I feel like I'm a million miles away from Him. How can He be close to me when I struggle so much to give myself to Him, to know the one I profess to Love? The answer is one that takes time to come to.
I found out this week that I still want to serve God how I have planned. Crazy huh? Think I would have realized after almost four years of Him tossing out every plan I've made and finding new ones that I'd finally realize He can and will use me anywhere! Yeah, I thought I would too by now, but it's a lot harder while you're in the valleys to believe something you've seen on the mountain tops. Not impossible, but very hard.
I was faced this week with how honestly bad I am at what I always thought I was gifted with and good at. Feedback about my skills, desires, and passions that say, "You're par at best and generally sub-par." It's discouraging. How am I supposed to use my gifts for God's glory when they aren't anything special? What am I supposed to surrender to God when I have nothing of value? How do I live my life for Him when I am lost and confused? How do I serve Him when what I honestly believed I was called to serve Him with is pulled away from me and I am left with a fear that I won't be of use to Him? That's been this week.
Now that I am at my lowest, now that I am broken, where does God take me? He doesn't build me up (big surprise), He doesn't remind me that He will use my gifts despite how poor they are right now. He didn't tell me to trust that He's bigger than my problems or that He was trying to get me to let go of myself. Instead He held out a hand. I was puzzled and didn't understand. I took hold and tried to pull myself up but He didn't let me pull myself up. I was confused! Why wasn't He there to rescue me? He smiled, It's not time for Him to rescue me. He was inviting me to walk with Him. I took His hand again and instead of pulling me up He came into step with me.
We walked through the valley together a while before I finally asked, "What do you want from me?" I was nearly losing it. I was of no use to Him and after so many times of picking me up and setting my focus straight He wasn't going to do it again. He looked steadily at me and said, "You."
I shake my head, frustration rising, "That's the problem! I keep giving you everything I can, but it never seems to do anything and I keep coming back to where I was." By the end I was nearly in tears. At that point I was kneeling in a room by myself crying out to God and lost while He was walking right beside me.
He kept walking with me and slowly my gaze was drawn to a book that is constantly close to me. It is called My Utmost for His Highest. It is a devotional by Oswald Chambers that I read every day. Over the past week it has been speaking very powerful truth into my life that has been something I've clung to in the midst of the uncertainty of this past week. If you are struggling with the same kind of feelings I would recommend look at the entries from October 20th till today, they can be found here. It was today's entry that really turned this week around.
This morning, God was still walking with me in the valley. I was wondering if He had gotten tired of walking with me in here. Was He tired of me still struggling? Was He bored with how often I turned to Him? But He didn't answer. So this morning I was reading My Utmost to His Highest and as my eyes followed the words on the page He reached over my shoulder and pointed to the words. I paid close attention and that's when it all fell into place. It said that our purpose is behind us. That we are not seeking and saving the lost. That's not what missions is about. Missions is not about the people, as much as that sounds so wrong! I have been rebelling inside against what I've been reading all week and looking back I am seeing that's why I was where I was at.
So what is the focus of missions? The focus is God. Well, that's the church answer, but in reality God cares about people so we need to focus on people because that is focusing on God. Wrong. We are not saving people because they are so important, that diminishes God's glory and the fact that it is only Him who calls the lost and only Him who can do anything. And once we start focusing on people we lose the one who called us, as Chambers puts it, "He will do with you what He never did before His call came to you, and He will do with you what He is not doing with other people. Let Him have His way." Wow. In my frailties He will use me? I just need to let Him? Yes.
And that is why it's so hard! Letting Him do with us what He wills is so...passive. Passivity is roundly denounced by everyone today. Passivity is equated with laziness, sluggishness, and even sinfulness. But not with God, we mess things up when we try to "proactively accomplish His will". The end of today's devotion talks about great men and women of faith and how we credit them with keen intelligence to understand God's plan, but in reality, "...the keen and intelligent mind behind them was the mind of God, not human wisdom at all. We give credit to human wisdom when we should give credit to the divine guidance of God being exhibited through childlike people who were “foolish” enough to trust God’s wisdom and His supernatural equipment." That hit home. I used to wait for God's guidance in my life as He would lay what He wanted of me in my path and I would walk that path in faith. This semester has been time and time again of me trying to do things I decided were what God wanted. In the end He has blessed those ventures, but I can clearly see that they are just my interpretations of what God wants, not actually waiting for Him.
What now? Well, I am climbing now. God has shown me the way to the next mountain top and I am pushing onward! I know once I reach the top I'll be headed either quickly or slowly back into another valley, but as Oswald Chambers says over and over again, it is not who we are on the mountain tops that reflects our walk with God but who we are in the valley that reflects who we are with God. That being said, I am not being spurred on by a goal ahead of me that I need to reach people, Love them, and bring Christ to them. I am spurred on by a God behind me that has my back, is worthy of sacrificing my life for, and will lay the path before me He wants me to walk. I don't need to strive to discern His will, struggle finding the purpose for my life, or worry about what's before me. I just have to have that childlike faith that is, "'foolish' enough to trust God’s wisdom and His supernatural equipment." He is the reason for everything I do. And when I realize that again, He suddenly shows me how to lay down myself and follow Him. I also realize I will be laying down myself for the rest of my life, but I will gladly do so for so great a God!
Being Foolish for Him,
~Joshua
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