authentically free

Desperately, helplessly, longingly, I cried; 
Quietly, patiently, lovingly, God replied. 
I pled and I wept for a clue to my fate … 
And the Master so gently said, “Wait.” 

“Wait? you say wait?” my indignant reply. 
“Lord, I need answers, I need to know why!
Is your hand shortened? Or have you not heard?
By faith I have asked, and I’m claiming your Word. 

“My future and all to which I relate 
Hangs in the balance, and you tell me to wait? 
I’m needing a ‘yes’, a go-ahead sign, 
Or even a ‘no’ to which I can resign. 

“You promised, dear Lord, that if we believe, 
We need but to ask, and we shall receive. 
And Lord I’ve been asking, and this is my cry:
I’m weary of asking! I need a reply.” 

Then quietly, softly, I learned of my fate, 
As my Master replied again, “Wait.” 
So I slumped in my chair, defeated and taut, 
And grumbled to God, “So, I’m waiting for what?” 

He seemed then to kneel, and His eyes met with mine … 
and He tenderly said, “I could give you a sign. 
I could shake the heavens and darken the sun. 
I could raise the dead and cause mountains to run.

“I could give all you seek and pleased you would be. 
You’d have what you want, but you wouldn’t know Me. 
You’d not know the depth of my love for each saint. 
You’d not know the power that I give to the faint.

“You’d not learn to see through clouds of despair;
You’d not learn to trust just by knowing I’m there.
You’d not know the joy of resting in Me
When darkness and silence are all you can see.

“You’d never experience the fullness of love
When the peace of My spirit descends like a dove.
You would know that I give, and I save, for a start,
But you’d not know the depth of the beat of My heart.

“The glow of my comfort late into the night,
The faith that I give when you walk without sight.
The depth that’s beyond getting just what you ask
From an infinite God who makes what you have last.

“You’d never know, should your pain quickly flee,
What it means that My grace is sufficient for thee.
Yes, your dearest dreams overnight would come true,
But, oh, the loss, if you missed what I’m doing in you.

“So, be silent, my child, and in time you will see
That the greatest of gifts is to truly know me.
And though oft My answers seem terribly late,
My most precious answer of all is still … Wait.”

It is only through being loved that a human being in capable of love. “We love because he first loved us.” 1 John 4:19

 I like to think that Jesus was ugly…I mean, don’t you? Because it brings us right to his heart. I mean, think about it. When you see an attractive person, it’s easy to get stuck on their physical appearance and be blinded by the beauty, or non beauty, of their heart. I think of movies how the guy has this jumbo crush on the hottest girl in school, but she’s a witch! However, when someone is less physically inclined, one immediately goes to the heart. And then you hear, “he/she is not the best looking person, but he/she has a really good heart.” Am I right? Jesus reminds us, especially in a culture that emphasizes so much to physical physique, that he cares more about what is in our hearts rather than on our physical bodies. I am reminded that Jesus wants to sanctify our hearts, not our bodies. The possibility that Jesus was a “hunchback” invites us to believe that.

Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. Deuteronomy 8:2

As a daughter of God, 

Choose compassion, not bitterness, 

choose gentleness, not cruelty, 

choose relationships, not isolation

choose obedience, not rebellion, 

choose to be confident only in God’s grace, not your own strength

choose to be genuinely “yourself” instead of wearing masks to present a false image of yourself to the world.

choose to look at life with an eternal perspective, rather than focusing only on the moment and yourself.

choose to seek the Lord’s will for your life and remain faithful to Him each day

‎”Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of-throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

-C.S. Lewis

I think it is a shame that we see ourselves in the shadow of our denomination. We seem to have an identity in the ways we have been brought up, when in truth, our identity is all the same: Christ. We all have on the same robe of righteousness that has been gracefully given to us by the blood of Jesus. Now it is time to live in response to that, and that may look different to different people. Everything we do should be living in response to what He has done on the cross. Whether that is in the office, hospital, or mission field, our duty is to live out the gospel, proclaim Christ as our Lord, and to live as the salt of the world. 

I have been praying lately for adversity, for challenge, for a period of struggle, yet also growth and development. I believe that God calls me to that prayer, but it is hard for me to get on my knees and ask God to make my life harder. The last time I did, I got Mono. I am ready for God to put me in a bad car crash, take off my leg, or make me go blind; i have this attitude that says ‘bring it’. I want to be challenged but then stand with my foot on top of an obstacle and stand victorious over it. I have been waiting for that. Today I realized that God knows me better and knows that I can defeat physical difficulties. I am the type of person to grit my teeth, put my head down, and trudge it. But God knows that I would not have to rely on him for help with it because i could beat it. My struggle is not in that, and i am realizing that my deepest struggle is emotionally and spiritually, with ED. I battle and battle all day long with thoughts that paralyze me and put me in a cage. I cannot seem to move on from that struggle, i cannot seem to remove it from my life. I have surrendered and surrendered that part of me to him; i have spent hours on my knees begging for him to take it away—and he hasn’t. I thought that all we had to do was give God our problems and then he would take them away from us; but i am finding that is not always true. I am reminded of Rick Warren’s quote: “If you want God to bless you and use you greatly, you must be willing to walk with a limp for the rest of your life, because God uses weak people.” Just like Paul and his thorn, he pleads with God three times for God to take it away from his side—but he does not. God chooses to leave the thorn in Paul’s flesh just as he chooses to leave ED in my life. But the most amazing part of it all is the way God responds to Pauls and I’s cries. I am sure Paul felt this as I am: God hears my cries, catches all my tears and wipes them away, and then quietly wispers, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness.” As I often struggle to keep my head above water with all the lies, and I am pleading with God to take it all away, I am reminded that the Lord’s grace is good enough, it is good enough to sustain me, and it is good enough for me to only rely on it. We all enter this journey in different areas and we all have a different thorn. But we must choose His sufficient grace over our delight in being pain free.

Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. —2 Corinthians 12:9-10