Wanting Purpose

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Have you ever felt like you just haven’t done much with your life? Have you ever prayed, “God am I ever going to be more than what I am now?” I have been in a struggle with these two thoughts all week long. I know, I know, I just blogged about giving my dreams and stuff over to the Lord. But this question has been weirdly at the source of every ill feeling this week. Let me be real here, sin will never go away. I think if it weren’t for Thistlebend, this week would be one of beating myself up and thinking, “I thought I gave it to the Lord, why am I thinking about it? I must not have meant it when I confessed it.” I am glad to understand that because we live in our flesh, the struggle with sin won’t really end until we are reconciled with God.

I think it all started when I began to wonder if I had reached the pinnacle of what I would accomplish in my life. It sounds really silly to say, and everyone will be quick to remind me of my youth. But I feel as though so much has happened in my life thus far. I have noticed this week that my spirit has been down about it. I have been even more concerned that God wouldn’t use anything I have to offer for His good. I have been so hung up on “my purpose in life.” I know I should speak truth to myself and be in the Word, but I have found myself too busy or in the “I will do it later” mood. I think after looking back, this is what I find most striking about it all. I knew how to be healed, but I didn’t want to be. Is that because if I let this go, it is in a way letting myself go? I know it sounds trivial. But am I really that prideful and self-centered? Yes, I am. Because here’s the thing I am learning about myself through this walk with Christ: I have to drop myself if I want to be truly committed to Him. And this is what has been bothering me. At the root of all this questioning, I find that I am scared to be “nothing.”

I wish I didn’t struggle with this because it is so self-focused. But I share this because I think at the end of the day, people like myself feel that when we accepted Christ there would be this magical moment when everything would immediately change. These kind of thoughts would never happen, and you would go about your purpose that God has now given you in life. I always pictured someone snapping their fingers when I thought about what it would be like if I asked the Lord into my life. And that is not always the case, you won’t necessarily feel those things, and there are sins in your life that won’t immediately stop. There are even things you have done for YEARS that you won’t even know to be sinful. I am just to the point where I have realized that I am not comfortable with having only my husband provide because even that has been making me feel like, well, I want to be something too. I want people to know me too, I want God to use me too. Just typing this out makes me cringe. But I am learning that I feel the need to be something in order to be satisfied in life. I don’t like that, and it is embarrassing to even confess.

I get it. It is more apparent than ever why being a true Christ follower is not easy. Everything in us wants to do everything–except have the gospel reflected and deny self.

I have been thinking of Adam and Eve lately. I can relate. The whole “I am not okay with the gifts God has blessed me with physically and spiritually” reminds me of them. It is a peek into how dissatisfied I am with what God has already given me, and how I want more. I am not seeing that I should be content with what He has done for me. Instead I am willing to go around Him in order to seek whatever “it” is or whatever this physical worldly life has to offer in order to feel like I am somebody or I have a purpose. I think this is why I have been struggling with the gifts that God has blessed me with and feeling like they are such minute gifts that could never make an impact.

“Needing” to make an impact makes me struggle with pride. I don’t want to feel this way. I know I have the tools to help me combat this in the Lord’s strength. It is a matter of fear and pride. I know if I let myself go to Him, He won’t make me literally disappear. I have to constantly put my flesh to death moment by moment. I need to stop and make a plan and remind myself.

Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” He has a plan for my life and even if that life is not the one I wanted to design for myself, I need to stop. I need to just trust. This is so much easier to type out, but applying it is what I need to do.

All for His Glory

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Letting Go of Shame

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Recently, I found myself filling out an employment application – the first one I had filled out in many years. I’ve worked inside my home for many years. In fact, the life I lived before my husband and children is a life I don’t think about very often. It feels like a different person lived those years – for many reasons.

When completing employment applications, we are asked to provide information about the past. Our work history. Previous accomplishments. Other names we might have been known by. These questions can stir up memories of a past we have worked to put behind us.

