How do I even begin to share God's faithfulness to me? He is so worthy of our lives. SO worthy of all of our affections, attention, and sacrifice. We can’t even fathom the depths of His grace and love.
Wow. I am His home, the place He willingly chose and actually DIED to dwell in. The home of God must be so glorious, so clean, so perfect. In me, He is cleaning His home. In such a loving, extremely gracious way. I can’t begin to explain the Lord's patience and kindness with my sin and flesh.
The past two years I’ve experienced excruciating spiritual pain in the Father’s process of humbling me through His loving discipline. It has been an extremely painful experience to be obedient to God. As I mentioned in my post from last year, I moved across the country from California to Kansas in 2021 with my husband and two daughters. We moved away from our entire family, but also every single thing I found purpose and comfort in. Everything that actually created a numbness to my sin and caused me to be dependent on people, things, and places rather than my God.
If I could describe the last two years it would be the most painful, humbling, and glorious experience I’ve ever had in my entire life.
I have had so many questions for the Lord. So many times I’ve questioned why I’ve “turned into” such a terrible person after moving in obedience. After falling and falling and falling over and over into sin and the weight of shame that came with it, I came to an unexpected conclusion to the question “why am I like this?” And I am absolutely blown away by the answer.
My discovery: I have ALWAYS been like this. I have always housed these sinful, fleshly tendencies. I just have never been put in a situation so uncomfortable that it has FORCED that hidden sin to come to the surface. I had not experienced a fraction of the refining until this point in my life.
I now know how absolutely weak I am. I am literally nothing apart from His strength. I cannot be a good wife, mom, friend, or daughter apart from Him. It will never happen. And thank God that the moment I TRY to do things independently from Him I always fail. Because we are literally not created to be apart from Him. The ache and depression and constant pursuit of things that leave us disappointed is a huge billboard sign saying, “HELLO, something is wrong. You clearly weren’t created to be independent.”
It may be silly but the Father actually revealed this to me even further by looking at my daughters belly button the other day. I was looking at her belly button in awe of the fact that in order for her to be created, she had to source from me to receive life. As I thought about this I felt the Lord clearly impress on my heart, “We are all marked by dependency.”
Our “billboard” of weakness should direct us immediately toward His grace. It should guide us to source from Him. It’s impossible to source from our own strength in order to receive life and freedom. We MUST depend on the One who created us.
DO NOT let the enemy instill shame into you when you fail miserably. When you lose your patience, when you harbor bitterness, when you get in a pattern of judgmental or hateful or lustful thoughts. DO NOT let him separate you from God because of shame. Instead, praise God for His grace of a built in billboard sign. We were NEVER created to do things apart from Him and we CAN'T do it “right” apart from Him.
His loving tender kindness whispers to me after the storms I’ve gone through. Internal storms that feel like they could have killed me. I feel Him whisper in His home that He never has left, that He patiently stayed in, and where he lovingly sat next to the disgusting dirt and grime surrounding Him. Never changing, He whispers in this now newly clean house and says, “I’m cleaning my dwelling place. Making it fit for me. Filth and grime cannot live here, my dwelling place is clean.”
What if every single sin we struggle with is just a misdirected desire? Because it is. A misdirected desire to source from anything but Jesus. And I don’t even know how to describe what your life will look like or what He will use to refine you. I don’t know what He will use to push out all of your impurities in order to beautify and purify you, His treasure. Everyone’s life is so unique and special. He has such a specific purpose and plan for each individual person so I can’t say what He will allow you to go through. But PLEASE know, He is allowing you to go through your trials and your struggles because of His GRACE not His punishment. It is His discipline as your loving Father not because He is disappointed in you, but because He remembers you are dust and longs to teach you the way to life. He would actually be doing a disservice to you by withholding trials. Because trials are the pathway to dependency on Him and one of the most powerful ways God humbles us is in order to clean His dwelling place.
Thank you God. Wow, you are so faithful in pursuit of my heart and you are so beyond worthy of my life. Thank you so much for your loving patience, my loving Dad. You are the definition of grace. I can now receive your grace instead of feeling guilty that you still love me after all I’ve put You and others through. You are so beyond anything I can describe. Thank you for giving me the strength to take the first steps of obedience in order to experience your fiery refining process, so that I may experience the freedom of LIFE in You.
“Humility is the fear of the Lord; its wages are riches and honor and life.”
Proverbs 22:4
