With Christ’s death and resurrection the beginning has ended and the eternal journey begins.
It is finished! No more wondering if we’re enough, because we are.
No more questioning whether Christ really is who he says he is, because he is.
It’s the end of the beginning. The end of wandering, the end of separation from God and the try hard life.
Jesus is our beginning and end. The veil that separates us from God is torn and now his love is accessible through the One who was torn, beaten, mocked, and killed for us.
We all have the same beginning: darkness and bondage even when we think we’re free and in the light. But when self rules our hearts and our lives, we become enslaved to what self wants: what we see, feel, and experience.
Christ has come to set us free from the tyranny of self. Christ defeated death so that we may live a life holy and set apart for him. So, you see, Easter really is the end of the beginning.
We get to live the middle part now. It’s the part of life between our resurrection from spiritual death to life, and the day when we see Jesus face to face in eternity. How well will we live?
Will we falter and fail? Will we doubt and question?
Yes and yes. But we have a power available to us. A power that says that “greater is he in me than he that is in the world.” And this I know: it’s grace that enables me to live this life for Christ, through Christ, and in Christ.
It’s grace that transforms me. Grace enables me to give myself up for a living sacrifice. It’s grace that enables our lives to be set apart and holy. I crash and burn when I try and live for Christ through my strength and understanding. I know failure well.
But the beautiful thing we get to experience in our failures is redemption. It’s redemption that makes getting back up again possible. It’s the daily resurrection of my spiritual life when I make “self” the number one motivator in my heart.
I want to live this middle life well, but I know how life gets monotonous and we forget what we did this morning let along two days ago. And when life gets monotonous I forget to look around and see evidences of grace in my life.
Or life is one crisis after another and rather than holding onto the anchor of grace we flounder and hold onto ourselves and our limited understanding. Crisis’ can blind us to the redemptive work of Christ in our lives.
It’s the end of the beginning! Your beginning steps are over and done and now it’s time to run. Run the race God has for you with your eyes fixed on the prize–eternity with the Father of Light. Let him shine that light into all the recesses of your life and keep on running.
You’ll make it. How do I know?
Because God is your strength. He is your love. He is your light. And he will finish it.
“A soul cannot seek close fellowship with God, or attain the abiding consciousness of waiting on him all the day without a very honest and entire surrender to all his will.”
It’s the “very honest” that grips me. It’s one thing to be honest, but very honest? It requires me to examine dark corners that I would rather leave hidden. If I’m very honest then I would have to admit that I don’t surrender well. And I want to surrender well. So I hide from the truth that surrender doesn’t work without honesty.
Surrender without an honest examination of our hearts leaves us deceived into thinking we’ve surrendered, and the deception leads to frustration because we don’t experience freedom.
This waiting on God brings me to deep waters and the discovery that I need God much more than I ever realized. It’s in the waiting that I discover layers of my heart that haven’t been relinquished to him. I realize that I’ve given him a pseudo-surrender, but failed to give him my honest heart.
My honest heart defaults to insecurity and comparison: two enemies that vie for the death of my soul and the defeat of God working and moving in me. So today I’m going to tell you a secret.
The secret to an honest surrender lies in building an altar based on the character of God. His character is only good. It is faithfulness, it is strength, and it is our everything.
If I know that he is faithful, then I can trust that he won’t run when I am at my ugliest. If I know he is truth then I can relinquish the lies I believe. When I realize that his love is never-ending and nothing can separate us, I’m willing to be honest with my fears.
It’s knowing his character that allows me to surrender all.
And it’s surrender that transforms me. Without surrender I cannot be a living sacrifice or experience his transformative work in my heart. My Christianity turns into a list of tasks to accomplish rather than a relationship to develop.
When we fail to get to know God we rob ourselves of the light he can bring to our darkness. Do you have pockets of your heart that are deep? Do you have secrets that you fear bringing to the light?
He knows the deep, he knows the secrets, and he’s waiting for you to invite him into those raw places. He’s waiting for you to acknowledge his faithfulness and love towards you. Will you take steps today to build an altar based, not on your fears of what might happen, but on who God is? Will you open your Bible and let his words soothe your soul?
But running clothes are cute. So then, maybe, I should run. Just so I can look cute.
Nah.
But I do run towards Christ because I’m on a pilgrimage.
It’s a journey we walk, run and battle our way through. We set our hearts. We fix our eyes. And we move our feet.
