I realized yesterday that birthday's are our own personal New Year :) Yesterday was my birthday FYI...I think it's a better time than ever to evaluate, be thankful for where God has brought us and be hopeful for the future.
I was talking with a friend I hadn't talked to in forever yesterday and all of a sudden she said, "You just sound so CONTENT!". And it was true! I hadn't been able to describe how I felt all day, but I realized it really was contentment. I've always tried to figure out how to be content without losing desires and dreams. The second I stopped trying to figure it out, was when contentment came. My dreams and desires have never been so big! But I'm abandoned to God's dreams and desires, which leads to TRUST, which leads to that beautiful thing called CONTENTMENT. I don't have to worry about where my life is going.
We must not confuse being uncertain about where God is leading us with being uncertain about who God is. God is not summed up in what He's done for us, rather He is summed up with his own self description when Moses freaks out and asks God who to tell Pharaoh has sent him in Exodus 3:14, "God replied, 'I AM THE ONE WHO ALWAYS IS. Just tell them, I AM has sent me to you'"....uhhh ok? We want more of a description sometimes, we want to define God by what He's done in our lives...but what about when things aren't going so well? If we only define Him by our circumstances, no wonder we get so angry with Him, when we have NO CLUE what God is ultimately doing. I've had to learn to look at the core of God, and how He's shown that to me in my life, and then I can stand on that Rock, rather than getting pummeled by my surroundings.
Just a couple of weeks ago I had to deal with this concept. I watched a movie called the Last Song, and in it the girls dad was dying of cancer. It's been 17 1/2 years since my dad died of cancer, granted I didn't grieve fully for him until 12 years after he died, but at this point I didn't think anything could really trigger in me the feelings I had when I watched this movie...the feeling I had to come to grips with though was deep anger, towards my dad! He didn't leave anything for me or my brother like a note or a video saying goodbye, I never got to actually say goodbye to him even though I saw him the day he died. He has left me a legacy of amazing people in my life who served with him and knew him, but at this moment that's not what I cared about. I was so angry that he had left without saying goodbye to me or my brother.
I called my mom and just went off! I'm super embarrassed about it now, but I was so mad. She told me that he honestly believed until the second he died that God could and would heal him. "That's stupid!", I said without really thinking first, "That's stupid! He was stupid! That's not faith! That's naivety! That's stupidity! He neglected his family, his children by not preparing better!" And on and on and on. The words felt like poison coming out, they stung my soul, and my mom's, but I couldn't stop them. I've never spoken of my dad with anything but complete respect and love. But I was pissed. I got off the phone, and did the only thing I knew how to do to calm down my spirit and I opened my Bible. I don't even remember what I read, I don't think it mattered, I just needed God's presence and to have Him sort of make sense of this for me.
Now that I think about it, whether or not I still think it was stupid or not, I can't help but admit what I DO know to be true, and that is that my dad believed in WHO God was, WITHOUT it being based on what was going to happen to him. I believe he was encompassing this fact that it's not about where God's taking us in our lives, it's not about asking questions and trying to figure it out, it's about being COMPLETELY abandoned to Jesus. My dad was being the definition of a disciple as Jesus states it in Luke 15:26..."If you want to be my follower you must love me more than your own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters - yes, more than your own life. Otherwise you cannot be my disciple." Wow, hard to swallow for me, but I can't deny it to be true.
My dad loved me so much, and I know this. He was an amazing father. But he loved Jesus more. His life was completely submitted to His will no matter what, and he believed in the power of God. And maybe that in itself was the best gift he could have left for me, a painful but lasting example of pure faith.
I want to love Jesus more this year. I want to stop asking questions. This is a new year for me, and I am content, I am abandoned to God's will no matter what that brings, and I'm ready to put Him first. God is who He says He is, and by believing in that, at the cost of being willing to lose everything else in my life, I can truly enter into a new intimacy with Him that my soul thirsts for.
"Naturally, we are inclined to be so mathematical and calculating that we look upon uncertainty as a bad thing. We imagine that we have to reach some end, but that is not the nature of spiritual life. the nature of spiritual life is that we are certain in our uncertainty, consequently we do not make our nests anywhere." April 29th entry of My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers.
