Lord, you know all of me, and you made my inward parts. You know what worries me and you know the offenses in me. Please reveal them to me in a way that I will repent and turn from them. Please be gentle with me. I know I still fear the lack of control over pleasures, but lead me into understanding more deeply that Your love is great and given to me everyday. Give me a thankful perspective.
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God, You are my God; I eagerly seek You. I thirst for You; my body faints for You in a land that is dry, desolate, and without water.
(Psalms 63:1 HCSB)
The desert scares me. Being without water and feeling physically faint sounds horrifyingly helpless and near death.
I asked God in prayer to give me a thankful perspective. I wanted to understand more in order that through understanding I would be convinced of letting go of more of my desire to be prepared, in control, and self-preserving. I knew that God wanted me to trust in Him, but so much was unsure that I just wasn't convinced enough, didn't understand enough, to let go of what I knew was stifling my spirit. I am definitely in the desert, but I kept my eyes shut tight in order to protect myself from knowing this. I think I wanted to believe that I shouldn't be in the desert, I should be by the streams of living water, "I should be the tree in psalm 1!" I wanted to be peacefully resting in a valley with bright blue skies and tall blades of grass.
Not in the desert.
This just can't be right.
And because I thought it couldn't be right I kept trying to imagine it away, closed my eyes, plugged up my ears, and even made prayers to God that He was good to have placed me where I was. But the truth prevailed and no matter how hard and creative I got at pretending I was somewhere else, I was here: in the desert.
And the Lord, gently answered my prayer this morning. Because opening my eyes I saw that was parched and thirsty and I needed him so badly. Or goodly? Hehe.
I mean I felt the dryness. I felt the lostness. I didn't just feel, but I saw, I knew, and I understood that this was the desert, and the more I realized it the more I sought the Lord for help, and the more I understood that this meant I was pretty powerless to change the situation. Here, in the desert, I'm forced to be dependent on God. To wait for Him because that is all I can do to get out. There is no other way, because before my eyes I see only dry desert in every direction. I might catch a glimpse of one of those false watery facades in the distance, but I've chased enough down to know at this point that it's useless, because there's nothing there. All I can do is look around, see where I am, and understand...I need God to rescue me.
God may have placed me here for this very purpose, perhaps somewhere along the way in my life I had grown quite comfortable with the world. I was not at odds with their ideals and their pleasures, although I may have been against some of their morals or methods, it was still not so distinctly and exceedingly differing. I was matriculating, again, and in that God used His Father-card on me and placed me in the desert to understand where I had gone wrong.
I rarely learn the first time around, and pretty much never learn when someone just tells me...I learn best when I make a mistake and get cut really bad from it, so bad that I never forget how terrible it was to be there in the end, and how I never want to be there again. But even when I experience that, I know that I still need help because some ends just come with different skins. Really, there are two ultimate ends in life: misery and joy. Then there are two ends after death: Heaven and hell.
But seeing as we can't make much to change the ends after death, I'll touch only on the ones mentioned during our time of living, since ultimately misery leads to hell and joy leads to heaven.
We've all been at both ends. I've had my share of misery and I've had plenty of joy in life.
The strange and elusive part is how I somehow always think that joy should lead to joy ends and that misery will lead to misery ends (excluding death). However, the fact that has become repetitively apparent to me (and to probably everyone) is that in order to reach joy you have walk through misery. And when you walk past joy you then have misery.
This truth is made famous by sayings like : "good things come in small packages" or "no pain no gain" and a million more that you probably can think of.
The point of all this is that God brought me to the desert, and instead of opening my eyes to His leading I had tried so hard to deny it. Because I associated it with badness. I didn't just trust Him as I should have, because I trusted my instincts more. And perhaps that is what I had been doing for a while which had God leading me here to be corrected.
So I prayed for understanding, and although I had my idea of what understanding would be like, I got it in a way I didn't expect. I thought it would just click in my head, over a cup of coffee, while I had christian music playing in the background. But no, this understanding is acceptance of my situation, and my position. I am in the desert, and there's nothing I can do about it except turn fully to God for His help. What else can I do? Who can help me but God? Can money help me? Can beauty save me? Can other people who are also lost help me? Can even my bank of knowledge give me ideas? The only response that makes sense in all that I have, see and understand is God alone can save me.
Hands open in a parched land within me, I seek God.
Here I am Lord, I see where I am, I understand. Now what?
PS: please be gentle.
Jmegrey
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