For two consecutive months my heart sank when I maneuvered my over-filled cart to the checkout lane and “The Daydreamer” bagged my groceries. As I watched her gaze off into the distance for every two items she packed, I wanted to snap my fingers in her face to grab her attention. Could I push her out of the way and bag my own groceries?
I did neither.
I did put a smile on my face.
But my insides did not match my outside.
Waiting. It can make me crazy. I put on a patience facade, but inside my heart races and my blood pressure rises. But God is calling me to wait on him and he shows me how in real-life incidents.
I’m grasping the idea that waiting is much bigger and much more important than I ever anticipated in my walk with Christ.
It’s also hard. Really hard.
It takes discipline. Ugh.
It takes perseverance. Too much sometimes.
God wants my inner self and outer self to be in harmony with each other. I might be able to fool others, but God is aware of the state of my heart.
If I were the most giving person, but my heart is resentful, my giving means nothing. I can be the most vocal for the socially oppressed, but if I oppress my fellow believers then my voice loses impact. If I raise my hands in worship or bow my body before the Lord, but refuse to surrender a secret hurt or offense then my worship means nothing.
Our outer self must reflect our inner self.
Psalm 37:34 “Wait for the Lord, keep his ways and he will exalt you to inherit the land.”
The key to having harmony between my inner and outer self lies in these three words: “keep his ways.”
But.
Sometimes keeping his ways is hard. Sometimes his ways lead us to a sea with our enemies closing in. And keeping his ways means surrendering a lifestyle or habit that is the opposite of kindness or unity or self-control or patience or goodness or life-giving words.
But we fail. You know? In one experience in the grocery store, we lose forward momentum. But we want to honor God and his word and we want to please him and receive his blessings so we keep trying and we keep failing.
Soon we are driven to the cross where we fall on our knees. We lift up our hands in surrender and we decide to wait on him because we are exhausted and can no longer keep doing and failing.
Waiting on the Lord begins with our impotence. We can do nothing in our own strength.
“Put your power in God’s omnipotence and find in waiting on God your deliverance. Your failure has been owing to only one thing: you sought to conquer and obey in your own strength. Come and bow before God who alone is good, and alone can work any good thing.” Andrew Murray, Waiting on God
We can talk ourselves into failing just by the overwhelming statement of “keep his ways.” But this I know: God takes us from strength to strength. Ability to ability. And we must carefully keep those that we have received the strength for, trusting him to guide our steps and guide our growth into the next one.
[bctt tweet=”In my full surrender I have full access to God’s blessings.” username=””]
In my impotence I am strengthened and filled with his goodness, his righteousness, and his love.
Waiting on God is about God’s magnificence, his faithfulness, his strength. It’s about recognizing that I am small and he is big. And it’s in my smallness that I experience his work in my life. The work that he brings from the inside out. The work that can only come from him, the work that is only through him, and the work that is only for him.
I’m one of those people who have a tendency to save things. I save those extra buttons that come with new shirts, but don’t ask me where I put them because I don’t know. I save gifts I’ve been given, even when I’ve outgrown the use of the item. I save gift bags to reuse, but not tissue paper because that’s just too much work. I save cards with heartfelt handwritten words from friends so when I forget my worth, I have a reminder.
Some would call me a packrat, and I would agree. I had the messiest room as a kid and underneath my bed was the best place to lose items and never to see them again. As an adult, my house might appear different, but if you opened closet doors and peeked under my bed, you would see I haven’t changed too much. I keep thinking I should get organized and clean things up and throw things away, but it’s hard.
I can’t seem to sustain any system for long so I end up on these purging binges. This might seem awesome–the crazy packrat lady is actually throwing things away–but I take it too far. I do get rid of things I don’t need, but I get rid of things I still need. I can’t seem to find the right combination of throwing things away and keeping things. And if I put something in a “safe” place it’s as good as thrown away because I can’t remember where I put it.
I see these tendencies in my heart as well. I keep behaviors and patterns of thought that should have been thrown out of my life. I cling to my belief that maybe this love of God is really too good to be true, and I might just wake up and be thrown away so I hold myself back from him.
But this holding of myself back has consequences as well.
“The most important [commandement] is, ‘Here, O Isreal: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your god with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:29-31 NIV
When I hang onto disbelief, it’s hard to love God with everything I am. When I cling to resentment, bitterness, or unforgiveness, loving him and others is not possible because these things stand in the way of giving myself totally and completely to Him.
I’m learning to live aware of the state of my heart because I know that resentment, bitterness, and unforgiveness harms me more than it harms anyone else. It also makes it difficult to fulfill the second commandment: “Love my neighbor as myself.”
When I’m judgmental of myself, I judge others.
When I’m annoyed with myself, I’m annoyed with other’s.
When I’m disgusted over my own actions, it’s easy to be disgusted over someone else’s actions.
How I feel about myself reflects on how well I love others. If I don’t love myself, I can’t love my neighbor. If we could see ourselves the way God sees us–through eyes of love, then loving our neighbors would be easy.
But it’s not. We know our weaknesses. We know our flaws. We know this journey to holiness is a lifelong journey, and we know the battle between the sin nature and the spirit nature rages within.
