so tired

God I am so tired. I keep wondering when You will come and save me. My insides are all twisted. Everyday I wake up anxious and it is an unending fight to keep my head up through out the day. It feels like there is a brick sitting on the back of my neck. There is a pit in my stomach. And it feels dark all the time. I cry out to You but You are so quiet. I keep turning back to You - because there is no where else to go... but seriously when will You rescue me? I believe You are the only One who can save me yet You keep me waiting, and waiting ... and I am so tired.

I think about what is going on in me ... and yet no one looking in would be able to see anything wrong. My life has been quiet and pain free on the outside. I have a great family, and life - so much to be thankful for.

Yet there is a constant darkness. This oppression is such a weight. It is a constant battle in my thoughts in my gut. It is hard to think, and hard to get anything done.

I have been listening to worship music for hours - just to keep my thoughts moving toward You. I keep reading Your Word, pressing in and pursuing You. I want to draw near - so You will be near to me. I am resisting the devil so that he will flee from me. I have cried out to You, I have given myself over to You over and over. Asking You to purge sin, and to free me. I know only You can free me. And I know I am impatient, it's just so hard to breathe. I know there is nothing for me to do but wait and continue to be faithful and worship ... and wait. Oh Father, I am so tired but keep my heart trusting You, I do not want to doubt You!

Hebrews 10: 19-23

And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. By his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place. And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God’s house, let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water.
Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise.


This song just came onto my iPod as I was writing, it brings tears to my eyes - such a beautiful song : This Is My Offering by Jason Ingram


I Lay it all down, My dreams and My crowns
Lord I surrender
I Lay it all down, My fear and my doubt
Lord I surrender, Lord I surrender

My heart like never before
My heart like never before
Lord I wanna give you everything I wanna give you everything
This is my offering

Give me the strength, enough for today
Lord I surrender
Show me your way, give me the grace
Lord to surrender, Lord I surrender

All I have, I bring to You
To You Lord

roller coaster

Something I wrote the other day...


I am struggling. Fasting is hard. The temptations have only increased. My flesh is bent on being heard, seen, and felt. 

Keeping my ‘mouth’ turned away from food has not even been the hardest part. Rather it has been loving the people around me in the midst of not being able to run to my idol of food. Before when life got hard I would comfort myself in the pleasure of food. Now that it is taken away, I must retrain my heart to run to the Lord … yet in the practice of it – I am not very ‘good’ yet. As a result my flesh wants to reach out and take and sin in other ways. And my family gets to see the ugliest parts of my sinfulness.

Reminding myself of God’s truth in the midst of all of this is hard. I know the truth – I know who I really am in Jesus. And I know the promises that He has given to me. But being humble enough to confess my sin aloud and ask forgiveness from my husband and kids – is a whole other kind of hard. Being humble does not come without even more death of self within me.

God led me to Isaiah 58 a couple of years ago – to impress on me that fasting is never supposed to be for my own sake – to achieve my own ends. But that in the midst of it we should be focused on loving God – by loving others.

I clearly needed to be reminded of that yesterday. The Lord wants this fast to purge more than one idol in my life. More of my heart needs to be yielded, more let go of. And then my ‘salvation will come like the dawn!’


And today...


I am on the roller coaster again. This day has been so up and down... a good talk with a friend, an encouraging email from a friend, a spiritual attack, temptations every where. And me still feeling like I will never be kind and loving to my family ever again. So much flesh - I just keep giving my mouth over to my flesh.


Lord, please tell me what to do - I can not see the way out. I desperately want to find your way out and off of this roller coaster!

reminders

That old cliche ' What a difference a day makes ' - is so true. I woke up this morning still feeling yesterday's cloud. But the Lord had different plans for this day - new mercies, and new undeserved gifts.

There are times I still get caught up in old habits - yesterday - and really most of last week were like that. Getting lost within myself, feeling self-pity, feeling like God is far away and has no intention of keeping His promises. Which lead to me looking inward for answers - but of course my flesh has nothing good to offer - so I start handing people all my crap instead. I get angry, selfish, grouchy, and I look for a place to hide - not only from God, but from myself. I also keep myself locked away from my family so they don't have to bear the brunt of this mess (though they did anyway - just less of me.)

