The God of All Good

Photo: St. Thomas, VI, February 2, 2019

Yesterday we explored some areas where people weren’t on the island.  We found a somewhat secluded area and decided to see what we could see around the shoreline.  We swam for what seemed like forever searching for underwater life.  We saw some neat things and found some stellar shells.  But, we didn’t even make it all the way around the original course we plotted.  Instead, we turned around and headed back the way we came because there was a little current and we are elderly.

When we returned to the cottage we saw the area where we were swimming and it looked so tiny – so incredibly small.  And I could not believe how big it actually was when I saw it from such a distance.

That is what it’s like to know God.  The closer you get, the more you realize how unbelievably big He actually is.

Men like to be right – especially men who are husbands – especially, especially men who are husbands named Tim.  At the end of the day I’m often left feeling as though I am always wrong.  That’s what it is when you’re married to Mr. Fix it.  He’s the ultimate diagnostician and I’m just a parts changer in the grand scheme.  So, by default, I’m not usually right.  So, I’ve been doing what any girl who’s seldom stellar, but sometimes really right about some things seriously would.  I have been rubbing it in when I am veritably, beyond the shadow of a doubt, right.  I’ve even had a few victories lately!

Yesterday the mechanic said, “Look at that island out there with a house on it sitting all by itself.”  “Honey, that’s not a house, that’s a boat.”  I watched for a few solid minutes before the sail passed through a clearing in the far away land.  “LOOK!  See!  It’s a sailboat, not a house!  Told you.”  “No.  Over there.” *Mechanic points due north.*  “Oh.”

That’s what it’s like when God gets a hold of a girl who can’t get past her own not-so- greatness.  All this time she’s been pointing and preaching about the itty-bitty boat, but all the while she’s been looking at the wrong God-loving island altogether.

I’m tired of being wrong, you know. I’m tired of being proven wrong.  Which is why I should have never gone back to church.  I literally feel like everything I have thought and believed on so many levels for so many years was just plain wrong.  And it’s not because anyone is candidly correcting me.  It’s because the carrying out of Christ’s work right in front of me is as clear as the water in this Caribbean sea.

If God was the house on the island due north that everyone’s been pointing at all my life, I’m still the girl going on about the boat sailing around the adjacent island and how right I am.  Meanwhile, I’ve been seeing Him so distant, so far-removed, and so tiny when, in fact, He is so much bigger and takes so much more movement and exhaustive effort to see all the way around than any place I’ve ever been before.  I have been looking for a house, seeing a sailboat, and thinking I saw rightly when I have literally been staring at the wrong flipping island for real.

How’s that for a revelation?

Seeing God is an exploration of sorts.  Knowing Him is a perilous, fantastic, furious journey.  Just when you think you’ve figured something out, you no sooner find out you failed.  But being led by someone so incredibly righteous – someone who is never, ever wrong makes following less like fighting and much, much more like true freedom.

Start successfully explaining that to those who are still seeing the sailboat shouting about their rightness and you’ll be a serious soul-winning deep sea diver.

It has been three months since I went back to church.  It had been a year and a half since I stopped going.  Most days my self-righteous bitterness did not allow me to miss it one bit.  Most days I was dancing in the distance, fixated on the far away floater while everyone else was pointing to the big, beautiful house juxtaposed just over yonder.  I could not see it.  I was too satisfied, fascinated, and content in my pitifully wrong rightness.

Nevertheless, because God is the huge, warm, amazing oasis that He is, His providence found me by allowing me to think I found him first.  He is continually showing me my stupidity through his people’s simplicity.  And I cannot believe how long I’ve been wrong about Him.

I have honestly never felt worse about who I have been.  But somehow I have never felt better about who God is.  And that’s all kinds of crazy.  The only way I can describe it is truly amazing grace.

I am still one of the most dense rocks you will ever meet.  Ask the mechanic.  But maybe I don’t have to be an island anymore.  Maybe my books and my poetry don’t have to protect me.  Maybe the house on the island is where I should start looking.  Maybe if I start looking at the house on the right island instead of self-righteously sailing away on the wrong one, I won’t keep missing God’s grandiose grace – for me and for all the other do-gooding no-gooders.

