The Beginning of the End

Today is the beginning of the end. The end of a 3 month period where I have allowed my emotions and feelings speak louder and longer than the truth. For the past 3 months I have felt depressed, isolated and alone. I have allowed my emotions to flow through me and carry me wherever they may lead. This has often times been astray. My heart is fickle. I know this in my head, but never have I seen in laid out so plainly in my life before. Instead of desperation leading me towards a closer, more intimate relationship with the Lord, I fell away. Allowing my feelings to affect my relationship with God, with other people, and the ministry that God has called me towards.

When I was in Knoxville a couple of weeks ago for a wedding, I went to my favorite bookstore called McKays. There I purchased "Get Out Of That Pit" by Beth Moore. I knew then where I was, but I still didn't have the courage to start the long, upward journey. God has been speaking to me gently, and I'm excited to know that His faithfulness never ends. He never gives up on me, even when I have given up on myself. In the introduction to her book and devotional journal, she said something I completely related with and thought she had read my mind.

Life can be excruciating. Crushing, in fact. The sheer magnitude of our worries can press down on our heads until we unknowingly descend into a pit of despair one inch at a time. Something so horrible can happen that we conclude we'll never be okay again. We can blow it so badly we think God would just as soon we stayed under that dirt and out of His sight. But, if we're willing to let truth speak louder than our feelings, and long enough that our feelings finally agree, we can be far more than okay. We can be delivered to a place where the air is crisp, the enemy is whipped, and the view is magnificent. 

I'm really excited to claim the promises found in Psalm 40:1-3. My God delivers and rescues us out of a pit of darkness and brings us into the kingdom of the Son He loves.

I waited patiently for the Lord;

he turned to me and heard my cry. 

He lifted me out of the slimy pit, 

out of the mud and mire;

he set my feet on a rock

and gave me a firm place to stand. 

He put a new song in my mouth, 

a hymn of praise to our God. 

Many will see and fear

and put their trust in the Lord.  

Right Where I Am

Recently, I got the immense joy of connecting with the Navigators 20's Missions. I've been looking forward to this for months. I love meeting new people and it was the perfect place to do so. However, in the past few weeks, my life has felt turned upside down because of some stuff I have going on in my life. Things that once made sense, did so no longer. So I went into this gathering of believers with a heavy heart.

God has a funny way of knowing me better than I know myself. I have a tendency to run to other people before running to God with my problems. There is just something so comforting about hearing an audible voice and receiving a hug that I can feel from someone. And while these things are wonderful, they tend to get in the way of my relationship and intimacy with God. So this past week and a half, timing and geographical location has not allowed me to run to the people I most often do: Betty, Morgan, Erin ect... I think God did that on purpose.

So last night while we were gathered in John and Beth's living room, the phrase "Right Where You Are At" kept being repeated both in the context of our geographical location and our spiritual or emotional place. I could feel this tugging on my heart. I didn't want it to. I wanted to ignore the still small voice. I managed to ignore God (how, I don't know) until I was in my car driving home. Then it felt like God was shouting at me even over the loudness of my radio. So I turned it off and prepared myself for an interesting conversation with the Lord.

I've been angry all week. Not at any one person but at life and circumstances in general. So I decided that if God wanted to talk, then fine. We were gonna talk but I was gonna go first. I had a bone to pick. I asked God what he had to say about my anger. I yelled and ranted and raved and cried all the way home. If someone had looked into my truck at the time, they probably would have thought I was crazy. But if God wanted to meet me where I was, then it was time to be honest.

I took every bit of emotion I had and threw it at him like he was my punching bag. And wanna know an interesting thing, it was like he just stood there and took it. Like he knew I needed to get it all out. He didn't yell back or tell me how selfish I was being. He just let me be angry and cry. He let me feel all the emotional spectrum that I had going on. And then he just started to help me pick up the broken pieces of my heart and life. God listened to what I had to say and was feeling even if it was totally wrong. It felt true to me.

And I'm excited to say that I feel so much better and am looking forward to hearing his part of the conversation because that is now it works. Someone talks and someone listens, then the roles reverse. Its my turn to listen now. I'm sure he has plenty to tell me.

