Hide and seek

Psalm 119:114 "You are my hiding place and my shield - I wait for Your word."

This great little nugget was hidden in my quiet time today and I immediately thought, "yes Lord - oh how I need you to be a hiding place and shield for me." And then I sat with it a little longer and some images started popping into my mind.

Like in Lord of the Rings - Two Towers - where they are standing behind their tall shields looking out into the darkness and rain hearing the awful chants of the opposing army. Like when Rahab hides the spies in her roof, silently waiting under stalks of flax while the king's men question her. Like when David is hiding in the inner recesses of a cave knowing Saul is chasing him all over the land trying to kill him.

Hiding and needing a shield gives us a perspective of our normal life condition. We live a life in danger - in the presence of an enemy we are incapable of fighting on our own. This isn't a greeting card picture -  sweet sounding solace in the Lord. This is a reminder that we are needing to get behind His shield. We need to hide behind, put ourselves under, in the care of, under the protection of, in the dependence of, in hope in, with trust in....not ourselves, but Him.

This is a picture of submission...humility...faith. 

And here in this place - we wait.

We aren't immediately filled. We aren't suddenly comforted. We don't have resolution to the problem. No - we wait. We wait on Him and His word. We wait on truth. We wait on the perspective of the One who has gone before and comes behind and surrounds us with Himself.

To truly put ourselves under His care is also to trust in His timing. To believe that while the battle rages around us that we are safe with Him and in the right time He will bring clarity. 

Back to the Two Towers battle scene - the battle is loud - the sky is dark - the soldiers are muddied - it's hard to see with the rain and the darkness surrounding and all you hear is the chant of those opposing you. A shield doesn't make you immune to the battle. And it isn't all comfy cozy. 

God was with David in the darkness but it still gave David all that experience to compose Psalms of desperation and cries for help. David followed Gods command through the caves and the darkness all the way to a throne. Jesus followed God's will to a cross and to hell - all to bring us peace. All so that we could trust Him when He says, "Do not be afraid." 

It isn't wrong to need to hide or even cry out from our hiding place, oh Lord, how long? But the first step is ours - to place ourselves under His care. And be ready to wait for His word. O Lord, grant us the faith to our ourselves fully in Your care and the patience to hear Your voice in Your perfect timing. 

Praying and other terrifying activities

About a month ago I felt called to a specific prayer - Lord show me how to live in dependence on You in the every day. This was really just step 1 in a goal of being able to to listen to His voice more clearly and live each day walking in His will. By my estimation, I couldn't walk in His will without being able to discern His will and I couldn't discern His will when I lived a life that was looking to my own strength and plans and provision. Therefore - step 1 was living in daily dependence on Him.

And then it all fell apart.

I haven't blogged in nearly a month because my mind (and heart) have been such a mess, words haven't really been put together in cohesive thoughts. Now I'm not saying that this will be some beautiful example of prose, well thought out and carefully articulated. However, several devestating times of prayer and mental break down have led to terrible clarity. 

First, it was a little ridiculous for me to be shocked that life would fall apart when I stopped holding it together. I couldn't have it both ways - if I'm not trying to keep it all working, then there are going to be things that were my priorities which haven't aligned with God. Now that I was willing to listen to His ordering of my life, it's not the same order I had. At first, I translated this as a difficulty watching things remain undone or left behind. But after some adjustment I started to see some beauty and freedom in the new ordering God planned. This wasn't as straight forward as I'm making it sound - but dying to my self importance was something I had expected to confront. After all, it was my pride and desire for control which had led me to this place of not being able to hear the Lord. My own voice was too loud and it was going to be a period of eerie silence to get to a posture of listening.

Now we move into dangerous territory. Now we start to dig deeper. Like Eustace having the scales torn from his dragon body in C.S. Lewis' Voyage of the Dawn Treader, this work has to hurt. It may sound simplistic, but being a dragon actually isn't a problem. If you were made to be a dragon, then you absolutely should roar and breath fire and fly through the sky. It's what you were made to do. The problem is when you were supposed to be a boy and you end up a dragon instead. The dragon has to be torn to shreds to find the boy inside. This is the type of experience I've been living through lately. Ripping off layers and layers of the outer form to have God reveal my true self. The self He created me to be.

