Reflecting In the Calm

It's been a time of reflection for me. I guess because we made our bi-annual trek down south to visit our families, and many memories are stirred up with the rising temps.

Some of those memories are just as searing as the blazing sun. Some are as sweet as the iced tea of my husband's youth. It's kind of strange to visit my past peeps...past stomping grounds...past past...when so much has happened in the two year storm away from the Texas border.

No matter how much I hated the force and heart-damage of the bouts behind me, I still grew. God still shaped me and gave me each new morning regardless of the downpour. And in such a storm, the growing is big.

I can't help but think of Paul's words:

For everyone who partakes only of milk 

is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, 

for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, 

who because of practice have their senses trained 

to discern good and evil. Hebrews 5:13-14

It's hard to consider that before this trial (you can read about it in many of my posts these past months) that I was only surviving on spiritual milk and not the meat of maturity. Perhaps, I am over-exaggerating. Maybe I was on toddler food.;) I mean, seriously, I was a ministry leader, a Bible-studier of almost two decades, and a very devout practicing Christian for many years.

But, the storm came. After the pain I rest here in the calm, realizing how little I had made God back then and how big He is now.

Could I really be craving meat? And has it been twenty years of milk in this journey? Am I finally comprehending God? Hardly. Actually, He is more of a mystery than ever....and I have so much more respect for that.

I am finally discerning not only good and evil in a deeper way, but I am discerning God in a different way. I am understanding the distance between men and God, and it's so vast, but yet, through the Son, so close.

I heard something the other day that really struck me. Christ came as the Son of Man AND the Son of God. He is truly the union for the Bride (Humanity) and the Bridegroom (God). Scripture is amazingly intricate in symbolism and design. Christ is our common ground with God. He is our bridge. Before, I thought that thinking God was a mystery was unacceptable in my Christian circles. But maybe to think He ISN'T mysterious is child-like--like I needed God to be an easily-explained  storybook character?

Perhaps, it really is good to see God as a mystery and unfathomable. Because it grows my need for Christ even more. It's only through Christ that I can view God as a mystery but still feel Him near to me in an intimate way.

It's an amazing, unfathomable, intimate plan only fulfilled through Christ and His gift of the Spirit. It is life-changing to know that. And it blows me away that I am just now figuring it out.

This past southern trek, I saw old pictures of me and met with old friends. I can't pin it, but I felt different. I am different. And I think it has everything to do with my recent storm.

And THAT is an unfathomable change only God could pull off. Because if it were up to me two years ago, I would have been just fine with milk a little longer.

But now, I want meat.

Consider it Joy

"Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance." James 1:2

Ugh.

Joy?

That's the last thing I want to attribute to my trials! They hurt, they're icky, they just throw me in turmoil and disrupt my very joy. At least, that's my initial response--my flesh reaction. In Beth Moore's study on this particular verse, she asks us to pinpoint a current hardship and write down three things we could do with it, the third being "Consider it Joy". Then we write the results from each of those actions. After doing this, the above verse takes on a whole new meaning. I wrote:

1. Compete. Or Fight. This is my very nature as I am a competitive person at flesh (don't really want to say at heart, because it is a huge stumbling block for me!). Whether it be a comparison game with someone on the same path as me, or a game of  "that's unfair" that makes me put up my fists, my initial reaction to a trial is taking that "I'll show you" attitude and shoving it in the face of that trial. For years, I felt this was the best thing to do. To work at being better that that person, showing them up, to debate and fight and slather my opinion all over a Facebook status or mass email. YUCK. This only wears me out. And it severs relationship with people...Love your neighbor as yourself flies the coop and leaves me in a nest of turmoil and defeat. Because even if I do win, it's a definite loss for my character.

2. Criticize. Oh how I can be the world's best critic. Especially when I feel competition swelling in me. When a trial comes along, I can point fingers, blame others, knock those down whose words might present the trial in the first place, complain about my circumstance to all around me, and just grow bitterness in my heart quicker than I can say, "Woe is me!" Again, this goes back to defiling God's greatest commandment-- to Love. When I cut others down, or focus on the negative of a trial, I fill my heart with anything but love. I deflate my heart, and prepare a long-term garden of tangled thorny hate.

3. But if I Consider it all Joy? What then? What if I take the idea of joy in the face of a trial, sacrifice my flesh response and replace it with the joy of knowing that some how, some way, God is going to take this trial and get me toward the next part of this segment of Scripture:

"And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." James 1:4

It's all a journey, isn't it? If I can look at the hardships, the gunk of this world, and consider it joy that God cares that much about my heart to make something GOOD come from it...to give me the endurance, the peace, the refinement to bring me closer to the perfect maturity in Him...then isn't that something to be joyful about? Sure, the trials stink, they hurt, they try to destroy us...but if I consider it Joy to know that through those trials I will come closer to a heart worth presenting to God at the end of this journey, then I can rest in the midst of my temporary hardships and know that Joy is worth considering.