Choices

     Recently I have been in a very apathetic state. If someone were to have actually asked me how I was doing and waited to hear my real response, I probably would have said I have been depressed. This is not normal for me but I knew all the signs. I was trained as a PL to look for these signs in freshmen and I began to notice them in myself. For someone so extraverted, I didn't want to be around people. I didn't care about school or the things that were usually important to me. I didn't even really spend that much time with God. I was officially in a funk and was like that for probably the past 3 months. Slowly but surely I began to fight against these feelings. I knew that something was wrong but I couldn't figure it out. Luckily for me Betty, the woman who disciples me, was willing to ask me the hard questions and wait patiently for me to answer. She knew when I was hiding the truth but yet she waited for me to be ready to tell her how I was really doing. She never gave up. 

     God never gave up on me either. I think every Sunday, the message was written just for me. God was desperately trying to get my attention. He knew that I was not following Him and that I was falling apart at the seams. He knew what was wrong and wanted to help me and heal me. I steadily ignored Him though. I heard Him calling but I wasn't ready to face the music. I knew that if I actually listened to God, that I would have to do something with what He told me. 

     A couple of weeks ago, I met up with Betty at J. Christopher's to talk about what was going on in my life. We have been going through a book together called "You're Already Amazing" by Holley Gerth and we were going to be looking through Chapter 3 which is about the lies we believe about ourselves that keep us trapped in sin and pain. The very first lie that we talked about hit me like a 50 lb bag of potatoes. It was the lie that says, "I have to be perfect." Dang it. I thought I had gotten rid of that, moved past it years ago. Yet it here it was again raising its ugly head. I have always been a perfectionist and have seen how it has hurt my relationships in the past. Betty and I began to talk about the way Satan has used this lie over and over again in my life to drive a wedge between me and God. This most recent time, Satan used this to make me feel like I was all alone, even when I was around lots of my friends. I was the Women's Director for Navs. I discipled girls. I led bible study. There was no way that I could be having a crisis of faith. I was supposed to be perfect and because I was supposed to have it all together, I couldn't tell anyone how much pain I was in. I couldn't let anyone know how much I was struggling. But once I named the lie I had been believing, I was able to first share with Betty and then really begin to work out with God what was going on. 

     In my bible study, we are studying James using Beth Moore's study. During last week's study, we were reading in James 3:1 and Beth spent a whole day talking about what biblical teachers look like. Something that she mentioned was that teachers had to be more self-disciplined than other believers in making sure to get in the Word and to lead out of an overflow of God in their life, otherwise they would get exhausted. I had heard this plenty of times but it wasn't until she said, "God will never ask you to sacrifice intimacy with Him on the altar of ministry" that I realized what had happened in my life. As much as I knew this was important, preparing for 1-1's, bible study and other "ministry" things had replaced my personal time with God. I sacrificed meeting with God intimately for doing things that I thought He wanted me to do. And don't get me wrong, all these things are good and are examples of spiritual fruit in my life, but they had started to become something that was hindering my walk. It was then that I began to realize that what was making me so apathetic was the fact that I was just plain exhausted. I had not been going to the Fountain of Life and therefore had reached the bottom of my barrel.  

     All my life, my relationship with God has been spurred by the other relationships in my life. When I was in  10th grade, it was my Dad that challenged me to grow. When  I came to college, it was Erin, my bible study and other Navigators. When I was a infant in my faith, I was spoon-fed Jesus. That was what I needed to grow. But that is not satisfying anymore. I can't rely on other people to give me Jesus. I have to go to the source. 

"Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. "    1 Corinthians 3:1-2

   
 This verse described where I used to be. But I have reached a point in my life where milk is not satisfying. I have to grow up and go after Jesus myself. Betty and I were discussing this as we sat in J. Christophers and she said to me, "Lauren, you are mature enough in your faith that you have to make these decisions, and make the right ones, on your own. I will not spoon feed you Jesus. If you want Jesus, you need to make the choice to go after Him." Boom. The past couple of weeks, I have been meditating on what she said to me and what my answer to her challenge would be. Would I choose to go after Jesus with everything I had or would I let it fade? Because God demands it all. He won't settle for being second. He wants everything. So my prayer recently has been Ezekiel 36:26-27

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws"

     It is a process, but I'm excited to see where God takes me. I know that Jesus is what I want. The past couple of months where I had second-hand Jesus was miserable. I can't even imagine not having Jesus at all. I am starting a journey to learn to rest in the Lord; to make my relationship with God my number one priority. To rediscover what it is like to fall in love with Jesus again. It is gonna be a great time of seeing God's character. 

I will betroth you to me forever;
I will betroth you in righteousness and justice,
in love and compassion.
I will betroth you in faithfullness,
and you will acknowledge the Lord.
-Hosea 2:19-20