He brings me to a place where I realize my neediness for him; this desperate place...the prison in my own mind. I tend to be a hermit within it more often than not and that's when the Lord really makes it known to me that I need him in ways more than one. I need him through people; the very creatures that he chooses to reveal himself through. It's crazy actually, that he chooses imperfect people to reflect a perfect God; himself. He's simply contradictory like that, and mysterious to say the least.
Maybe it's just me but I'll be the first to admit my walk with the Lord has been everything but a meer walk in the park lately. The last three months have been a notorious reoccurrence of spiritual stubbornness due to fear and my insatiable need to control everything. The fact that the Lord, (like I said earlier) is mysterious and very much silent at times, doesn't pacify the heart's desire to be instantly satisfied. When he is silent I want to say I become anxious?...but in all actuality I lose it and go off the deep end :-) Instead of admitting that I need him to center me in my insanity, I simply denounce his ability to control my life and go my own way. Needless to say, I'm a work in progress so I know He will eventually bring me to a place where my faith will be based upon fear, love and mercy. My prodigal tendencies are nothing new to my Father, because he has searched me and knows me. He knows my thoughts and is familiar with all my ways. It's so crazy to think that he knows you and I the way he does...so intimately and specific, so detail oriented and intricate. My words are...predictable. My sin, already forgiven. Absolutely ineffable love, I will never be able to wrap my head around it and constantly have to remind myself to accept it for what it is.
It's cool to take a step back and recount all of the times that the Lord was there, in that moment or in that blessing. You know what I'm talking about? I'm talking about all the times that you know that without a shadow of a doubt the Lord came through for you and that it was because of him that you are able to testify his faithfulness today. Sometimes that is all we have to carry us through the night; referring to the times that we have walked in faith and not by sight. I can't say that I've mastered walking a straight line when going through a dark season, but I can say that Jesus already did on my behalf...on our behalf, bestowing spotless righteousness :-) Even as I write, I am getting pumped and encouraged by this concept that our victory is in Christ. That although my life can be messy at times, he looks at me and says, "How can I give you up? How can I hand you over?" (Hosea 11:8)
"It is written, 'Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" (Matthew 4:4) I love this verse because it points out two things. The first thing being that we are mortal beings, and that without the essentials (such as food) we would die. But then it goes on to include the very Word of God to be just as essential to our appetites as bread. God intended us to need him from the very beginning. Our neediness for him isn't weakness, but made-up in our DNA if you will. Being human doesn't mean that we have a disease, the disease being sin and that we are all together hopeless. Being human means that we are dead in our sins and alive in Christ and that humanity is loved beyond the grave and through a resurrected Savior who made having a relationship with him possible in spite of our nature. It's taken me three months of wrestling with who I am, a creature said to be made in the image of God, to finally realize that being human is eternally good and acceptable to God and that he was so sure of this that he sealed his opinion with a death to atone the relationship between deity and humanity. Think about it,
that's mega love folks.
~Dierdre Madrid
