Friday, September 5, 2008

September 5th

Hey everyone! I'm really happy to be back in Kansas City, it was really hard leaving family and friends to come back but the Lord is good and gave me grace to choose to be here again! So the Lord quickly beckoned me to more time in the secret place once I got here and it's been a few weeks now and I've pretty much done nothing but fail at answering this call. So yesterday a girl on my team sang a passage, I tried to remember which one it was however the Lord used her to sing that to me so I was a little preoccupied! What she sang boiled down do how the Lord doesn't expect us to bring him anything more than our brokenness, and how he delights giving us beauty for ashes. It was such a breaking down point for me because I was trying so hard, I had just heard a message on the ten virgins in Matthew 25 and was so challenged to get oil (intimacy) and in my mind and heart I made a decision to go deeper and give more of myself to that place of intimacy with the Lord. However I keep failing at this and each time I try to pick myself back up and make myself presentable before the Lord and the whole time he just wants me to realize that I'm not perfect and he doesn't expect anything more and that he wants me to come to him in my imperfections and my brokenness. I do this little run through in my head where one day I'm like: "ok I'm gonna tackle this intimacy thing, I'm gonna dive in and go deep in the Lord and give my time to grow more in love with him" and then I forget, or grow lazy, or let other things get in the way of that. So then I get so frustrated at the thought of my failure and when I get to this point of frustration thats when the Lord wants me to say "Yes I'm a failure, I'm broken and weak and I need you" but I don't do that, instead I kick myself when I'm down and then when I feel like I've kicked myself enough I pull myself back up and try to convince myself that I can set out to do this intimacy thing again and then the process just goes on and on. So this happened for the first few weeks until yesterday when the Lord showed through his loving kindness that he wants me to come to him when I'm broken, not when I'm fixed up and have it together. It's such a prideful thing to think that I can choose to be such a good devoted Christian and that I can say that I do A,B, and C. No, what makes me desirable in the eyes of God is when I know I'm weak and broken and when I lean on him and his mercy through every single step of my walk with him. Oh my gosh, just even as I am writing this I struggle with pride in my heart wanting to think that I can walk it out on my own, that is not at all how it is supposed to be with him and I'm so glad too because I would be a mess and so would all of us! So I wanted to get this out there because I know it's just our nature as humans to want to try and look good for everyone else but I want to say that I'm broken, I fail at what the Lord is calling me to do here on a daily basis and that's ok because he can't bring me to completion when I'm trying to do that on my own. I hate that the enemy lies to us and tells us that were the only ones that are failing at things in our walk, and so I just wanted to use my blog as an opportunity to tear down that lie and lay bear before the eyes of God and others and be ok with doing that because He is the one that will cover me up and make bring me to completion and at the end of the day I will look like him and not myself because I was able to do that! Whew ok, that was fun! Love you all, hope the Lord blesses you through this!