I get so focused on myself and my ugliness I forget to worship. It's that reverse pride - not the pride that says look at me I am so great - I have all the answers, but the pride that says look at me - I am so awful - I am such a ridiculous mess - please gawk. Pride in either form is destructive. It takes my eyes off of Christ and puts them on me.

So today the Lord brought perspective. Psalms that spoke to my heart, a prayer from the Valley of Vision - that felt like it came from my heart, and a reminder that God has amazing plans for me and my family.

And really I need to be on the lookout for the reminders that God gives everyday - I know they are there - but some days they are more obvious than others. One came the other day... as I was praying in the morning asking God to send His Spirit - to take over my mess ... He gave me a rainbow. I looked up out my window and there was a rainbow - reminding me that He does keep His promises - and that He will give the Spirit to those who ask! Luke 11.


May this be the prayer of my heart today and everyday!

Morning from the Valley of Vision:

Let me this day know Thee as Thou art,
love Thee supremely, serve Thee wholly, admire Thee fully.
Through grace let my will respond to Thee,
 knowing that power to obey is not in me, but that Thy free love alone enables me to serve Thee.
Here then is my empty heart, overflow it with Thy choicest gifts...

evil hands

I feel like shit today. I have been running from God most of the day.

Flesh has a way of reaching out any way it can. Fasting ... it has been really hard this last week - like really hard. I want to eat, I am hungry, temptation has been awful. I have continued in my obedience with food, but the rest of my flesh wants to get out. It's like evil hands reaching out from within me trying to grab at anything - trying to gain control, trying to be heard, trying to do what it wants.

I have been awful to my family. I have resented my kids and my husband. I am angry or irritated constantly about everything and nothing. I have to correct my kids constantly and I resent it. I hate cleaning up after them. I hate getting them going in the morning. I don't want to clean, or do any chores, or cook. I have just been miserable.

How can I yield everything all at once? I want to. I don't want this. I hate this.

As I was praying this morning, I felt the Lord saying - 'you haven't been serving ... you have been serving yourself.' All the cleaning has been for me - because I want it clean - so I can relax - it's not for my family. And then I resent them when they mess up my clean. I haven't been pointing my kids to Jesus - I have been pushing them around (not literally) - trying to get what I need them to do - so we can be done - and I can go be alone.

Alone, sometimes feels like the only safe place ... then I can hide and I don't have to keep being so shitty to everyone.

I don't want this, Jesus - please kill my flesh, please put this shit to death in me.

I want to worship you, I want to serve my family, I want to bring You glory. Please save me from my flesh. I want my whole self to serve You.

obedience

I've had a thought running in my head the last couple of days. Here it is... 'obedience is not legalism'. I heard my pastor say it in a sermon sometime in the last year or so. And when he said it - it struck me, and in the last few days God has brought it to my remembrance. Here is the difference between the two - legalism is when we add rules on top of/or instead of what God has laid out for us to do. It is work, it's striving to make our sanctification happen without God. And obedience is listening to God's desires for us, and actually doing it with His power and leading.

In the last year I have been trying really hard to get my flesh to do something it just did not want to do. I was trying to get my flesh to follow the rules - my rules - to want to eat healthy, to want to eat less, to enjoy being hungry all the time. I wanted my flesh to obey me. None of these desires are bad necessarily, but I was not letting God lead, I was trying to make it all happen without His power - and use mine instead.

The really big problem with my plan is that flesh does not want to obey ... and it can't obey... it's flesh... and there is nothing that can be done to get it to obey. Flesh wants what it wants. Flesh is deceptive and corrupt. Flesh is full of sin. But I kept asking my flesh to obey me anyway, and it just kept on saying 'no'.

So it was just me and my flesh duking it out, and flesh was winning. It had not occurred to me that God might want to be in on this, and that in fact He was the only way out. But I really wanted my flesh to obey me, so that in the end of it all - I would get the glory. If God took over, He would. But it just wasn't working my way.

I entered into this Lenten fast pretty lightly, meaning I didn't spend a whole lot of time debating it, or deciding. I just knew that I could not continue going down this same sin-filled path. And I hated where I was, I hated what I was doing, I hated that my flesh was winning, and I hated that I was filled with pride and wanted God's glory for myself. At the beginning of this new year I asked God to kill my addiction. I was at the point where I just couldn't live with my sin any longer. And in my spirit, I desperately want my life to glorify God, so I asked Him to lead me. So what to give up for Lent seemed obvious - food.