“I will run in the way of your commandments for you set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32
I don’t know about you, but this whole life thing can trip me up, trap me fast, and triple my heartache. My heart sometimes doesn’t feel free.
It gets caught up in performance or perfection. My heart trades worldly wisdom for godly wisdom. It mistakes man’s words for God’s word. Lies snare. Idols form. And soon I’ve traded the glory of God for a false light. Then I no longer run, but stub my toe on a rock, trip over a boulder, and tumble down the cliff.
I sit stunned and wonder how I got here. You too? Do you feel like you stumble more than you run? Do you want to know how to run? I do, too.
Reveal Your Heart
Ask God to show you your heart. It’s okay if you cringe, I know I do. But this is the deal. We can forget, for a while, the contents of our hearts and fool ourselves into thinking that nasty little section that gossips or harbors bitterness isn’t really there, but God sees all. Only instead of following our example by condemning us, he lovingly convicts. Because how can we run free if our hearts are bound to sin?
How can we run free when we are bound to performance or perfection? How can we be free if we are more worried about what other’s think of us instead of doing what’s right in God’s eyes? When fear rules our lives, we cannot be free.
So. Freedom to run. Not away, but towards God. It comes when our hearts are set free of any sin that stops forward momentum. Freedom comes when we know who we are in Christ and when we surrender all to him.
I know that my ability to run lies in how open I make my heart to God. Will I let him have unfettered access? Will I risk trusting him with the most intimate details of my life?
Take the Risk
It’s risky. This journey we’re on. But one unequivocally worth it. So, how do we run? We fix our eyes on Jesus. We give the Holy Spirit full access to our heart. And we trust God for strength and endurance.
We can do it. I know it looks hard, but running well is a benefit of freedom. Step into the freedom and run. He has set your heart free.
Our paths take us through valleys and mountaintops.
We linger in Vanity Fair.
We dance with Ignorance.
We battle Giants.
We wrestle Pride.
All the while we march ever onward, ever upward with our eyes fixed on the perfecter and finisher of our faith.
Maybe you’re on a battlefield and the giants are about to crush you. Or you’re lingering in vanity fair where all things pleasurable tempt and distract you from your purpose.
It could be that pride is having it’s way with you and ignorance is deceiving you.
But either way–it’s time to get up again.
Hope is calling your name.
Lift up your weary head and look to the source of your strength: God.
It is he who carries you. He gives you the strength to take the next step. He inspires you and whispers encouraging words to help you onward and upward.
“Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.” Psalm 84:5
Rest. Then respond.
He will fight your battles–the battle of complacency that we sometimes don’t even know we’re in. But we are. It’s found at the end of the day when we can’t remember the beginning. We discover it when we forget to care about others. We run into it when we resist change.
We grow weary and stumble in this journey of onwards and upwards. But we have this hope:
“As they [you] pass through the Valley of Baca, they [you] make it a place o springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools. They [you] go from strength to strength till each appears before God in Zion.” Psalm 84:6-7
We journey strength to strength.
That’s how we make progress. We go from God’s strength here to God’s strength there. One jaunt at a time.
And as we do so–the valley of bitterness is turned into a valley of growth and refreshment.
This is a journey we all can take. Will you step out and onward? I’ll be cheering you on!
What do you do when the hard is hard? Do you hide? Do you immerse yourself in all things chocolate and a good book that takes you to places long-gone? Do you find yourself paralyzed by the what ifs? Do you stare it in the eye and wrestle it to the ground?
We all have hard. It comes in different packages, but it’s still hard. And what might be hard for me, might be easy for you, but you have your own set of hard too. If there’s one thing that’s chronic in this life–this is it: hard.
Hard days. Hard lives. Hard hearts.
And that hardness is an indication that I need the softness and the power of grace.
The Softness of Grace
The softness of grace gives me freedom not to compare my hard to yours, because in reality: I am healthy. My kids and my husband are healthy. I am able to pour my life and energy into raising my kids and then ministry to others. When I compare my “hard” to my friends who struggle and suffer with health, family, or financial issues, I don’t feel I have the right to my hards.
When I compare, I rob myself of receiving God’s grace because I minimize my experience in the journey he has me on. And it’s in the journey that I learn dependence on him and comparing feeds my independence.