I was created to be dependent on Him. This prayer was good and ultimately for my good. But I wasn't walking around as an empty vessel just waiting for God to fill me up. I was dependent on other things which had to be emptied first, before I could learn to be dependent. See, I prayed a prayer I didn't actually want answered. Sure, it sounded like the Christian thing to do. I had the logic all outlined above. I might even go as far to say that the Spirit was prompting me to that prayer. But I wasn't ready for the cost. I wasn't ready to be empty. I wasn't ready to redefine my treasure. Jesus so clearly explains the nature of our hearts in Matthew 6 - our heart was made for God, but we can only hold one thing as a treasure. And whenever we treasure something other than God, we fill our hearts and turn our gaze to focus on our love, our precious.

Tim Keller reminds us in his book Counterfit Gods that we were made to worship. We as created beings are made to worship, but we choose to worship other created things above God. Lysa Tyrkhurst explains in her book Made to Crave, that we were indeed made to desire after something intensely - but we were made to crave God - not lesser things. C.S. Lewis tells us that eternity is written on our hearts and that we were made to long after something to make us whole - to long for the peace that seems to elude us in this life. 

God gave us all of these internal emotional, intellectual and spiritual prompts to point us to Him. He wants to long for Him and desire Him and worship Him. He made us to have an empty place to be filled and He alone wants to fill it. And yet - we find other things, people, relationships, expectations, distractions and lesser things. I knew that God wanted to replace these lesser things in my life with Himself, but that meant letting go.

And letting go hurts.

I'm hurting. I miss my distractions. I miss my idols. They were comfortable. They were my companions. And while they could never fill, they were safe. But now I'm empty. I'm not filled. It isn't better. It just hurts. 

I have hope in His promises - that I am a work in progress and He will faithfully bring it to completion. But right now - it's just empty. 

Identity 101

Ok- they say confession is good for the soul, so here is some soul healing honesty.

As much as I have delighted in my new life, when confronted with an opportunity to step back into the life-draining madness, I was tempted. With an odd turn of events, my position at my old job is now vacant again at an inopportune time and needed someone to step in on a part time basis ASAP. People began to pass my name around as a temporary solution and it felt great to be needed. It felt great to be pursued. But the decision maker in this whole situation had been silent. My old boss (whom I felt I always had a good relationship) was being extremely tight-lipped about the whole thing and I have spent the last 8 days wondering "will he call me?". This had the emotional weight of a ton of bricks and I have spent the past week sleepless, anxious and quick to anger with my kids and husband. My whole mind was preoccupied with "what-if" scenarios on what could happen and how I would react.

As happy as I was and as miserable as I had been in my old job, the possibility that I would be called on to come save the day captivated my thoughts and made it nearly impossible for me to function normally.

Why? Why did I feel this way?

Truth is said to set us free, but truth about ourselves brings freedom at the cost of our pride. I cannot experience the freedom of my identity in Christ without also experience the pain of stepping away from myself. In the epic Psalm 119, the author writes " This has become mine, that I observe Your precepts. The Lord is my portion; I have promised to keep Your words. I sought Your favor with all my heart" (vs 56-58a).

"This has become mine" - for all the Lord of the Rings lovers out there, you should be hearing the voice of Gollum in your head - or Frodo - or Biblo. Any keeper of the ring starts speaking of it as "my own, my precious." What is so easily identified as an idol in a movie or book, is so hard to identify in ourselves. The ring was shiny and gold and indeed had great value. It was precious. It was captivating. It became all consuming to anyone who had possession of it.

But the Psalmest speaks the same way of the Word of the Lord and of his God. "This has become mine", "The Lord is my portion", in verse 72 "Your law is more precious to me than a thousand pieces of gold and silver" and in verse 127 "Therefore I love Your commandments, above gold, yes above fine gold."

What was so precious about that job - it was mine. My own. I claimed ownership of it and I would have let it destroy me into a shadow of my true self had it not been for God's merciful grace and truth spoken to me from those I love.

Identity in Christ is both the easiest and hardest task all at the same time. There is great freedom in not earning your standing and great humility in accepting that gift. I am called to claim my inheritance and must accept the truth of my empty hands. I am the child of the King, but not chosen for my gifts or talents - solely chosen by His desire and His love.

Hallelujah - it's not on me.
But wait a minute....it's not about me.....

There will be no phone call asking me to save the day. God has removed the temptation and given me the blessing of continuing in this new walk of life without interruption of the stress and workload of my previous job. It is not mine anymore.....

But I am His. And He is using this time for His purposes through lavish grace upon me. Life will not always be so charmed, but I am always His. I wish I could say that the Psalmist and I share those words. I want to - but I am still dying to myself - dying to the shiny things of this life - dying to all the precious distractions that draw my wandering eye from Him.

The Lord is my portion.
What joy awaits us when we can embrace that truth.....