New Life

Please, pay no attention to the old leaves and weeds...and to the fact that this is an awful iPhone pic.  My iPhone is the nicest camera that I own so that's what ya get.  Plus, even if I had a nice camera, I wouldn't know how to use it, how to get the pictures off of it, or how to upload them.  So iPhone pictures it is!

So I went out into my yard and bent down to take this pic because I feel like it is an image of my soul right now.  I know, maybe a bit deep for a picture of my messy front yard, but follow me.

There has been so much emotional turmoil in my life in the last few years.  So much good.  So much bad.  Hurts and joys and changes and just so crazy much!  Since we moved, I feel like we have spent the last eight months stripping away stuff that we didn't even know was there.  I feel like being out here has forced us to take deep long looks at ourselves.  I know it has for me personally.  I'm no longer surrounded by a whole huge church full of really awesome sweet people who love me just because their love for Jesus is crazy big enough to cover my blunders.  Back in Paris, it was easy to think that I was "good enough."  I was comfortable.  I am SO not saying anything against being in a church full of awesome people.  All you Paris peeps reading this, go hug someone and meet up at Wade Park for me please.  Like now.  Go.  Fellowship is an amazing gift not to be under appreciated.

BUT, with that said, I think that for me personally I wasn't growing like I should have been.  So Jesus, in His grace and mercy, kicked me out of my comfortable nest like a baby eagle who refuses to learn to fly.  And I have been freefalling for a while.  Still am, if I can be honest.  I've never before been so unable to get away from how yucky I am.  All my life, I have struggled with rejection issues.  Yadayadayada, theres a bunch of reasons why, but DUDE it's so there in my sinful nature.  It is the sin which so easily ensnares me, like Hebrews talks about.

But I want to be different.  I've been BEGGING Jesus to free me from the need to feel like people love me or want to be around me.  I've been BEGGING Him to fill me with His Spirit so that I can grow....so that people's lives can be transformed by His mighty power....so that demons are cast out and chains are broken and lives are released from bondage...I've been BEGGING FOR REVIVAL!  And I know it's cliché, but it has to start with me.  SO that's my prayer life right there, a good chunk of it anyway.  And I feel like my front yard.  The tree is leafless...there was snow covering my yard a few days ago in fact...the grass is patchy at best....there's a weed right in the middle of it all...but would you look at those beautiful blue flowers!  My yard is NOT perfect.  It has a long way to go, BUT THE BEAUTIFUL NEW IMPERFECT LIFE RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF IT IS SO ENCOURAGING!  I have so far to go, so many weeds to pull.  DUDE, my tree is still asleep (when I look at it, I imagine myself like Lucy in Prince Caspian looking longingly at the trees and begging them with her heart to WAKE UP).  My spirit is patchy and not very pretty, and I am begging the Holy Spirit to come and breathe life and vibrancy into me....but there is a stirring.  Like those little blue flowers, there is new life beginning.......

I'm so impatient to see this all come together.

Jesus has made me so many promises that I just don't see happening in reality.  But I am clinging to them anyway.  In between times of being a faithless dork and giving up that is.  I want to be a better clinger.  Reading through the book of Ruth this week, it struck me that when Naomi was all get your selves back home girls, I'm a lost cause, that Orpah kissed her and Ruth clung to her.  It's not enough just to have an emotional reaction to the Lord either!  I want to be a clinger!  I want to hold fast to Him, the anchor of my soul.  So pray for me, yeah? That I won't lose heart but in due season keep on going to receive the reward.  (It's my sinful self that makes me lose heart...can I get an amen from anybody out there?)

Which totally ties into our study in Galatians this week.  Go read Galatians 3:1-9 and then lets dig in.

For me, this all ties in because I think I tend to be a bit like the Galatians and try to finish a work that I know began in the Spirit with my flesh.  Yikes, right?  Oh man, verse 3....

"Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit are you now being made perfect by the flesh?"

Dude, I am a FOOL way too much.

But it ties back into verse2..."Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith?"

THE SPIRIT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A LEGALISTIC LIFE AND A DISCIPLINED ONE.  At least, that's what I feel like God's been speaking to me as I have gone through this.  There ain't a thing wrong with works.  There's NOT!  Works are in fact good....when they are empowered by the Holy Spirit.  Works alone aren't any good for anything.  But James (gulp, yes I am going there) tells us that faith without the works isn't really any good either.  He says its dead.  Chew on that puppy for a while.  Ouchie.

So, Paul isn't saying not to do anything.  He is saying that we need to get back to the SPIRIT!  And when faith and the Spirit are working together, it's all gonna be good!  That to me is the heart of Galatians...no, the cry of Galatians:
Quit trying to do this in your own power!  Be filled with the Spirit and be moved by Him and let Him rock your socks off!  

Easier said than done, I know.  But really, anything that Jesus asks us to do requires a daily realignment with Him.  I have to ask every single day to be filled with Him.  I need new manna, a new time in the Word, every morning.  I need a new heart and new mercies and new EVERYTHING...every day.

That's really the Christian life right?  Sticking close to Jesus, depending on the Holy Spirit for power, falling on the merciful nature of our Loving Father.  Not a list of accomplishments.  Not a list of things we don't do anymore.  I mean, I may not do drugs anymore, but I've still got a serious issue with SELF that needs overcoming.  I am not complete until I reach heaven.  And that's cool with Jesus.  Is that cool with you?  I am desperately trying to come to the place where I am cool with it.

As I read this morning in Psalm 105, I just stopped in awe of verse 40-41

He opened the rock and water GUSHED OUT; IT RAN IN THE DRY PLACES.

Oh man, THAT is what I need!  I want His Spirit to GUSH out and run into all the dry places in my heart.  I just need to be moved by and full of HIM.