Have you ever had the moment where you didn't mind the wreck that you always fear you might get in? The plane crashing, or something taking your life. I feel as if I've been brought to this moment in life. This hurts, I feel crushed, weak. My tears have been my food day and night. I've cried more than I ever thought a man could and have sobbed louder and deeper than I knew possible. My eyes are dryer and redder than I wish them to be, and my stomach stays in continual knots. I seem to be like the sky's outside, dreary, dark, and full of sadness. My plans have not gone the way I thought they would. I continue to see things get worse and worse. I'm not sure how much more I can be broken. My 20's have been rough, so much sin to give over to the Lord, so many tight grips on the things of this world. My sin is ugly and only seems to get worse the deeper I go. "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes." Job 42:5-6 Wether it's seeking mans approval, trying to take control of something that I don't own, namely my own life, fear of the next day, the next week, and the next month. Fear of taking care of my family, fear that this is the way that I'll always feel. Sometimes I feel as if I'm sinking and I'm trying to grab onto everything else but what God has for me to grab onto. So much of my understanding of the Lord has changed. It's what started most of this opening up, purging, disinfecting. Sometimes I fear my dreams for they usually have led to heartache, pain, and those tears I've talked about before. Then I fear my lack of confidence, sometimes I don't know which one is from me or the Lord. Taking this thing one day at a time is rough. Working out your salvation is a lifetime of seeing my sin and then turning and seeing the cross. Sometimes it seem so simple, invigorating, and life changing. Then other times it's like I've never heard the gospel before, or at least that is what my actions say. The fulness of the gospel I can't say that I've grasped. I still don't trust my God, my Savior like I want to or wish I did. My pace is much slower than I want towards sanctification, much harder than I imagined. This Christian life is not easy.
Without the gospel, without Jesus, and the work of the Holy Spirit I would have run. But when you've had all the things you found your worth in ripped from you, He is the sweetest thing to me. I'm in need. Extreme need. I've seen myself as lacking. I've seen my plans go extremely bad. If I look off and try to project my faith on the next few months or years compared to the way that it has gone, I don't know where it will come from. I'm learning about trusting God with the grace needed for today, and today alone. If I look to far, even to the next day, I will be shortchanging God on what he can do for me, the grace that will be required, because my brain couldn't muster up the idea of that much grace. "I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted." Job 42:2
Moments like these make me hope for the day when this will all be over. No more weeping, no more sadness, no more pain. Fully in the presence of my King, aware of his majesty and holiness only, not my sin.
I pray that I not try to muster up a plan to take care of myself, come up with my plan on how this will work, figure this all out, so that I won't have to live in the grace that God supplies, instead I'll try to use the sinful counterfeit kind that keeps me in my misery, my own strength. Father, help me understand what that means. I don't even know I know what that looks like. Help me as a man give my plans over to you, my plans for my job, my family, and the daily time, into the hands of the sovereign God that wrote the script, knows the lines, and has seen the ending, more like created the ending. Father forgive me for I have chosen someone or something else other than you countless times. It saddens me to see my lack of faith in a God that has proven himself more than I deserve. My problems along this path are far less than the sins I've committed. I deserve much worse, when truly I don't deserve anything at all.