I did not come to know the saving grace of Jesus Christ until I was in my late 20’s. By then, I’d had nearly 3 decades of living according to the only way I knew how: for me. I believed in God, but I had a very warped concept of who He was. I thought He was a distant judge. Or I told myself, “God wants me to be happy,” which basically gave me permission to act according to my own wants and needs. Everyone else (including God) was an afterthought. I alone ruled on the throne of my life.

During this time, I was married and divorced. I married young and did not know how to be a good wife – certainly not a godly wife. These years were not happy years. My marriage was not healthy. I was in a very dark place emotionally. The divorce was acrimonious.

When I became a Christian (and by that, I mean, I acknowledged before God that I was a sinner and placed my trust in His Son, Jesus Christ, as my Lord and Savior), I had been studying the Bible for a few months. I began to store up verses in my heart that gave me hope and encouragement:

I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten… (Joel 2:25)

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (2 Cor. 5:17)

He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. (Psa. 40:2)

I believed I was a new creation. Over time, God changed my heart, and by His grace He did indeed restore the years the locusts had eaten.

But here I was, 20+ years later, staring at the employment forms, knowing I needed to put my “old” name on a piece of paper and cringing at the idea that I might have to explain myself or my past. I began to feel shame creeping into my heart.

I tried to contact a trusted friend. She was unavailable. It was just God and me. He spoke tenderly to me through His Word:

Know that the Lord, He is God! It is He who made us, and we are His; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture. (Psa. 100:3)

I was reminded, once again, that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that I can do to earn God’s love. Christ is my Good Shepherd. He paid the penalty for my sin — my past, present, and future sin. God sees Christ when He sees me. As I took to heart how powerful that truth is, I knew the enemy was trying to use shame to keep me from seeing the unfailing love of my perfect Father.

There is freedom, such freedom, in knowing your sin is forgiven. I have nothing to be afraid of! My Father in heaven has adopted me into His family!

I did reach my trusted friend. She told me to place my employment forms in the hands of the One who died for me. I did. And He took away all my uncertainty, doubt, and shame. I am His.

Growing in Grace

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No Condemnation

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“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1).

If I really allow myself to sit and think about the past few weeks and the way I have been acting it is very easy to feel like a complete failure. My quiet times have been slim to none and when I have had them they have been half-hearted and rushed. My focus has been completely on my to-do list and how to get everything done and unpacked in our new house before our sweet little one comes. In my uncomfortableness in the last few weeks of pregnancy, I have been anything but grateful and just a complainer instead. I read a blog post the other day where a writer described herself as a “feeler,” and I think this describes me pretty well myself.

And I really hate to admit this as well, but this morning as I was praying for a co-worker who had asked me to pray for them, all I could feel was like I was in some way better. Why would God answer this prayer for them? They don’t follow the Lord. The Lord began to convict me as I realized that I don’t deserve for my prayers to be answered either. And not just because I haven’t been having quiet times, and not just because I haven’t been praising the Lord 24/7, and not just because I haven’t been a “good Christian” lately. I don’t deserve anything from the Lord because I am sinful. Apart from Christ I am nothing—NOTHING! And I am nothing not just when I am convicted of sin, but I am nothing all the time. It is awful that it takes me making a mental checklist in my head of all the things I have been doing “wrong” in Christian culture these days to remind me of my depravity.

My flesh wants to feel guilty. My flesh wants to feel frustrated over the sin I’m being allowed to see in my life today as my focus is completely on me and not the Lord. The pride, the self-righteousness, the unbelief is so evident. And why haven’t I been able to get better at this yet? But praise be to God that He reminded me of Romans 8:1 today. And I’m super thankful for a sweet friend yesterday who brought to mind that I can’t experience the true beauty of the truth of this Scripture if I don’t completely take it to heart and rest in what it says. Because of Jesus there is no condemnation! I want to feel righteous before I come to the Lord. I want to have my act together so badly before I come before His throne, but the truth is I just can’t. The truth is, the real truth is, that I can bring all to Him and lay all my yuckiness at the cross because of JESUS! So by God’s grace, I’m choosing to look at this truth today over looking at my sin and comparing myself to “good girl Christian ways.” Thank you, Jesus, that there is now no condemnation because of you!

Planted for His Glory

 

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