However, over the last couple of years, God began moving, stretching, and no matter what I did, He began to escape the safety of my arms and my box. He began to lift off the lid, cut holes in the four walls....I tried everything to bring Him back into compliance with what I understood and with what made sense to me. The more I tried to bring Him back to what felt like safety, the more frustrated, angry, anxious, and fear filled I became. What if He completely escaped? What if He started doing things that didn't make sense or line up with my understanding of who He is? What if He started riffling through my files, messing with my routine, and rewriting my lists? Worse yet, what if He left me without a list? What if He left me with no direction? What if He left me all together?
It turns out, God doesn't live in boxes or the safety of my arms. Turns out, while He is a God of order, He is not a God ruled by my definitions, my lists, or my order. Turns out, God is shapeless, yet perfect. Right when I think I have Him figured out, He shows me another aspect of Himself....one I don't have a category for. One that I can't find a place to file. Turns out, in order to answer the deepest cries of my heart for a steadfast and immovable faith, which I prayed fervently for and meant with every fiber of my being, He had to move out of the safety of my box, reveal Himself to me in a new way.....He had to turn my filing cabinet on end and shake everything out. He had to lift off the lid of my box and step out. And then He did the unthinkable, He flipped my box upside down and He shook me out.
What felt like silent chaos and circumstances that filled me with anxiety and fear and messed with my understanding of Him (A Good, Good Father who worked all things out for good, who answered my every prayer in my way and my timing, who delivered to me every desire of my heart and brought ease to my life, who danced with me through flourishing meadows, who blessed me with many blessings that were happy and joy filled) actually was the beginning of the answer to my prayer. I had prayed it, in my box, not understanding what it meant to be given unmovable, unshakable faith. Not understanding that asking for deep faith, to be led out upon unknown water and declaring to Him that He can take everything from me, even my friends and my comforts and I would still love Him because He was all I needed, would require a shaking up of my box. It would require me to release God to be God. It would require me to step out of the box myself and since I was hanging on so tightly, it required Him to shake me out.
Before I found myself shaken out, I defined blessings as things and circumstances. I heard it from others and I spoke it myself. The air was filled with the blessings of God for those who loved Him and were called according to His purpose.
"God blessed us with this job!'
"Look how God worked, He blessed us with the perfect house."
"What a blessing, we did exactly what God called us to do, and now look! He is blessing the work of our hands!"
"God blessed us financially."
"God has blessed us with good health!"
"God has blessed us with the desire of our hearts!"
As God began to stretch out from my protective arms, undo my order, lift off the lid, step outside of the box, tip it upside down and shake, leaving me disheveled, confused, and scared as I unceremoniously and ungracefully fell to the ground.....leaving me with questions, leaving me anxious, leaving me scared, leaving me without direction.....He began preparing me to begin to understand His strength, His unfailing love, His grace, His blessing.
He had to step out and shake me out of my comfort in order to grab my attention. If He hadn't, I would still be sitting in my box, holding Him tightly in my arms, filing my life away in neat categories and missing out on one of the most painful yet life giving experiences of my life.
On the outside of the box, I found myself sitting uncomfortably in a place unknown. I watched as comforts I had relied on, little by little, began to leave the control I once held on them. I watched opportunities I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I had been called to crumble. In fact, I often felt like, no matter what I put my hand to would soon die instead of flourish. I walked up to open doors knowing I had been told to walk through them....only to get there and experience the door slammed right back in my face. Not just shut, but dead bolted. I watched as relationships struggled, finances get messed with, illness hit, desires went unfulfilled, dreams flew away....and it all happened as I tried my hardest to pick myself up, reorganize my upset box, stuff God back in, put myself back in and secure Him back into my arms.
The more I tried, the more frustrated I became. Frustration turned to fear and anxiety. Fear and anxiety gave way to anger. Anger gave way to feeling like God had abandoned me and that I was not good enough, not chosen (an age old lie I already believed but had tucked away in one of my files). I watched as others received their blessings, their dreams, open doors to ministry opportunity....
And here I was without. What had I done? Had I sinned? Was there hidden sin? Had I misheard God and taken a path I wasn't supposed to? Was He disciplining me? I had tried so hard and done my best to be a good child, to be faithful, to do EVERTHING He asked of me.....why was I receiving this instead of reward? Instead of blessing? Instead of being given more to be faithful with?
Hands were flung up into the air demanding answers, but I often was met with silence. Like a two year old child, I threw myself to the ground, stomped my feet, beat my hands against His chest, screamed at Him and cried. I became exhausted and overcome with depression and dark oppression.
It was during this time, in ways I didn't understand, that God began revealing truth to me.
He showed me in order to overcome the darkness, I must allow Him to fight for me. He showed me how I was trying to fight in His God sized armor a fight that was too big for me. The armor wasn't for me to fight in (it was too big and heavy), the armor was to protect me in the midst of the battle while He fought for me. He taught me my job was to stand. On my own strength I could not defeat this enemy. It was only by God's strength, His wounds, and His stripes that the battle would be won and the enemy defeated and I would find healing.
He revealed, along with standing in His protective armor and allowing Him to fight, one of my greatest assets was praise. Praise in the midst of battle....arms lifted high, declaring who He is should be on the front lines.
He taught me, standing alone, without fellow sisters in Christ standing with me, is a detriment to me. In the middle of the fight, even protected in the armor, my raised arms can become heavy. They want to fall, but when surrounded, like Moses was by Aaron and Hur, they can help lift up my weary arms through prayer. It's what sisters are for. I am forever thankful for each Aaron and Hur God has sent my way. I prayer I can do likewise.
He began to reveal to me blessings are not measured by circumstances or things. His blessings are like His grace. It is free and it is freely offered. I don't have to do anything to get it. To be blessed by God has nothing to do with my obedience or disobedience... I have His blessing simply because I am His. His blessing is that warm hug He gives to me as He says, I am pleased with you......Because You are mine.
Quietly, as He shook up my box and shook me out, He was giving me the best gift He could ever have given me. An opportunity to begin to realize, my box was not a safe place to be. I didn't belong there with my false sense of security and safety, with my perfectly filed categories, with my definition of Him, with my "blessings" piled up around me carefully grooming it all, taking good care of it, doing all the right things so they would stay put. I belonged out in the open spaces. I belonged safely tucked in His arms. I belonged resting in Him and not on my "blessings".
Circumstances and things, they are just earthly rubble. Someday, they will be burnt up. All my works, all my ministry, all my things.....If I am not resting in Him, snuggled deeply into His arms, are all for nothing.
It is for this reason I can learn to begin to give thanks in ALL circumstances. Because, in every circumstance, I am still in Him. It is right to give thanks for the happy in life. It is also right to give thanks in the ugly. Because, In Him, He has promised me this hope.....
"All things work together (in synergy as a companion in labor, a work fellow, a partner) for good ( a benefit, useful and upright) for those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose in Christ Jesus." (Romans 8)
Nothing is wasted. That is the hope. All those earthly circumstances and things, whether deemed by me as good or bad, broken, painful, joyful....all of them will be used for my benefit. They will be useful. They will be upright. In that and for that reason, I can give thanks for the good, the beautiful, the joy filled things as well as, the bad, the ugly, and the painful. In fact, He is teaching me, that it is through the pain that I receive the greater gift.....more of Him. In the pain, I snuggle down deeper into those great Galilean arms.
In His arms and in Him lies this other, most beautiful hope....
"The Lord shall preserve (keep watch, put a hedge around, shepherd) thee from evil (brokenness). He shall preserve (keep watch, put a hedge around, shepherd) thy soul." (Psalm 121)
Hmmmm........It's like a breath of fresh air rushing in after living in a musty, dank, and dark place. All those circumstances and things? He won't allow me to come through them broken. My soul, the very essence of who I am, will be shepherded, will be protected.
All those circumstances and things? Good or Bad. They can no longer define whether or not I am blessed. They can no longer harm me or give me a false sense of safety. Because.....
"neither death, no life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, not things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of god, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8)
And
"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?" (Romans 8)
Circumstances and things no longer can hurt me, be used against me or give me a false sense of security. I am learning to rejoice in both. I still dream, but I leave those dreams with Jesus. I still hope, but not in things. I hope in Him.
Inside of my box, I held Him in my arms. He was safe there. I understood Him there. Inside of my box, I categorized and filed, kept things neat and orderly and I controlled things. Inside of my box, I heaped around me good circumstances and things. I counted them as blessings and I sat on them falsely secure on my mountaintop of happy. I depended on them to remind me of how good I was, how good I did, how chosen and acceptable I was. They were proof....they were the "blessings" bestowed on me because of my goodness. Inside of my box, I became accustomed to darkness, breathing in musty and dank air.
BUT GLORY.....
God didn't stay safe in my arms. He stepped out. Shook me loose. Turned me upside down and dumped me out.
Outside of my box, He holds me securely in His arms. I am safe there. Outside of my box, I do not categorize nor do I file. He controls things. Outside of my box, He is my blessing and I am blessed because I rest in Him and because I am His. Outside of my box, I am chosen and acceptable, not because of what I have done, but because of what He has done. Outside of my box, I blink hard in brightness I have never experienced before as my eyes become accustomed to the light of the Son and I breathe......I breathe deeply of His fragrance, His air. It is refreshing.
I am so thankful He loved me enough to shake me loose. I am so thankful for the journey. It hurt, but I can't regret it. I am thankful for His answered prayer to giving me deeper faith and more of Him. I am learning, His answers often don't come in pretty packages, tied up with bows.....it is the cost of the gift and it's ugly wrapping that allows us to better understand the value of the gold inside.
It is with this answered prayer that I can now say:
I AM BLESSED!