Maybe I can be a rock without being an island.  Because maybe, just maybe a God this good can handle a girl this bad.

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The Power Issue

Healing begins with a broken heart.  One who has never been broken often fails to recognize pain, need, hunger, loneliness, and poverty.  One who chooses to stay broken clings to the security of neediness and ignores the pain, need, hunger, loneliness, and poverty of others for his own.  But for the one who has been broken and healed, broken and has forgiven, broken and been forgiven – that one loves much.

The more a heart bleeds, the more potential it has for love to flow out, or, the more potential it has to sew itself shut and dwell in egotistical narcissism as long as possible.  The one who has been forgiven much, loves much.  The one who has been broken much either considers only itself and its every selfish need in bitterness and fear, or, considers the brokenness in others most of all.

There are so many things that God has shown me over the last 19 days.  There are so many things He has done in me and through me during this time.  It would take a book to explain it all.  Maybe one day I will take that journey.  Or, if you ask me, I would love to tell you all about it.  For today, I have just a few truths to share.

I am so extremely, amazingly, beautifully humbled and thankful for the glimpses of glory I have seen so clearly recently.  These days He has given to me have each felt like Christmas – Christmas Eve, even.  Each day has been met with great anticipation, wide-eyed wonder, and undeserved, unbelievable gifts.

But, it began with brokenness.  The more my bright eyes beheld, the more my heart began to break.  The need in every life everywhere is overwhelmingly great.  As I sought to help and hoped to heal, I was given the greatest gift I have ever known – a gift I had not even asked for.  That gift is joy.  Real, true, unadulterated joy.  Joy inside.  Joy despite.  Joy deep.  Joy uninterrupted.

There can be absolutely no doubt this gift was given to me by God himself through the laying on of hands and prayers of a faithful, fearless fellow Christian.  Never once before this time have I ever experienced such freedom and freshness in my faith.  What God did through the prayers of his servant was nothing short of miraculous.

Not only was I immediately emptied of angst and worry, I was immediately filled with joy unlike that which I had ever known.  I was also given a great desire and urgency to pray constantly.  Me- a girl who writes books about why I cannot seem to pray and struggles to pray at all.

But now, God.  Now, GOD! God leads my prayers in a way I have never known before in nearly twenty years of Christianity.   God is using my prayers to lead and direct me to people and places and actions and needs like never before.  He has given me a great boldness to both pray and preach the gospel to anyone and everyone who will listen.  He has taken away my fear.  He is showing me things I should and would not know.  I know beforehand things I later come to see.  He is moving me, guiding my every step by His Spirit and confirming his direction with unmistakable signs and wonders.  And I am amazed like I have never been amazed before.  And if you will not ask me about it I will tell you anyway because you can’t make this stuff up and God will have glory because of it.

He gave me new knowledge, new eyes, new compassion, new strength, new joy, and yes, even a brand new life growing inside of me all at the same time.  God gave me rest in the earthly realm and realness in the spiritual one.  His message was one of comfort, joy, healing, and hope.  Judgement, restoration, and revival are what he has shown to me.  Joy, healing, and powerful, effective prayer are what he has given to me.

God does not want His people to be stagnant.  He is moving and His people are to be moving.  He is moving his people.  Still water is dead water.  Stagnant water is diseased water.  God is building his house in great power – and that power is prayer.  His living water will be rushing through it at all times lest he shut the doors and close it up.  He spits out pretense and all who set themselves up against his purposes through prayer.  God seeks to demolish strongholds and bring boldness to his people through prayer.

The seeds are planted firmly in the ground.  May the Lord bring a great harvest of hope, healing, and regeneration through obedience to public and private prayer and the laying on of hands.  May it be what he uses to break the spirit of pride, pretense, rigidity, and position in our families, churches, communities, governments, and nations.  Amen.

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