Strife

It’s quite noticeable that this blog has become slightly neglected since my avid writing days at the beginning of the year.  It’s true that busy-ness has partially contributed to this, but I have also found that being transparent and vulnerable about God’s work in my life is sometimes a very hard action to do.  This blog often pops into my mind when I feel as if I’ve learned a new lesson from God, but the lessons these past months have been difficult ones to deal with and ones that I’m still waiting to come to completion. To be quite honest, I thought that I would always have encouraging words to put on this blog.  I thought that I would always feel secure and joyful and confident in my walk with God, but perhaps… that was exactly what led to my downfall.

This new chapter of my slow trudge with God has indeed felt like a time of living in quicksand.  I have to keep moving so as to not be pulled down, but the going is slow.  The lesson that I’m learning is not a quick and easy one, but it’s one about my identity and because it’s in serious need of redemption, the struggle goes on.  Let the story begin with second semester coming to a start.  I was still exhilarated from Urbana and from spending time at home with my family and so arrived at campus ready to implement what I had learned.  I was indeed quite effective at it as I was able to do the Urbana Bible Study with my DSG, began praying with my suite mates, and even met with the Office of Multiculturalism to talk about racial reconciliation (these were all things on my heart after Urbana).  In the midst of all this, I must confess I was still quite lonely.  I felt empty.  I felt dry and totally without joy.  I could fake it though my still reading my Bible and being a devout spiritual girl, but the yearning inside of me remained.  I don’t quite remember what did it, but something finally clicked in my mind and I realized that the cause of my emptiness had been that exact thing that I thought would fill it– my walk with God…ahh sigh… more like my SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS.

I have indeed realized that so much of my spirituality was for my own desires.  I found identity in being a passionate Christian girl. I built my image of myself up in my head when I was able to read my Bible every day of the week at 6:20am.  I was trying to start a Bible Study, going to prayer meetings, reading my Bible, talking about spiritual things, but alas I was empty because I forgot that the goal of running the race for Christ was to being running the race FOR Christ.  I had so lost track of the goal.  I had so completely forgotten that my life was bought at a very expensive price and that I was to be living to glorify God.  My attitude was to be one of obedience.  I was to let the Holy Spirit guide me in my life rather that take control of it on my own.  I found myself in a very difficult place to be in.  I was coming to realize that for quite sometime I’d been living life attached to the vine via a garden hose rather than being grafted in as a true branch.  From the distance, I looked like another branch that was being filled and supplied with life, but on the inside I was becoming brittle and weak.

I must admit that this journey of coming to reconciliation with Christ is a hard and lengthy one.  I’ve had to question my motives for pretty much everything that I do and especially my walk with Jesus because I know that the norm for me is a pseudo sort of self righteous reliance.  I am finding that admitting to my sins helps, but repentance still genuinely leaning of God and asking Him to pull me in the right direction.  I have to live with my hands open and palms up so that God can give and take as He sees fit.  I’m not whole by any means.   I am in the process right now.  I cannot say that the lesson has come to completion but I know that I am still hanging in there.  Now that I’ve learned more about what it means to love, it seems that I’m now having to apply that to my Savior.  I must invest and live for another person’s glory.  It’s so humbling, but the weight that has been lifted off in the realization of my phoniness and the grace that God extends through the renewed bit of joy in my life; they have given me a new understanding of God’s most precious and unconditional love for me.  It has been in spite of my own doing that God is redemptive, is patient and is faithful.

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