There I sat at His feet, my favorite place in the world. So peaceful. So safe. So loved.
He leaned down and stroked my hair, His very touch making my heart leap. It was here that I felt most alive. He was my father. My savior. My best friend. “Do you trust me?” He asked tenderly as His loving eyes gazed into mine. “With everything in me.” I replied honestly. “Would you trust me with your heart?” “Of course.” He had never once hurt me and had in fact saved me time after time – I knew I could trust Him in every way. “Would you give me everything in your heart?” “Yes.” I said as genuinely as I knew how. He looked down in my lap and my eyes followed His gaze to that thing I was holding onto that He so obviously wanted me to give Him. As I held it in my hands – everything I was, hoped for, dreamed, thought about myself – I suddenly realized how much harder it actually was to give it to Him than just to say ‘yes.’ “…I don’t know if I can.” I slowly and sorrowfully realized that I found myself unable to do what I had just promised Him. It broke my heart to realize how unable I was to actually do what I so desperately wanted to be able to do. “One piece at a time,” He said with such love and patience. “Just start with one.” With pain and resistance tearing at my resolve, I slowly raised one hand and picked up a piece. My time. It hurt to pick it up, yet I so desperately wanted to give it to Him, so I placed it into His open hand and released it. As it left my possession, it felt as if something precious had just been ripped out of me, yet in that I felt such peace and freedom. I knew it was in good hands – better, even, than my own. Next piece. This time, it was a little easier. My talents. It, too, hurt to pick up, but I knew it was worth it. One last look and I let go, dropping it gently in His open palm. My friends. My family. My future. My dreams – that one hurt. My aspirations. My hopes for the future. Each piece a little bigger than the last and going deeper and deeper into my heart. As I scooped out each one, it stung to lose yet was replaced with even more relief. I watched as my pile diminished and the pile in His hands grew. I looked at those things – everything that made me me – and though it hurt, I knew that He was so good. That He would not hurt them and that He was faithful to take care of them and to give them back to me when the time was right. I looked back down at the remainder of what I held. It was so much lighter than it had been earlier, yet I was not done. So much had been given up and now those things that had been hidden underneath the surface were brought to light. At the very bottom, clinging to the very center, were small, dark parasites. Their claws had dug into my heart and I did not know how to pry them out. They were sucking the life right out of me. Self hatred. Doubt. Fear. Insecurity. Fearing what others thought of me. Selfishness. Jealousy. Judgment. Self-righteousness. Impatience. Comparison. Shame. With tears streaming down my face, I could not bear to look back up at Him. I did not want Him to see the ugliness at my core. “Will you give me those things too?” He asked with the most gentle voice I had ever heard. His voice alone only brought more tears to the surface as I stared at the creatures that had so long been lodged into my heart. “I don’t know how.” I said sorrowfully. No matter how I pulled at them, they only held on tighter and jabbed at the tender places inside of me. In defeat, I finally let go and let the whole thing drop into my lap, my arms drooping to my sides lifelessly and my head hanging. “Let me.” He said, His comforting words bringing life to my hopelessness even in that moment. One by one, He tenderly reached down and took hold of the little parasites. At His touch, they released their hold and were drawn out and disappeared. They stung fiercely to be removed, but the instant they left, that place they had been for so long received a surge of new life and freedom like I never could have imagined. The process was so painful, yet the most wonderful thing I had ever felt in my life. Chains that had weighed me down were removed and bonds cut. I could sit up straighter, breathe deeper, see clearer, and became increasingly aware of the light radiating from His face and of how much He really loved me. Finally, the last one was taken out and I looked down again. I couldn’t believe the difference that it had made. I looked so different – so clean. For the first time, I looked at myself and did not hate what I saw. “I’m beautiful!” I cried out with joy, beaming up into His kind face. “You always were,” He said. “Those things weren’t you, they were just in the way of you seeing yourself the way I’ve always seen you.” Now there was room in my heart for those things I had given Him. The conflict gone; the weight vanished. With the parasites cleaned out and gone forever, now there was nothing taking up room and sapping my very life from me. One by one, He returned them to me. Piece by piece, my heart was filled again. This time, though it was different. Some things, once put back, no longer seemed important. Such heavy things I had been clinging to became small and easy to put into perspective. Other things, though, finally had a chance to bloom. Things that had never been given a chance to grow, blossomed in His light and became so much more alive than they had ever been able to be before. His light and His love poured in and fed those things, giving them life and vibrancy like I had never known before. Before I realized it, my misshapen and bruised heart had been cleaned out and restored and made into what it had always been meant to be: a garden.
