We’ve had a wonderful summer: Simple, sunshine, home, popsicles, family, friends, sunflowers. My days are full. There is a lot of peace because I know I’m obeying for this season. It is so freeing to just attempt to obey, not attempt to fix my life and save the world; it is so freeing to stop thinking I was made to do something more, harder, or more important than this normal daily life I lead, and to stop thinking I am supposed to get somewhere else. It’s not that things won’t happen with missions or music (my passions!)…it’s just that I know now what my responsibility is, and I’m sticking to it. For maybe the first time in my life, I am living for now, and don’t feel responsible for tomorrow’s callings.
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God has definitely made it clear in half a dozen ways how incapable I am of doing what is clearly in my lap today anyway, let alone tomorrow’s callings. It is actually freeing to know that I can’t do the things I tell the Lord I’ll do for Him; I’m not trying to prove I can do anything anymore, because He has made me utterly unable (on my own). It was necessary for me to see that I am really not good at anything I attempt! Marriage, my walk with God, song writing/singing, missions, intercession, parenting, relationships, running a household. I had to see how much I really stink at these things and start from there. I was like, “Why are you making me realize this, God? Just to make me feel horrible? Just to make me see how I can fix my own life and squeeze it all in and just learn to do better after all these years of failing at it???” And He was like, “No, to set you free.”
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He is setting me free. And practically speaking, this freedom has brought changes to my lifelong desires, to my thought processes, to how I spend my energy, and to what I really think I need in life. (matt. 22:37) Right now, knowing I am not good at any of the things I always expected myself to excel at, my life really does revolve around dependence on Jesus in each of these things which are alive and well in my daily life (and I am certainly unable to do this without His very patient grace). I think I am getting to the place where I don’t want anything more than He wants for me, which means two things. Number one, it absolutely means that I cannot spend my time thinking about, desiring, needing, and working toward places (both literally and figuratively) that He has not given me. Number two, it means I surrender everything I ever thought I would have, do, or be in order to embrace daily obedience in the here and now NOT KNOWING where it will lead. (This season by season obedience may very well lead to where we thought it would…but we don’t obey because of where we think we’ll end up! We obey, and die to where we want to end up. We decide walking with Him is more important than anything we could be or do.) We are told we are supposed to live our life with this end vision, and you logically figure out what steps you need to take to get there. They call that purposeful living, and I was all about that! That was so me! But God is changing me; I don’t know about you, but God hasn’t told me any end visions…except that He is returning and He wants us to recognize each other on that day. Whatever passions or ideas He has planted, surely He will also be faithful to water and grow and blossom them, if He chooses. He doesn’t have to. We do sometimes run away with His ideas and make them pretty different than He first said…
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The last thing I’ll say is I thought that what I expected from my life was HIS idea!! So I was running after it FOR Him, or so I thought were the motives of my heart! Thank goodness He was running after me, chasing me down, pulling me over on the side of the road to tell me the truth about myself and about what He really wants. My expectations are little by little just narrowing down to Jesus; not the mission field & saving lives in africa, not a music career, not a mother of two brilliant prodigy children, not a intercessor & teacher & writer of deep things the Lord reveals. I had a fatal belief that I needed to be important. This is something like round 103 of finding out I just need to be His.
Thank you so much for sharing!! You put into words the thoughts that I’ve been thinking over the past couple of weeks. A lot of times I struggle with not being overseas right now. I get so focused on the things that I think are good because they are for Him. But they aren’t Him.