Loving ourselves has to start with loving God with our heart, soul, mind, and body. This is where we learn that we are lovable because as we love God we begin to see things his way. I know I’m flawed. I know perfection is a myth. I know my weaknesses, but I know I’m strong when I trust in God. I know my flaws can become facets that reflect his glory. I know that in him I am made complete.
If I can look at myself in a mirror and remember these things, I can actually love my neighbor well. Beth Moore writes in Believing God, “My obedience flowed directly from my faith to believe I was who God said I was even when I didn’t feel like it.”
There are times I don’t feel like I am who God says I am, but I choose to believe it because I want to obey his commands of loving him with everything that is within me and loving my neighbor as myself.
Loving myself doesn’t mean that I get to go buy the latest pair of shoes I have my eyes on, or the purse that’s simply amazing. It doesn’t mean being selfish with my “me” time. It doesn’t mean that I get what I want when I want it. Loving myself doesn’t mean I put my needs and wants above others.
Loving myself means embracing the truth of what God says about me so that God can use me to reveal himself to others.
Loving myself means allowing God to transform me into a truer reflection of himself and going smaller so that he can go bigger.
When I struggle with loving my neighbors, the struggle can usually be traced back to my thought-life about myself. When I’m rattle with insecurity, I’m ruled by fear in my relationships. When I’m overtaken by a tongue that throws sharp darts, it’s usually because my thought-life is filled with sharp and unkind words.
The struggle to love is true and real. It’s evidenced all around us in our world, our communities, and our homes. But what if we all determined to love God with our hearts, minds, souls, and bodies, and let him change us from the inside out and to love ourselves as he loves us–beloved children, made for a purpose that only we can fill, righteous, holy, and reflectors of him to this world. If we did, loving our neighbor as ourselves might become a little easier.
Acceptance, Security, and Significance is the three legged stool that makes up our identity. My weakest “leg” is the one labeled significant.
I look at my little ol’ life and see a stay at home mom who rarely gets regular showers, a crazy homeschooler who receives the stink eye way too often, a wanna be author with dreams of a book in my local bookstore. My kitchen sink is never empty, I raise dust bunnies, my bed gets made fifty percent of the time, and my kitchen island collects life’s clutter. I don’t see significance when I look at my life.
God’s definition of significance transforms my understanding of it. Significance is not about being noticed or an empty kitchen sink. It’s not even a bed made with the blankets hanging evenly along the side (mine are quite crooked, thank-you very much).
It’s not even having thousands of people read these words or buy my “some-day books.”
Significance means becoming smaller so God can become bigger. It’s about less me so more God-honoring fruit grows so other’s can experience the harvest for his purpose. It’s realizing that this life isn’t about positioning myself for my idea of success. But how I position myself to be used for God’s kingdom. In order to do that I must go lower and lower so he increases higher and higher.
I must let go of the unspoken, yet very loud, expectations that pressure me. A clean house? Perfect children? Harmonious marriage? Successful blog? My success or failure in my roles as a wife, mother, housekeeper, teacher, or writer cannot dictate my significance.
That dream? The one that involves words on a page and my name on the spine? My significance doesn’t change whether that dream simply stays this wonderful, glow-y kind of dream. And the even more secret dream—of leading worship for women’s conferences, and leading tender hearts into the most precious presence of God? Guess what? My significance doesn’t change whether I’m leading 8 or 800.
My heart, my life, and my innermost being grows most significant when placed in the tender hands of my most loving God as he shapes and molds for his purpose and position. Even when I’m feeling as though I’m not seen, and as long as I stay a living, willing sacrifice, I know without a shadow of doubt that God looks at me and sees me as significant.
But it’s one thing to know this on a surface level, it’s a completely different to accept this on a heart level where it gets lived out on a daily, moment by moment level.
But these verses in Ephesians and Philippians show us how to live out our acceptance, security, and significance.
“In whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.” Ephesians 3:12 ESV
“I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” Philippians 4:13 ESV
I cannot convince myself of my acceptance, security or significance because I cannot positive self-talk to myself enough to break through the lies my heart believes. I’ve tried. And the failure feeds the lies.
It’s only when I take my weakness to God that I find the strength I need to embrace the Truth of what he says about me:
Beloved.
Chosen.
Accepted.
Purposed.
Significant.
Special.
Priceless.
Receiving our identity in Christ happens the moment we receive Christ as our Savior. But living out our identity with him takes steps of faith and trust that he will rewrite our negative thought patterns into thoughts based on his truth.
It’s this process that makes our lives beautiful and colorful and oh so worth the wrestling. There’s nothing more beautiful than a woman, who has never felt loved or chosen, then when her eyes light with the Holy Fire of God’s truth as it sinks into her heart and rewrites what her past has taught and told her who she is. As the profound truth penetrates her heart, the strongholds fall and God rushes in and beauty is wrought from the rubble.
It’s like the butterfly’s metamorphosis. Beauty unfurls and beauty is you as you embrace the struggle of owning your significance in Christ. Let go of self-sabotage and trust the truth God declares over you.
