Rebuilding
Posted on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 by oneP3 | (0) Comments
I’ve come off a very hard week. Sometimes it feels like God continually takes away good things from my life. When there is enough emotional padding and “good things” around me, it’s easy to not feel the void that the removal of these little things leaves. But when there doesn’t feel to be any soft space near by, the grind of every removal is painful and threatening.
I lost something this week that felt like that. As I look back and get perspective, I realize that it’s hard to quantify quite what I felt about this thing that is no longer in my life. Did I love it? Someone asked me. Not like you think. I can’t really say, though. I loved it like I love air or warmth or good food. It felt like a need. So why would God take away something I needed?
I fell on my face before the Lord. Take every desire away from me that You aren’t going to fulfill. Put a passion in me for the things you are going to say ‘yes’ to in my life. Save me from deep sorrow. Save me from ruinous grief. Allow me just the heat that I have to experience to be refined to the shape and color you need me to be and then take me out of this scorching fire. And so I wait for my change. I know it will come. Either God will change me, or change my circumstance, but probably both.
I saw this idea of approaching God from a new angle. Sometimes I feel like He has nothing new to say to me. I’ve exhausted my Bible. I’m tired of thinking of words to say to Him. It feels useless. But then, as I sat on my floor, Bible open, crying out to the Lord, I told Him, “This is what I’m doing so that this doesn’t ruin me. This is my sacrifice of praise.” And I suddenly saw it like I see going to the gym. I don’t see the minute improvements that each workout brings, but I know over time it is what changes my body and improves my health. I spend time before the Lord because He tells us this is what leads to transformation. It shifted my expectations and renewed my love for Him and this excruciating process. Maybe He does know best….
As I laid myself bare before the Lord (again), I believe He led me to this passage in scripture, so I share it with you all because I know this is the sort of God that He is. This is redemption.
Here is what the Lord said to me:
“Again, I will build you and you will be rebuilt.” Jeremiah 31:4
We will be rebuilt.
PP