Monday, August 4, 2008
Friday, August 1, 2008
Lacking sense or sensibility, apparently
I really should be going to bed. I've been severely lacking sleep due to pleasant and happy late nights for the last week, but ones that have left me with 4-6 hours of sleep a night. Not good when you're an 8 hour a night sort of girl. [And don't get me started on either the virtues of minimal sleep or early mornings. Einstein slept 11 hours a day, so I figure I'm 8/11ths as smart as he is. Thank you Jesus for having a vacation from work next week.]
So I just got home from the first night of Beth Moore's simulcast. There were 2 things that particularly spoke to me, separate and able to stand on their own, yet related too.
First, Beth talked about our lack of belief that God has promises for us personally. This hit me hard. I've been a group of one in the Summer Siesta Bible Study of "No Other Gods" by Kelly Minter. [Side note: I had purchased the trade paper book by her just days before Beth announced this study. It's not a book written from the study or vice versa. They're complimentary, so I recommend getting both.] The last few weeks, Kelly has asked us to discuss the promises God has made to us. And my answer is always the same ...
I don't believe God has promised me anything more than He promised to all believers in a generic sense of the concept of promise.
You can see why her words struck me.
And then, near the end, she made the comment about not feeling worthy because of your past or because of what you did last night. What if it was yesterday morning? Because I sinned. Of course, we all sin regularly. This was premeditated. Something I would've been very, very pissed had it been done to me. It was so easy to do, so easy to slip into old habits and patterns and relationships. Too easy. And I'd been so long without actually engaging willfully in this sin - thinking, yes, although even trying to avoid that - that I'd achieved a level of this sin's absence I'd never had before. Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall, I suppose.
So where does this connect? See, I've been working through my idols because of the study. Seems God likes to test me, to work with me on these while doing a study while Satan tries to recover any ground he lost. [To the point of having regular middle-of-the-night feelings of great enemy oppression during the Believing God study.] And this one idol, this area, this one particular area, was the source of my sin. See, there's something I desire greatly. I don't believe it's a bad thing or a wrong thing or an ungodly thing in the least. In fact, I think it's a topic of many promises God makes to his people, individually and corporately. I desire this thing, and I've talked to God about it and yet, and yet, I just can't fathom God fulfilling this in Himself alone. I just can't.
And this is an area where I sense, painfully, God's silence on promises to me more than anything.
I had a taste of it once, but circumstances and sin ripped away what I felt was a promise. I felt that it was mine once, that God had given me what I desired most in a package of which He approved. Even when the entire promise didn't go as planned, I sensed that He was working out something better that I could have ever imagined in my puny little fleshly brain.
But now I wonder if I was ever promised anything at all, if I made an idol of it and talked myself into believing God had something special for me, that I was special enough to Him to make plans JUST FOR ME. And this being special thing, this thing which feeds my sins and idols, seems to always be just out of my reach. To not be special, to be chosen, by the very ones who are supposed to choose you above all others except God.
I have a history of this here in this place, in this void in my heart. And while I know what the Bible says, while I know what my heart wants, while I know what is right ... I don't see evidence that this desire, this thing I thought was promised to me and that I was given, is meant for me. Ever.
I'd love to be proven wrong.
So I just got home from the first night of Beth Moore's simulcast. There were 2 things that particularly spoke to me, separate and able to stand on their own, yet related too.
First, Beth talked about our lack of belief that God has promises for us personally. This hit me hard. I've been a group of one in the Summer Siesta Bible Study of "No Other Gods" by Kelly Minter. [Side note: I had purchased the trade paper book by her just days before Beth announced this study. It's not a book written from the study or vice versa. They're complimentary, so I recommend getting both.] The last few weeks, Kelly has asked us to discuss the promises God has made to us. And my answer is always the same ...
I don't believe God has promised me anything more than He promised to all believers in a generic sense of the concept of promise.
You can see why her words struck me.
And then, near the end, she made the comment about not feeling worthy because of your past or because of what you did last night. What if it was yesterday morning? Because I sinned. Of course, we all sin regularly. This was premeditated. Something I would've been very, very pissed had it been done to me. It was so easy to do, so easy to slip into old habits and patterns and relationships. Too easy. And I'd been so long without actually engaging willfully in this sin - thinking, yes, although even trying to avoid that - that I'd achieved a level of this sin's absence I'd never had before. Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall, I suppose.
So where does this connect? See, I've been working through my idols because of the study. Seems God likes to test me, to work with me on these while doing a study while Satan tries to recover any ground he lost. [To the point of having regular middle-of-the-night feelings of great enemy oppression during the Believing God study.] And this one idol, this area, this one particular area, was the source of my sin. See, there's something I desire greatly. I don't believe it's a bad thing or a wrong thing or an ungodly thing in the least. In fact, I think it's a topic of many promises God makes to his people, individually and corporately. I desire this thing, and I've talked to God about it and yet, and yet, I just can't fathom God fulfilling this in Himself alone. I just can't.
And this is an area where I sense, painfully, God's silence on promises to me more than anything.
I had a taste of it once, but circumstances and sin ripped away what I felt was a promise. I felt that it was mine once, that God had given me what I desired most in a package of which He approved. Even when the entire promise didn't go as planned, I sensed that He was working out something better that I could have ever imagined in my puny little fleshly brain.
But now I wonder if I was ever promised anything at all, if I made an idol of it and talked myself into believing God had something special for me, that I was special enough to Him to make plans JUST FOR ME. And this being special thing, this thing which feeds my sins and idols, seems to always be just out of my reach. To not be special, to be chosen, by the very ones who are supposed to choose you above all others except God.
I have a history of this here in this place, in this void in my heart. And while I know what the Bible says, while I know what my heart wants, while I know what is right ... I don't see evidence that this desire, this thing I thought was promised to me and that I was given, is meant for me. Ever.
I'd love to be proven wrong.
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