What Do You Cling To?

While I hate to say it because I KNOW the truth, I still cling to my feelings, which keeps me from clinging to the Lord. Everything I shared in my Taking the Truth to Heart each week during the Falling in Love Again with Your Lord study all boiled down to the fact that I’m not believing who God says He is. I keep thinking about the TRUTH that God is in complete control and He also loves me. But then when I feel as if I have lost control, I will do just about anything in my power to keep the control I think I have. Like when I feel overwhelmed because I realize that I need to rush if I want to get everything around my house in order or everything on my to-do list crossed off for the day. I will get a headache. I will think of no one but myself and what I think needs to get done. This kind of thing can lead to maybe my husband asking me to do something and me just acting so frustrated with him because it didn’t fit into my plan for the day. I only think about what I think is right, better yet, what I feel is right. This causes me to not serve my family like I desire to do and should do. It also leaves no room for me to pay attention to anyone else and what they may be going through.

The selfishness that the Lord has allowed me to see lately has truly overwhelmed and saddened me. And again, because I feel like my life should go a certain way, or (another way to say that is) because I don’t believe God is who He says He is, I just completely push others to the wayside. I said to a friend the other day that I can taste the freedom that would result from actually believing God’s truth, the relief that would really come if I just took hold of God’s truth with everything I have. I want that, I really do. And I’m thankful for that desire. But actually acting it out is something entirely different. And it’s so frustrating to me because I know what to do and I don’t do it. And then I again, I hear the focus on myself as I even type that sentence. I want to cling to Him with everything, I want Him to be everything because the truth is that He is everything. I know that producing this dependence on Him in my heart is a work that only God can do.

I keep wanting my life to be my form of perfect, when the only true perfection is found in Jesus alone. I also am tempted to believe the lie that now that I have confessed my self-centeredness, I can fix it myself. If I just discipline myself more, I think I can fix myself so that I won’t be that self absorbed woman anymore. But I really really desire to be okay with being broken and not fixed so that Jesus alone can fix me. Because the truth is, that is the only way. The old me is a self-absorbed, must have it a certain way king of woman who follows feelings and her own form of perfection. But I really, really desire to actually cling to my new identity that is in Jesus. In this new identity, He gives me grace to follow His way alone. His way will be done no matter what anyway. And I know that His way is good, even if it doesn’t feel good to not have my way right now.

“For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations” (Isa. 61:11).

Will you please pray for me? I really want to believe the truth of God’s Word alone and want His glory more than my own. I’m praying for you as well, dear reader, that you will cling to God alone, and that God will reveal to you other things you may be clinging to that aren’t Him. What are you clinging to?

Planted for His Glory