However, this time fasting needed to be different, it needed to be a matter of obedience. But what would my obedience to God look like? I had already tried to make my flesh obey my rules and failed. This time I had to try it God's way. I needed to learn what walking in obedience to Him actually looks and feels like as I eat. So, I am learning that it really has less to do with what I am doing and not doing with food, and is much more about which direction my heart is facing. I am learning to listen to His voice, to let His power flow in me, and then act out what God is saying. And when temptation rises, as it always does, I am learning to look for the way out that God has promised to provide and actually take it.

Food can no longer be the thing I run to for happiness. And for so long it has been ... as soon as I would slip a tasty something on my tongue I would get a rush of pleasure even if it was only for those moments that I was eating. The problem was I could always go back again and again, and food is always there - because I have to eat. Food, also, can not be the thing I center my whole life around. I was always dreaming of the next meal, or the next party or holiday full of treats, or the next time I got to go out for dinner - and it was all for that next great taste that I thought was going to make me feel so good. It is a true high, a real addiction.

I have to tell you this has not been easy - it is hard to turn away from a lifetime of thinking about food this way. It has been a daily struggle to not eat what the Lord has asked me to abstain from. But He keeps reminding me that salvation has to come from Him. Not just that one moment in time conversion, but the moment to moment salvation that is sanctification. He wants my happiness and joy and salvation to come from Jesus every moment of the day. He wants me to be obedient, not so He can thumb me down, but because He knows I will be happier when I am free of this and free to serve Him. So He keeps reminding me to turn my heart, face, mind, ears, and mouth back to Him.

At the end of it all, I want my flesh to die, I want this addiction put to death, I want food to be just food and not the idol I worship. And I can honestly say now, I want all of this, not so I feel good about me, but so that God will be worshiped and glorified in my life. He is the healer, He is the One who brings obedience, and He is the One who can break the power of sin in me. That is worth worshipping - He is worth giving glory to, because He is the only One willing and able - filled with power beyond all comprehension - to do this work in me.

Galatians 3: 3,4
How foolish can you be? After starting your Christian lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort?  Have you experienced so much for nothing? Surely it was not in vain, was it?

fill me

Oh God - How I long to be filled with praise. Fill me with words - fill me with love to give You.

I long to throw my hands up, and my head back and sing out at the top of my lungs to You,
to dance and jump and get wild and totally free before You

To revel and glory in Your love and grace, to feel you all around to be drenched in You

I want my whole heart, every bit of my soul, every part of my mind, and every ounce of my strength to bring You glory

If only I could play all the instruments, and speak a million languages
I would use them all to bring You praise
Oh how I wish I could gather a million people to all shout praise to You

It would never be enough, never  You deserve so much more

Let Your beauty fill me
Let Your love overflow in me
Let Your light shine out of me
Let Your breath be what I breathe
Let Your words be what is on my lips
Let Your thoughts be my thoughts
Let Your heart flow into me

So that no matter what I do, or say, or think,
I can bring you glory
My great and mighty God
Oh how I long to give You praise!

feast

I woke up anxious again today.

People keep asking how I am - and for some reason when I say 'fine' it feels like I am being dishonest. So instead I say that I am feeling anxious. Then inevitably they ask 'why' and then I say 'I am pretty sure it's oppression.' It may follow with me saying something like, 'I have examined myself and asked the Lord - if it's me or any sin in me - and I come up with nothing, so...'

As I have prayed about it, I usually feel like God keeps saying for me to be patient. That I am supposed to learn to stand up under it. That He is here - whether He feels like it or not.

As I was singing in church today a line from a song we sing based on Psalm 23 stuck out to me ... 'You are my feast in the presence of enemies'. That line says a lot about where I am right now. Stuck in the presence of enemies - this oppression - yet I can still feast on the Lord. Especially in this season of Lent - where the Lord has asked me to give up so much food, to fast, and be present with Him - He is the feast.

I have found at the end of the days that I have fasted that I am still looking for food to be my salvation - instead of the Lord. Yet He is the One who has sustained me all the while.


Oh Lord - be my salvation, be the feast that I run to at the beginning and end of everyday.  Come, Spirit, and wash me clean - bring repentance - so that I may be free to worship You even as I eat.