Is He enough ...

Hi Friends,
It’s been a busy week and I’ve had a hard timing getting any free moments to think, let alone to write. Each night it has been my intention to post an update, but once the kids are in bed, it’s been hard for me to keep my eyes open much longer than to brush my teeth and fall into bed myself ... still so tired and our full days and short nights are not really working towards catching up on that rest ... on most days though, He is continuing to sustain and provide and for that, I am thankful.

The kids are doing well ... although they, too, need more rest. Baseball is in full swing for the boys, putting us at the baseball fields 5 days/evenings out of our week! It is also taking a little longer to get things done these days and even though I aim to get home and get them into bed before 9:00, it’s consistently been 10 or later for several weeks now and I won’t even tell you how long it’s been since they’ve had a bath! Really looking forward to summer days that include a swimming pool so they are at least getting SOME form of water over their bodies :) Hey, don’t act like you don’t count that, too! :) I am hopeful that things WILL eventually slow down and we’ll get into ‘normal’ again soon.

Emotionally, I’ve been really struggling this week ... I don’t know why it took me off guard, but apparently that revelation last week on being fully dependent on God ushered in a full load of trials this week ... new and old ... and I find myself at the foot of another hill, hearing the same question that I’ve been hearing through the Spirit for quite some time, now ... ‘Am I enough? In all that you need, in all that you’re going through, am I enough?’

I had not realized how dependent I had grown on people and things, other than God, until so many had been taken from me these past few weeks, only to leave a canyon size hole that I’m now desperately trying to fill once again with more things, other than God. Why isn’t He enough? Is it the matter of waiting? Would He be enough, if I would just be patient long enough to wait for Him? But how long is too long to wait and what do I do with this emptiness until then? Or is it the matter of the type of filling? Is He ready and wanting to fill, but I’m too afraid of what He might have for me to fill these holes, so I try to fill it with other things that I think are better ... or easier?

I was challenged by a thought at the end of one of my devotions the other day ... ‘When you lose your heart and Another takes it, and you lose your desires and He takes them, then you live in that sunshine of bliss that no mortal can ever find.’

Pretty ‘heady’, but as I’ve mediated on it, I think there might be something here ... the words ‘Another’ and ‘He’ were capitalized, so I’m pretty sure the author was referring to God ... If we lose our heart and our desires to God, and/or if He takes them, then we live in ‘sunshine of bliss’ that no mortal can find. The words ‘sunshine’ and ‘bliss’ seem contradicting to the words ‘loss of your heart’ and ‘loss of your desires’. Is it possible that our worldly hearts and our worldly desires are actually holding us back, keeping us from a special place of bliss with the Lord? Is it possible that losing our heart and our desires could actually be good for us, because I'll be honest, I feel like I’ve lost both and I’m not feeling so good about it, at all ... could it actually be a step towards ‘single-mindedness’ that we know He desires for us?

A few days later, in the same devotional, the author refers to God’s intention for His Creation in this thought ... ‘God had no thought in Creation but to bring forth through mortality a natural order so that you might be quickened in the Spirit, be received into glory and worship God in a way that the angels never could. But in order for that to be, He has brought us through the flesh and quickened us by the Spirit so that we may know the love, the grace, the power, and all the perfect will of God.’

Whew ... more heady stuff ... what I think He is saying here is that God’s intention for us, as His Creation, is to know Him in a way that no other creature would or could ... in a way that would lead us to worship Him like no other creature can ... not even the angels ... but the only way for Him to reveal Himself to us in this very special way is to bring us through mortality, in the flesh, so that we can be quickened (to be made active, restored, aroused, stimulated) by the Spirit so that we may know HIS love, HIS grace, HIS power, HIS perfect will ... like no other creature is able to know Him.

WOW!

Friends, I still don’t know where I’m at with all of this ... I still have lots of questions and emptiness that I’m trying to fill and to be honest, I’m not sure how long I’m going to have to wait for Him to fill it ... It’s a pretty big hole ... but I do know He is able. I am also thankful to know that this intense pain that I’m experiencing is meant for good and will be used for good and I think I’m learning that it is also intended for me to learn something new about my God ... about His love, His grace, His power and His perfect will ... all of the holes in our lives are God-shaped ... and I believe God-intended ... intended to draw us closer to Him, not away from Him ... to bring us closer so that He may reveal something of Himself to us ... something special ... something loving, powerful, perfect and full of grace so that we might then be restored, aroused and stimulated by the Spirit ... ultimately to bring Him glory and worship. I’m not quite there yet, but every-now-and-then I get a taste of the truth behind it ... it tastes like freedom, joy and peace all wrapped together and it makes me want more. I want so badly for Him TO BE enough because I know that He is unchanging and I’m just so tired of investing in things that are temporal. I’m ready to invest in things that are eternal ... and I know He’s all that.

So, more Lord ... more

[comment on this entry] [sign guestbook]