First the Lord

I took some time a few nights ago to simply abide in the Lord and I’ll tell you that I’ve yet to regret every time I’ve made the opportunity to make this happen. I was talking with Him about my heart, about my future family, and asking Him to prepare me for all that He has for me. So He began to reveal something to me about my heart.

I have been blessed with an incredibly amazing earthly father. My dad is my number one fan, an incredible support to me, an excellent sounding board for all my crazy thoughts and ideas, and the greatest earthly covering and protector my heart has yet to know. He is not perfect, but he gives me his absolute best. We’ve spent a lot of time lately talking about relationships, about what I’m looking for in a spouse, about what it looks like to be pursued, etc. My dad has taught me more about the way a man desires to be respected, to be trusted to provide, and how it is truly a good man’s intention to protect his wife and his family. He has told me that one of the very best things I can do someday in my marriage is to give my husband the benefit of the doubt. This does not mean that my husband will be perfect or that there will not come times that I’ll have to communicate ways my heart has been hurt. But this does mean that when I come to him, it would honor him for me to remember that he did not try to hurt me, that his ultimate goal is to protect me, and that he didn’t do this intentionally.

As I was spending time with the Lord that night He began to reveal to me that in order for me to be successful in this concept with my husband someday, I must first be able to trust Him like this. It was revolutionary and completely brilliant! If I cannot trust my Savior to provide for me, to protect me, to have my best interest in mind, and to love me unconditionally I will never be able to do this with an imperfect human. And that’s okay that no human will get it perfect. I will not be perfect either. But my God is true and constant. He will never fail me. It will not always feel this way, and I won’t always be able to see the big picture in the difficult moments. And yet, I can know and trust in His character.

This extends beyond trust. If I do not believe the voice of the Lord when He speaks to my heart of value, of beauty, or the way He cherishes me, then how can I expect to believe it myself or when another person tells me? If I cannot forgive God for the times that it feels that I was held out on, I will have extreme difficulty forgiving others. If I cannot accept the love of my perfect King, I will never be able to rest in the love of a friend, of a husband, or of a family member.

This is not a one time fix. It’s not a quick fix either. Often we don’t believe these things because we’ve been told otherwise. If we’re really being honest, there isn’t a person on this earth without baggage of some kind. My guess is you’ve already had some of yours brought to the forefront of your mind in the time it took you to read to this point. There are some of us with more baggage than others, but we all carry or have carried it at some point.

I encourage you to ask of the Lord for healing. Request restoration. I promise you it is His desire to bring it to you. If you don’t believe me, check out the Bible. It’s not only the overall theme but interwoven into every single story. It’s the journey of freedom.

Tough Love

My previous post eloquently described my new profound knowledge of Moses’ wisdom in the wilderness. I regret to admit it only took me about 36 hours before the luster of my enlightenment had faded completely and I was ready to be through with my wilderness. Let me pause here to give major props to Moses for his patience. I didn’t last two full days leading myself before I was ready to be all done, and Moses made it forty years leading a grumbling peoples. Moses wins.

Now let us back up to where we left off in the last post… I was decidedly remaining with the Lord, wherever He determined to be. And if that meant the wilderness, then so be it.

But then I began to wonder why of all the places in the world the Lord would choose the wilderness? Why couldn’t we then walk hand in hand to the promised land? What God who loves me, cherishes me, protects me and has my best interest in mind would then determine to simply camp out in the wilderness?! Where is the goodness in that?

… It’s here that I’ll inform you that I write a lot. It’s primarily because I think a lot. And sometimes I will think so quickly that I neglect to remember to pause for listening. So to help this unfortunate imperfection, I write. It forces my thoughts to slow down just long enough to let God interrupt me and respond. It’s a wonderful little system He and I have going and if you’re looking for some ideas, that might be a good place to start.

