THE MORE I FOLLOW JESUS AND HIS CALLING, THE MORE I THINK I’VE LOST MY MIND. IS THAT WHAT A RENEWED MIND FEELS LIKE? I HAVE UPROOTED MYSELF SO MANY TIMES, LEFT THE TANGIBLE STUFF BEHIND, AND WALKED AWAY FROM WHAT I PERSONALLY WANTED.
In the middle, searching out what it is that God wants… It’s been brutal. I look back, certain I made the right decisions, but it hurts. This Way is painful!
Bald cartoon of myself?
There’s a book called Deep Unto Deep, and it is exactly that: deep. It’s taken me months {seriously} to read it, because I’d sometimes read one sentence and shut it.
I challenged myself to finish it in the airplane, on the way home from Thailand. I did finish it, and I remember feeling kinda drunk. Not in the alcohol way, but in the “everything is hazy, I shouldn’t operate machinery or make big decisions” kind of way. A bit stunned.
Here are some quotes from this book that ricocheted in my head and made it to my journal:
What He calls lovely is indeed lovely though all the earth may disagree.
It is a sign of truly comprehending the heart of our Beloved when we reach for His love from the pit of our darkness. It’s a risk we take that demonstrates our confidence in the strength of His love.
How many countless hours have I wasted distancing myself from the One who loves me?
The person who feels loved and pure, overflowing with dignity and desire, is fearless and tenacious in love.
Love is not love until it is expressed.
Paraphrased concept: desire for Him is ardent and desperate. Increasing ardency and desperation aren’t signs of dissatisfaction, but of growing affection.
Also: the exchange of tangible inheritance for unseen inheritance.
We were made to know more than longing. We were made to taste. … to experience, to receive… We were made for the fullness of joy.
Yet many times we think we are in winter when we in fact are in spring.
Concept: this misinterpretation buds from doubt of His manifestation and the lack of knowledge of His heart.
When we know that love is always the objective {of God}, we can say Yes to whatever the process.
What the enemy meant for silence, God has ordained for song.
Concept: spring seasons are times of discovering (revelation, impartation, movement). Winter seasons are times of remembering (stillness, hope, thanksgiving).
Good is always the enemy of the best. (On secondary pleasures)
We are surprised to find that with the heights of Love come the depths of Love.
With the power of the resurrection comes the fellowship of suffering.
He is just as acquainted with suffering as He is with conquering.
Let us not receive the tidal waves and refuse the deep unto deep.
I am comforted by all of this, challenged to perceive hardships as welcomed parts of the journey of knowing Him. Every crazy thing I have to do for love, let me do it in the awareness that I can’t out-crazy the Love of God.
There is always reward with sacrifice and obedience. Breakthrough comes down from heaven, in His perfect timing, soaked in the fragrance that was poured out on Christ’s feet. Crazy love that wastes whatever treasure it has, in order to be demonstrated, expressed. What a beautiful, foolish waste. He’s worth everything, my all-consuming Lover.
Whatever it takes, whatever He asks me to do, to go to places far or unfamiliar, to stretch my heart in ways that hurt in order to align with His, to confound my mind in order to renew it, to run out so He can pour miraculously… yes.
I can’t mess up His plan with a surrendered heart. My fatalistic fear is driven out by perfect love, perfect faithfulness. No mistake I make can fall too far from grace. I put one foot in front of the other and hold on tight. His joy is my strength.
Let me be a fool, if it is for Love.