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.