Trembling

The farthest distance I see in myself lies between my head and my heart. What I know in my mind, and what I really want or love in my heart do not align in some major areas.  The fact of the matter is I get overwhelmed by truth, because I am afraid of change.  Change is unknown and carries with it a lot of "what ifs". Change.  We all want it in some areas, but definitely not in others, and when we give our everything to God we also give up those areas we don't want change in...like good skin, our health, our boyfriend or girlfriend, our friends, our family's respect, people's respect, our comforts.  We think "well since these areas are pretty good, my control over them should be kept and not given up to God, because what if He changes those things that I don't want change in?!  And we freak out, or in my case become overwhelmed by truth.  Truth being, God has a better plan, better ways, better thoughts.

  Isaiah 55:8,9--

“Indeed, my plans are not like your plans,

and my deeds are not like your deeds,

for just as the sky is higher than the earth,

so my deeds are superior to your deeds

and my plans superior to your plans."

But still.  I like my plans, and so how do I know that Gods plans will be better or superior to my own (at least for the things I don't want changed)?  That only comes when you get to know God, and just how good He is. We all want to change for the better, but if you're like me you like to see the blueprint first and get clear concise directions on where and when to do something.  We expect things.  Our expectations are a huge obstacle to change, because Gods ways are higher so therefore if what we expected happened then that statement would not be true.  You must not have expectations, because you'll set yourself up for more fear when they don't happen,...and they won't.  I can guarantee that your expectations of how it will look will not come to pass.  God is holy, which means that He is set apart from all.  Likewise what we fear, He sees as nothing.

"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; 

and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;

 when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you."  -Isaiah 43:2

Notice He does not say you will not pass through waters or rivers or that we won't walk through fire.  He says "WHEN", meaning we will experience our circumstances being terrible and in the eyes of the world we will have every right to be overwhelmed, cranky, to be felt sorry for, but God says His ways are higher.  He wants to carry us through our worst circumstances so that when we come out of them our faith will grow and we will see Him more clearly.  

So it comes back to that one thing.  Or maybe (most likely) it's several things, but for the sake of simplicity I want to bring to center stage that deep rooted possession in our hearts that is buried underneath all our spiritual knowledge, and underneath all the other bigger and more obvious sins...because God sees the heart.  He sees what we try to keep, even if to others it looks ok to keep, we know we are possessive over it.  That is what God wants, and if we believe His ways are higher, believe that He loves me and loves you, believe that He is God, then we will take what we want or have so badly (whether it's our ministry, an addiction, a relationship, a job, even our hold on our health, it could be anything we feel possessive over--like we have to micromanage it) and with tremendous amounts of trembling and fear and doubt and the freaking heebie-jeebies, we make the choice to let what we know surpass what we feel and let God do heart surgery on us. 

 Even writing this I feel scared, I'm on the verge of tears as I write because I know how intense it is.  We see the knife coming down, the physician is about to cut our chest open and that's freaking intense, but if he doesn't take out what is blocking us from life, we'll never get well.  We know post surgery is also going to hurt a lot, and that's scary too.  So it's in this moment where we just make the choice.  Choose to be still and let God cut out that one thing, the one thing in our hearts that we so badly want to be kept left alone, unchanged, because we think we have it under control, that is exactly why God wants that one thing, because we shouldn't have anything under our control. 

God will be glorified regardless of what I choose.  So choose to let God have His higher way in your life, but if not, I don't know what will happen, but it says that 

Jesus prayed...

"Father, bring glory to your name.”

Then a voice spoke from heaven, saying, 

“I have already brought glory to my name, and I will do so again.”

-John 12:28

And God also says:

"For my sake alone I will act,

for how can I allow my name to be defiled?

I will not share my glory with anyone else!"

-Isaiah 48:11

So if I think I can hold on to my one thing, that I have this under control, I am trying to hold back from giving God all the glory, and His glory will not be defiled nor shared, so to me that looks like I'll get a pretty bad awakening if I think I can withhold anything from God.  That's just how I see truth as it is written in the bible.

So the truth, I'll say it again and again, is that when I choose to run from the knife of Gods heart surgery, I'm essentially saying that I love my one thing more than I love God.  How then can God have an intimate relationship with me?  

I want to know God, and it's scary to be still as He cuts me open to remove my one thing, my identity, but I ask God now to help me choose what I know over what I feel.

Obedience is not emotional (so whether you're crying or not doesn't matter), obedience is intentional.

God is not a feeling, He's real.

If I didn't get my point pinned down, then I failed in writing this, haha and I will be humbled.  God will be glorified still. 

Trembling,

-J