A Rigorous Course

I've been learning many things over the last three years. To me, it's been a crash course in spiritual muscle development. I prefer to go the more gentle route but someone else thought that I would only learn the things I needed to through a rigorous course in dependence. You should see what happens when you have the legs of what we think security is kicked out from underneath us. It really shows you where your heart is and truly where we view God.

One of the hardest things is to realize that you have absolutely no control over anything. This usually sends me into a fit of frustration and anger. I hate what's happening around me but I am helpless to change it. Every direction we take seems to be met with a dead end. I beg, plead and have vigorous conversations with the Lord and yet, I have no answers. Silence seems to follow me around.

Then, ever so gently, something will happen that was clearly the working of God himself as if to say that He is listening, providing and making a way. Perhaps in my, what I refer to as Donald Duck moments, I am so busy being frustrated that things are not changing that I miss the areas that are.

One thing that I have noticed is that I have great periods of growth that make me feel like I am soaring, that I have learned much and am on that mountain top. Then, there are periods after that, that are valley-like and silent. It is difficult to keep your focus upward in those times and especially after a lengthy crisis. You begin to wonder where God is, if he's forgotten you, if you will ever be on the other side of it. Sometimes we just have to continue trusting God even when nothing makes sense or whether we feel up to it or not. God sees the beginning to the end and the end to the beginning and only He is able to work things out.

So why can't I leave it alone and let Him do what needs to be done. Because I am uncomfortable. Life's situations are ripping me raw and I see the pain and it's effects everyday. My heart yearns to heal the hurts and make things well. But, God did not intend for me to do that. He wants me to learn something through this. He wants me to know and understand the depth of His love. He wants me to know and understand where my dependence should be. He wants me to know and to understand about trusting Him alone.

It's one thing to say that we trust God, that we depend on God, that we know that God loves us and an entirely different thing to fully understand what the reality of that means in the deep places of our soul. When we are placed in a situation that makes us face that in the raw, you find out really what you believe those to be.

Some chuck the whole thing and give up their faith in God declaring that God doesn't love them or He has forgotten them. How could a God of love do that? Others, hang on with all that they have struggling day to day to fight for their relationship with God, knowing that living for Christ was never promised to be easy.

I choose to hang on with all that I have even when nothing makes sense and my world seems to be falling apart. I am broken and liquefied. I am terrified of what may come. But most importantly, I want what I've been learning about God to settle in my soul so that I know without equivocation the things I've learned. Those things which will be stored up as true treasures. I want to learn all that I can about the God who created me so that when I meet Him face to face, HE will not be an UNKNOWN God to me.