Consider a Jealous God

My heart cries out for more today. It screams for something deeper; something more vivid and alive. Something that I can grasp onto and hold, take it in as if it's my very own breath that I'm embracing. Something--no, Someone--that will hold me and keep me and birth in me a wild and abundant and lovely passion and burning for life.

I have been home in Washington for five weeks now. I left YWAM Destination Paradise in Belize five weeks ago with a heavy and faltering heart. I left with an angry and despairing and hurting spirit. I left with a sense of bitterness and frustration; towards others, but mostly focused towards myself.

I was reading in Hebrews 12 a few days ago and verse 3 kept playing over and over in my mind.

"For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, 

lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls."

When I left DP, I was weary, discouraged. I hadn't been considering God and His passions and heart for me, and I fell into a state of thinking that was so inwardly focused that I couldn't see what He was speaking over me. Since being home, I have found that peace again. I have found the rest in Him that I have so desperately been craving, discovered once more the excitement and intimacy with my Father. He has been speaking into me life and color, breathing into my weary soul and reviving the joy within that is so natural for me. My heart is still in a process of healing, of finding a place where I can communicate healthily with those whom I have hurt and who have hurt me, but within this process I am learning to focus on God's peace and humble myself before Him daily, hourly, in every moment, because according to Deuteronomy 4:24;

"...the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God."

and

"Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken,
let us be thankful, and so worship God with reverence and awe,
for our God is a consuming fire." (Hebrews 12:28-29)

My God is a jealous God. He is a God thirsty for my love, hungering to get to know me better and craving my company. Who am I to deny Him His glory? It was foolish of me to step into sin and convince myself that He wasn't watching, that I could repent later. It would be foolish for me to run from that. Instead, I'm walking into His presence with a sense of utter peace and joy, because His grace and His love is bigger and more passionate than I could ever imagine. He is reining me in and teaching and growing and stretching me, and as this happens His restoration and His will for me encompasses me and burns in my heart; calling me and prodding me ever towards His feet, towards the throne, towards His beauty.

This is What it Looks Like to be Real Sometimes.

I'm so incredibly small.

Sometimes, I get frustrated because I can't eat what I want to eat. Sometimes I get frustrated that I live in a state that has rain 90% of the year. (Made that statistic up... but it's probably true.) Sometimes I get frustrated because I don't like my clothing. Today was one of those days.

I found myself in my room, standing helplessly in the middle of a pile of clothing, upset because I didn't want to wear any of it. I felt like my clothing was outdated, out of style, old. I felt like it didn't fit just how I wanted it to, or it didn't look as good as last time I wore it. 

And then I realized what I was doing. Honestly, how utterly sick is it that I stand in the middle of a warm, carpeted room with three windows, a bed, closets, mirrors, shoes, a couch, on the top floor of a rambling farm house, and I am upset about my clothing choice? I know people--I know children--whose clothing is ripped, and baggy, and fading, and literally falling off of their back. I know people whose only house is a couple of random pieces of wood set up together and placed against a concrete wall. I know people who have no place to sleep at night, except for the cold, hard ground under the trash on the side of the street. Yet here I am, standing in my room whining because I don't want to wear my striped shirt today, and I can't find clean socks. 

It saddens me to remember that before I fell in love with God I was a selfish and haughty, proud human being. What saddens me even more than that though, is that I have found myself slowly slipping back into that same cycle. 

The fact that "fitting in" or being "in style" concerns me even a little is almost a warning flag to me. It's not a bad thing to be stylish, or to be able to relate to people. However, I find myself questioning my motives when that is consuming me, and I know that I have gone too far when I step back and see that I am in a situation like the one I found myself in today... standing in the middle of a heap of blessings, and complaining because I don't have more, or better, or bigger, or prettier. 

How did I become this? The realization of where I had let my attitude drift to started a whole new round of frustration, and with it determination. So today, I wage war. I don't know how to be any different than the selfish woman that I am on my own, and so I make a choice. I will cling to my Jesus harder and fiercer than before, because without Him, this life of mine is worthless. I don't want to be proud, or haughty, or selfish, or flaunt myself in any way, and so I cast those cares aside and I claim freedom from those. I want to live a life of servanthood.

I remember the sweetness of His presence and the sound of His voice in my spirit, the rush of His wind against my skin and the colors He painted around me. I remember visions He has given me and His promise of more to come. I remember Him being so much that I literally cannot describe Him. I am so thirsty to return to that place where I could sit in His presence and feel His peace and His heartbeat and stay there for hours without becoming restless. So once again, I sit before Him, a pitiful human, and I offer myself up.

I mentioned in my last post that I am ready for whatever He has for me, and I truly am. I am a broken, tired little girl, but honestly... that doesn't even matter. Because where I end, He begins. Where my spirit is full of frustration, His is full of grace. When I don't know what to sing, He places a melody in my heart. And that, my friends... that is extraordinary.