Rest in Uncertainty

Sometimes I’m extremely uncertain about what the Lord is trying to teach me, but not for lack of trying to figure it out. I’ve been trying to learn a lesson for nearly a year now and it’s beginning to be draining. I want to be able to see where it leads. God is faithful to show Himself especially now, and I know that He has purpose for where He places us. Everything is to His glory and I’m growing to see that not everything is meant for us to understand. I pray that God will continue to grow and strengthen me in my inability, that I will have the faith to rest and know that all is for His good. I’m so thankful that God promises to continue to grow us. He isn’t content in leaving us where we are but rather he longs to sanctify us and make us more like his son.

“Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from him. Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken. My salvation and my honor depend on God; he is my mighty rock, my refuge . Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.” Psalm 62: 5-8

This Psalm has been great for me to read time and time again. God wants us to pour ourselves out to him and for us to be known by him. It’s impossible to trouble God with the things we go through on the contrary he is pleased to hear us cry out for him. I hope that I will never quit learning the promises and the words of the Lord. That they will continue to push me to know and love him more. As I am aimless in the quandary that is life, I hope that God opens my eyes and strengthens my faith the lean on him more fully.

The Gospel Demands.

I’m currently listening through a sermon series by David Platt called the Gospel Demands. I recommend it to anyone. It’s on itunes podcast. This is a plug and it’s one that is the reason for a major revamp of my walk with the Lord.

If I believe that the bible is true, that means radical things for my life. Not small changes and adjustments but it means that there are radical implications for how the bible, how Christ, how God’s love affects the way that I live. This doesn’t mean that I have a checklist of do this or do that. While we crave for a list of boxes that we can check off of external practices this completely misses our hearts. It’s not the point that we have this but it’s the point that the word of God drives us to the spirit and in turn we spend hours wrestling with God in prayer of what this word means for our lives. This will spur on radical external implications that are rooted in an internal change. Not the other way around. David Platt says that Christians today ware willing to do everything that we can in order to bypass spending the necessary time before God for internal change. How true. I can think of so many times in my life were I would go to Church on Sunday morning not pick up my bible anytime until the next Sunday and then have the guts to question God why he wasn’t growing me…. Are you kidding me? How naive have I been in the past to expect God to let me check off those boxes that I didn’t do this or that and then did this or that and expect for those things to be what grew me? What a misconception of the gospel.

The supreme love of God is what I long to drive my heart. Luke 14:26 “If anyone does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters- yest even his own life he cannot be my disciple.” This may seem brash to hate those that we are supposed to love. But in Matthew 22:37 Jesus states that the greatest commandment is “Love the Lord our God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Our love for God is supposed to be so supreme that any other form of love is so lackluster that it looks like hate. Our hearts become so captivated by the love of God that anything else is pitiful. Christianity is not a relationship of begrudging obedience but that our love for Christ becomes everything else. Do I love God to the extent that my heart beats for him and that ALL of my affections are driven by him? Jesus doesn’t get our leftovers.

Let’s be real honest about it. I fail at this daily. Not occasionally. Daily. The reality is that I have given Christ full reign over those things that I am comfortable with giving to Him. Even more reality is that I continually choose the version of Christianity that is enough to be respectable but not enough to become uncomfortable. My plea is that God will continually make me uncomfortable for the Gospel. I don’t pretend to have it all together and I never would begin to say that I’m close to having it together. They beauty of it is that when we begin to realize that the reward is a supreme reward that nothing is truly sacrifice. C.S. Lewis says that we are too easily pleased. We are children playing with mudpies instead of having a vacation at the sea. We don’t even truly begin to grasp that the reward of knowing Christ, heaven. When we begin to see the reward that Christ is we can see that the rest of the stuff just gets in the way. Stuff doesn’t satisfy the longings of our hearts.

I’m so thankful that God is willing to be patient. He will pick me up time and time again and turn my eyes to him. I can’t begin to say that I have a handle on letting God take everything of me, but I pray that He will never stop teaching me to remove my grasp on the things that I hold and in turn replace them with His promises. That my life will be a total and complete longing to know Him, and be willing to loose everything in order to gain the most precious and supreme reward of all of knowing Him.

Simple Truth

“But God demonstrates his love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8

This is very possibly the most beautiful statement that has ever been made. “While we were still sinners…” Not when you get your junk in line. Not once you were made lovely. Not once you were without shame. But while we were still sinners.

I’ve been teaching VBS this week at my church this week and it has been such a beautiful experience to see the Gospel displayed in glory for precious children to see the graciousness the beautiful nature of God. One of the hardest things about growing up in church was this idea that my life had to be perfect. That I had to fit into this mold or see the world just like everyone else before I could have any real relationship with the Lord. And PRAISE him that this is not true. For if it were I would never be good enough to sit before the feet of the Lord. God has been continually showing me that in my failures in my faults is where He shows His beauty.

I could not be considered beautiful in the least but God can cover my spots and my stains with Christ and bring me closer to Him through it. I love the fact that Christ was continually putting himself in a place that was with those who didn’t know the Lord. He ate, drank, and lived with those who needed to know God. It wasn’t enough to live a perfect life for no one to see but to live rightly in the eyes who needed to see it. I long that the Lord will continually open my eyes and my heart to those who will gain salvation and truth.

I know that I can easily live striving to check off a box. To go to church, to dress a certain way, to act a certain way, and to have the right kinds of friends those things are easy. But God wants so much more from our lives then to have us simply cross things off a list. That is what makes Christianity so much different than any other Religion that I have ever studied. So many other people live striving to cross off enough things so that God will look upon them. But God is willing to come to us. It’s not about sacrificing or meditating or anything else. Not that we should become lackadaisical because God comes to us but it should spur us on to live more fully because He has already bridged the gap to himself. We don’t have to do it because Christ has already done that.

These things may seem ridiculous but God has been continually reminding me that this is not of myself but of Him. Everything good that I do is His and every sin that I do is redeemed by Him. Praise be to God that it is not based on me because I could never do anything well enough to begin to deserve salvation and yet I still belong to Him. But God’s grace covers all.

To God be the glory forever and ever Amen.