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I love that the Holy Spirit is so active in our lives! Just knowing that the creator of the Universe loves me enough to reach down and spend time with me is mind blowing!! Sometimes it's in a major encounter and other times it's the sweet feeling of peace that I feel as I lay in the sun. I feel His love in everything from a prophetic word given to me by a friend to receiving revelation about myself to just listening to worship music and journaling. He knows me better than even I know myself. He knows the way I think and how I'm feeling. He knows what stirs my heart and loves to make me smile. I cannot imagine my life without Him and I cannot fathom giving my life to anyone else. It doesn't matter how scary the situation is or how hopeless it may seem, I know He will see me through any storm. Even when things look humanly impossible, He will never leave me hanging and I will always have Him to lean on. I trust Him with my finances, with my safety, with my heart, and with my entire life. I need $1,000 by next week to go with my team on outreach and that's not to mention the other $3,000 I'll need in a couple weeks after that. But when I look at everything He's done in my heart, my circumstances, and my life to this point, I don't have a shadow of a doubt that He will provide completely. Last night, we had our Thursday night service and the Holy Spirit totally showed up! Two of our girls got encountered and ended up laying on the floor in His presence far after the service was over and the building cleaned up. I loved sitting with them and another one of our students as we prayed for them and listened to what they were saying. God encountered their hearts in such different and sweet ways, it was so fun to stay up till all hours of the night laughing and praying as sisters! He was speaking to their hearts and filling them both up with His love and joy and it could not help but spill out on us as well. It's moments like that that I truly treasure. At the same time that that was happening, a few of our guys went to go swim at the beach at night. BAD IDEA. The waves grew to be (according to them) 13' to 15' high and a rip tide suddenly pulled one of them out to sea in the dark. A couple others got so tossed around that they swallow enough sea water to make them sick and disoriented. When one of the guys went to save our friend who had gotten pulled out, he was so tired by the time he got out there that he was not strong enough to fight the waves and get them both back to safety. By the grace of God, another student saw them even though they were far out to sea and in the dark. He managed to swim to them and pull them each back to shore individually. If God hadn't been there last night, I dread to think what might have happened. Three of them almost died and it is truly a miracle that they all made it home safely. His hand of protection was so over them, it was a frightening story yet such an incredible testimony! He provides healing, He provides safety, He provides community, and He will most certainly provide finances!!! Behold! The Muff-affle!!! (Muffin-Waffle. Or would it be waffled muffin? Waff-in just doesn't have the same ring to it...) OK, the actual muffaffles we made today were consumed before a camera even made it out of anyone's pocket, but this is more or less what they looked like. =) My student and I started by having a lunch date, which turned into three of us looking at my old outreach pictures at the cafe, which somehow turned into four of us in my kitchen making these lovely treats. With vanilla ice cream, of course! I love these girls so much!! Each of them I can see someday coming back and staffing alongside me in the future or going on to do ever greater things - they are some of the most fun, God loving people I know. I love how, as we sat and ate our revolutionary treat (which has changed the way I see waffles forever, by the way. Next, cinnamon rolls!), our topic of conversation so easily comes back to God, miracles, visions, encounters with the Holy Spirit, etc. It is just incredible how we can be living life completely normally - making muffaffles on a rainy afternoon - and yet be still so centered around God in everything we do. Nothing is not spirit-centered. God is in everything and in every moment of our lives. He is living life with us and teaching us in every single moment. Even doing community service in the park is a place where God shows up. Our crew volunteers at a local park doing whatever they need to clean the place up and keep it nicely maintained. We painted fences and pulled weeds last Friday and had so much fun doing it!!! We got to talk to one of the ladies who runs the park maintenance and tell her about YWAM and DTS. It was wet and rainy, we totally thrashed our clothes, there was no one except the couple women who worked there to even know that it was us who did the work, but it was still such a great opportunity to sew into our local community and have fun working as a group. =) Something I have realized over the past few weeks is how happy I am to be a student again! Yes, I am staffing the school, but I feel like I am learning just as much in the lectures as the students are. =D Last week, Dan Baumann taught us and it was incredible! If you haven't heard of him, He's been in YWAM for something like 30 years and has one of the craziest testimonies of being a missionary you will ever hear. He told us about his book, Imprisoned in Iran, and didn't show us the YouTube reenactment in class, but I watched it on my own and I highly recommend it! There was so much rich experience he shared with us just in those 4 days of class. We have been friends for a while and I've gotten to know him pretty well, but I still walk away from hearing him teach with pages of notes! Revelations like that God cares more about our hearts and that we make the attempt than about the success or failure of whatever it is we are doing for Him. And that we can either move from a motivation of working for His approval (which is impossible to achieve) or from knowing that we already have His approval and simply loving Him back. And this week we have Christian Gonzales, a Harvard graduate currently going to Yale (I might have those two in the wrong order, but you get the picture) who is utterly brilliant and has such astounding insight into how we interact with God!! I could listen to him teach all day long. =) It makes me want to always be a student! I have also been struck by what an amazing situation God has placed me in. I spent the weekend relaxing with my students who are now such close friends of mine! They are actually almost all older than me, but neither our difference in position or age seems to matter. They love God, I love God, we are all here together because we want to know and love Him better, and we can just hang out and be the best of friends in the process!! One of them even noted yesterday that out of the staff I tend to hang out with them more than most. An odd compliment that I'm not sure is entirely accurate, but it was so good to know that I've made an impact in her life. =) In a way, it's true, though, because even only having known them a month and technically being responsible for them in a way, I have been increasingly amazing by their tender hearts before God. I can see Him moving in each of them and one of my greatest joys is calling that out in each of them and seeing them go even deeper with Him. I love seeing their giftings develop and see how God is the one who is teaching them, not me or anyone else. "The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance." Psalm 16:6 (NIV) |
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March 2023
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