It was while I was writing all these realizations about how not good a good God felt that He stopped me and asked me to contemplate something. When your child comes home from school and tells you that another kid in their class has been picking on them, your first reaction is probably to march yourself into that school the next day and give the little twerp who hurt your kid a good lesson. If they haven’t already figured it out, you’re going to tell them how fantastic your kid is, how they don’t deserve to be picked on, and how you’re going to make sure that their mother finds out about their poor behavior. But even without kids of my own, I am fully aware that is not always the best solution to the problem. As a parent, you can’t fight all your child’s battles for them. You can encourage them, love them, and give them suggestions or advise about how to handle it, but you cannot always save the day in the way you would prefer most to do so. At some point, your kids have to learn to fight their own battles. And while it may be difficult to watch your kid experience discomfort or pain, you know it is for their betterment. As a parent you can see the big picture.

It was at this point that I began to see what the Lord was up to. I was picking up what He was putting down... He was the parent, and I was the kid. And while it may feel like I am being held out on, like I’m not being provided for or protected like I ought to by my Dad, He can see the big picture. And while this pain still doesn’t feel like it has purpose, or like I couldn’t have learned some of these same things in far different ways, it is preparing me for something He wants to do through me. And whatever that is, I’ll have needed this season in the wilderness to be ready.

Does that make this season any easier? No. Does it add a little more purpose and understanding to it? I think so. My prayer is that it will do the same for you.

The Wilderness

Lately I feel as if every time I turn around, I’m reminded of Exodus 33. It can be from a song on the radio, something a friend or family member says, etc. Regardless of how it happens, it seems to be a relevant theme in my world. A little bit of context: the Israelites are in the wilderness, and Moses has just recently descended from a literal mountain top experience with the Lord. Out of frustration with the Israelites’ unfaithfulness to the Himself, the Lord commands Moses to take the Israelites up toward the promise land but tells Moses that He will not be going with them. It’s here that Moses begins to plead with the Lord. In verse 15 (NLT) he is even so bold as to say, “If you do not personally go with us, don’t make us leave this place.”

I used to simply think that Moses was a wise man for knowing that the Lord’s presence was the best place for the Israelite people to be. I mean it makes sense, right? Creator of the universe, all-powerful King of everything, the Great Provider, etc… You get the point. God is one cool dude. But the other day I began to realize something about the story I had never noticed before.

The Israelites were in the wilderness.

I know. How could I miss it? It’s only their location… Still I’d only ever considered the story in light of where they were going. I’d never thought about where they were. So lets talk about it for a second.

The wilderness. On my study trip to the Middle East in 2012 I experienced it first hand. It’s pretty depleted of natural resources - at least the ones that sustain life such as water, shelter and food. Lets also keep in mind the Israelites were a huge group of people, requiring a massive quantity of these very basic resources each day.

If you know much about the 40 years of wandering, you are probably already aware that God provided for His people. They ate manna each day and had water miraculously every time it was needed. But it was still the wilderness! It was the same thing for every meal every day of every week. Now I don’t know about you, but there have been enough of these seasons in my life for me to know that God will always provide. Even so, there still remains many a moment in such a season where I am literally just getting by. And I’m going to guess that in the wilderness, the Israelites were just getting by. Where they were headed was a land of prosperity, a land flowing with milk and honey, a land God promised to His people. Where they currently found themselves was a place where everything was directly the opposite.

Yet Moses tells the Lord that he does not want to be sent up from the wilderness into a land of prosperity if the Lord does not go with them. … Just let that sink in for a moment. What Moses truly just said was, “I would rather stay in a place of suffering and know that the Lord is with us than inherit a land of prosperity without the Lord beside us.” What a statement!

This stand that Moses makes has really encouraged me to remain faithful to the Lord through a season of what feels like a version of my own wilderness. The time of wandering for the Israelites was indefinite. There was no foreseeable end in sight. Yet Moses had the wisdom to stay with the Lord in a wilderness instead of walking into the land of promise without Him.