Once again God speaks to me about the true condition of my own heart. Amidst the feelings, the fears, the distrust, the things that look so safe, the comfortable, even the spiritual verbatim and those areas where my confidence is so concrete that at times it makes me think I don't have to work so hard to stay strong (which is idiocy from pride + self-righteousness), He asks me, "Do you, my daughter Jamie, have a desperate hunger for Me, and only Me?" Or to be more specific, "are you hungry enough to not just stay and finish the next three months in Cambodia and Burma, but are you hungry enough to finish all while choosing to fight every complaint and anxious thought?"
A hunger is either there or it's not there, you can not fake hunger to yourself or to God.
So I ask myself, am I hungry enough to combine belief with action? (Which equals faith). And that is so difficult to answer, because I hate the heat and humidity here so much. Why should I suffer like this? Why don't I just go home and serve God there? But as my friend had helped me find footing the other day (before I paid the remainder of my fees), I am reminded of her words, that this is a season of suffering, it's temporary, and I am so hungry for God. 3 more months. I can't do even 3 more days, but God can. So I stay because I'm utterly powerless here, and the less power I have over my circumstances the more I find that I press into Jesus with everything I have left in me.
Hunger leads to desperation, and desperation leads to doing things you normally would not do (like living in Cambodia for 6 months haha). I say, after careful reflection and immense gratitude, that I am hungry for God, I have become increasingly ravenous for Him, desperate to know everything I can about Him, thankful that He has led me up to this point of such a hunger where I desire and seek Him, and I see Him more clearly now.
Before this year I had asked God many times to give me a hunger for Him, the desire to know Him, motivation to live more radically for Him, because I was in a long season where I hungered for other things more than for God. I was hungry to be a published writer, a beautiful wife and mother of 4 children (with an equally or more beautiful husband), have a nice toned body, be admired and seen as gifted, I wanted fame and to travel the world singing or signing my books, constantly be living an adventure (whilst staying in air-conditioned nice hotels with free breakfast). I convinced myself that I was doing everything I could to love God, tears convinced me of my sincerity, but when nothing changed I got confused, frustrated over my sin, and then I found myself just growing apathetic towards God. If He wasn't going to meet me on my terms then all that was left was either apathy or different terms. Apathy came easier, it was comfortable yet agonizing.
I felt nothing toward God, words of "I love You" came out, but they fell like ashes to the ground and were blown away at the first hint of wind. I had little to no desire to really know God let alone give Him anything of mine that was difficult to give up. For a long time God was just convenient for me when I needed to cry or someone to point to for something beautiful I saw or felt. He was just a facilitator for when I wanted an emotional release or, as some say, a "spiritual high".
God does desire for us to experience Him, which often brings tears, and to acknowledge and thank Him for creating the beautiful things our eyes behold like the mountain peaks early in the morning or a beloved friends face during a refreshing conversation, but He will not settle for just your emotions. He wants all of you; your intellect, your emotions and your will.
I've given Him plenty of emotion, even lots of my intellect (by just trusting the things He says that I don't understand to be good), but my will I have held on to for so long. My actions. My decisions that represent my rights. Rights to comfort, rights to be happy, rights to be healed, rights to run away and hide when things become overwhelming, rights to eat what I want when I want it, rights to go where I want to go, live where I want to live, do what I want to do; all of these rights I have held on to when God asked me to give them to Him. Not because he is a cruel God who wants to see me suffer and be unhappy, but because He is a good God and knows that I can only serve one of two masters. I will either be a slave to sin which leads to death or a slave to righteousness which leads to eternal life (Romans 6). The more I give up to God (emotions, intellect, will) the more I get back: a life that has joy and hope. This doesn't make sense to most people who use the mathematical logic of 9-8=1 which is significantly less than what you started with. Right. It's crazy!
So I, and pretty much anyone who says they are a Christian, am either on a one way road to the nut house or I am on a one way road to eternal life. Personally, I have enough evidence in my life to bank on the latter, but it is still scary as swimming with sharks. Or perhaps to hit home even further, it's as uncomfortable as sweating through 3 outfits a day in 104 degree dusty weather all the while not being allowed to wear shorts or tank tops for the cultural conservatism and effectiveness for our ministry.
Maybe soon my entries will contain less complaining and more thankfulness. I hope so, but in the meantime I will be honest about my struggle as well as about what God is teaching me. Everything has to be real, cuz this is not funny. Well, it's funny to say that, because after all it's "just sweat", but yea. I guess that says a lot about my tolerance for pain, but on the brighter side, I found a cockroach in my shirt and wasn't scared haha I looked at it and shook it off. So my fear of bugs has dramatically decreased. :)
J
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