I feed my independence because I won’t admit this day, this week, this month is hard and I fail to reach for God’s help and rescue. So comparing our difficulties robs us of the softness that grace brings to our lives. Comparing actually leads to competition and competition leads to compulsively looking to ourselves for strength and success.
The Power of Grace
When I run smack dab into the middle of hard, I know I need to reach for the power of grace, but so often I reach for anything else rather than the power of God. It’s the power of grace that makes living this life possible. But that seems so nebulous. It’s much easier to look to Pinterest, Facebook, snapchat, or Instagram for the latest tips and tricks to live this life well. It’s even easier to turn to the words of others rather than the Word of God.
It’s the word of God that shows me how to live through hard. Joseph. David. Abigail. Rahab. Moses. Deborah. Peter. Paul. Job. These are my examples on how to live well through the hard. They knew the power of grace in their lives. The power that enabled change, not their circumstance, but themselves within the circumstance.
So often I think I need to change my outside: maybe if I were more organized, or slimmer, or researched the latest health news, my hard wouldn’t be so hard. But it’s our insides that change our outsides.
[bctt tweet=”It’s our insides that change our outsides.” username=””]
Our hards challenge us on the insides, in our hearts.
Worry or trust?
Doubt or belief?
Negativity or Positivity?
Complaining or gratefulness?
We have a choice and it’s the power of grace that enables us to choose trust, belief, positivity, and gratefulness. Even if it’s in the middle of the hard.
Hard will come. Hard will go. But even if it does or doesn’t, can we extend the softness of grace to ourselves and tap into the power of grace to keep choosing God’s way in the midst of hard?
The Giver of light gave me the gift of flickering light after a long season of darkness. Hope flashed briefly in the darkest of soul night where I had wandered searching his word, playing God-music, fellowshipping with the body of Christ, praying and waiting for Light. I waited a long time for that flash. But I knew this hope:
Isaiah: 30:18 “Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.”
Waiting.
It speaks of inaction, of watching paint dry, of pointlessness. Yet it’s not.
Andrew Murray describes best:
“Waiting in the sunshine of his love is what will ripen the soul for his blessing. Waiting under the cloud of trial, that breaks in showers of blessing is as needful. Be assured that if God waits longer than you wish, it is only to make the blessing double precious.”
God certainly waited longer than I wished. Much longer. I feared I would never hear from him again. I feared that my Christian life would be shallow. I feared how much longer I could go through the motions.
But I learned much in the dark and when His Light pierced through I knew this:
God longs for your heart. Your heart that says yes to him even if the red sea doesn’t part or the flames consume or the lions devour or the waters overtake.
But the only way you can give him your heart is if you understand the power of his presence in your life.
Not the power of his promises, although they are mighty. It’s his presence that our hearts should most long for yet we substitute his promises for his presence.
It is possible to experience both—his promises and his presence—and we should experience both because if we don’t then we have things a little mixed up. It’s mercy and grace and judgement in one package that transcends comprehension.
[bctt tweet=”Seek God’s presence no matter what. Seek his promises and his presence will be lost.” username=””]
Why? Because God longs for a relationship with you. And relationship comes when you enjoy and long for his presence. He wants to know you and be known by you. Waiting on God will bring joy and peace and also discomfort because if we are to make him known he will continue to rid us of anything that is not of him.
My dark night? It was rooted in anger at God. An anger I didn’t know was there until God pierced the recesses of my heart and brought it into his light.
His judgement or conviction is something we don’t need to fear if we know his presence. When we know his presence then we know his heart is for us, that he thinks good thoughts towards us, that he makes good out of bad.
But if we don’t know the power and beauty of his presence then we fear conviction and believe it leads to depravation. But it really leads to freedom. Freedom to be who he created you to be. Freedom to choose him and his ways. Freedom to live for him and in him and through him.
The Lord longs/waits to be gracious to you and blessed are you when you wait for him.
If you are in a season of waiting for God to be gracious to you, may I offer you this? Keep waiting. Keep leaning. Keep trusting. God may be growing you in this waiting time so that you experience a double blessing when the sun breaks through the dark, dark soul night.
A double blessing of his presence and his promise.
The Giver of light gave me the gift of flickering light after a long season of darkness. Hope flashed briefly in the darkest of soul night where I had wandered searching his word, playing God-music, fellowshipping with the body of Christ, praying and waiting for Light. I waited a long time for that flash. But I knew this hope:
