It's Only Me
It feels like months since I’ve written anything. It was starting to worry me, hearing such silence from God. Then I flipped back and realized that I had, in fact, written two blurbs in the past fifteen days.
And God said ‘thou shalt chill out.’
That is a relatively low rate of production for me. I don't get blurb ideas every day, and I have learned not to try to force them, but it's usually not so long a stretch between the juicy morsels God tosses me to share with anyone who cares to read. Writing them is my greatest Joy, and I always worry that God is somehow displeased with me when he falls silent.
But looking back on these past couple of weeks, I see amazing, Godly purpose in this dry spell: it allowed God to get my attention in order that he could demonstrate the massive progress his Spirit has made in my heart.
I have touched on how desperately broken my spirit was for so very many years. I was ruined and deeply unstable, nowhere more so than in my relationship with God. I would turn against him at the slightest trial, screaming my rage like a madman at my Saviour… and then collect myself, keep walking with him, and write a wonderful blurb the next day.
And then it would all happen again. For years. My spirit, though saved, was ruined and scarred by years of bipolar devastation, heartbreak, drug abuse and the corruption of sin. Nothing less than the blood, mercy, patience, and love of the Almighty could have kept me alive and sane this long, let alone at the point I wish to illustrate.
In the last couple of years, I have finally found my footing. Those horrific peaks and valleys have largely leveled out. Like my favourite Psalms says, God lifted me out of the pit of despair, and set my feet on solid ground. However, one problem remained: discouragement.
I have spent a lot of time failing. Failing at love, failing at a social life, failing with drugs and alcohol, failing at hobbies, failing at jobs, failing God. Even as I write, it strikes me how deeply branded I am by years of humiliating defeat. It's as though I had come to identify as a failure.
God would not tolerate that.
I don't claim to have a precise timeline for all this. But in these past fifteen days of pronounced silence from my God I find myself extremely conscious of success in my life. I’ve lost sixty-five pounds. My job is going beautifully. I'm sticking with things, and not shirking responsibility. I am not complaining to God even in the style of Moses or Job, let alone in the style of a raving lunatic. My sense of purpose is stratospheric. I am overcoming snares and stumbles with prayer and trust. My family life has never been richer. And while some of the toughest parts of my life remain, I am steadier than ever in treating them as the fire that purifies the gold.
God did it all.
In giving me a relative drought in my writing, God compelled me to pull my head out of the clouds and look inside myself… and see that the wonders within us are the most monolithic of all.
I guess the lesson I’ve learned, is that God takes his sweet time, and that is good. It is good to wait on God. Twenty years of pain was not one penny too little to pay for peace with Jesus, but now that I have it, you could offer me the universe and everything in it, and I would declare it trash in a ditch by comparison.
Keep going. You’ll get there.
It feels like months since I’ve written anything. It was starting to worry me, hearing such silence from God. Then I flipped back and realized that I had, in fact, written two blurbs in the past fifteen days.
And God said ‘thou shalt chill out.’
That is a relatively low rate of production for me. I don't get blurb ideas every day, and I have learned not to try to force them, but it's usually not so long a stretch between the juicy morsels God tosses me to share with anyone who cares to read. Writing them is my greatest Joy, and I always worry that God is somehow displeased with me when he falls silent.
But looking back on these past couple of weeks, I see amazing, Godly purpose in this dry spell: it allowed God to get my attention in order that he could demonstrate the massive progress his Spirit has made in my heart.
I have touched on how desperately broken my spirit was for so very many years. I was ruined and deeply unstable, nowhere more so than in my relationship with God. I would turn against him at the slightest trial, screaming my rage like a madman at my Saviour… and then collect myself, keep walking with him, and write a wonderful blurb the next day.
And then it would all happen again. For years. My spirit, though saved, was ruined and scarred by years of bipolar devastation, heartbreak, drug abuse and the corruption of sin. Nothing less than the blood, mercy, patience, and love of the Almighty could have kept me alive and sane this long, let alone at the point I wish to illustrate.
In the last couple of years, I have finally found my footing. Those horrific peaks and valleys have largely leveled out. Like my favourite Psalms says, God lifted me out of the pit of despair, and set my feet on solid ground. However, one problem remained: discouragement.
I have spent a lot of time failing. Failing at love, failing at a social life, failing with drugs and alcohol, failing at hobbies, failing at jobs, failing God. Even as I write, it strikes me how deeply branded I am by years of humiliating defeat. It's as though I had come to identify as a failure.
God would not tolerate that.
I don't claim to have a precise timeline for all this. But in these past fifteen days of pronounced silence from my God I find myself extremely conscious of success in my life. I’ve lost sixty-five pounds. My job is going beautifully. I'm sticking with things, and not shirking responsibility. I am not complaining to God even in the style of Moses or Job, let alone in the style of a raving lunatic. My sense of purpose is stratospheric. I am overcoming snares and stumbles with prayer and trust. My family life has never been richer. And while some of the toughest parts of my life remain, I am steadier than ever in treating them as the fire that purifies the gold.
God did it all.
In giving me a relative drought in my writing, God compelled me to pull my head out of the clouds and look inside myself… and see that the wonders within us are the most monolithic of all.
I guess the lesson I’ve learned, is that God takes his sweet time, and that is good. It is good to wait on God. Twenty years of pain was not one penny too little to pay for peace with Jesus, but now that I have it, you could offer me the universe and everything in it, and I would declare it trash in a ditch by comparison.
Keep going. You’ll get there.
