Strike Your Life

I haven’t written in awhile. A great many beautiful things have happened over the past few months. My life is so good. What feels like a great, long transition has quietly ended. I expected a plateau on the other side, but instead, I feel the beginning of yet another transition. The former has been in the physical, yet this one I feel to be spiritual. While life has been wonderful lately, I feel as though God is calling me higher. Stirring me to action. Looking around, I feel as though I have been in a season of complacency. A season of spiritual burnout. A season of needing to press in, yet not. A season of needing to stand up, but feeling to weak to rise from the chair. I’ve become lazy and disobedient in small things that God has given to me to steward. I’ve become busy. I’ve become disorganized. I’ve become tired. And I know that our patient, loving God is calling me to a season of rising.

During this time, I feel though God has been preparing me for this new season of getting back on my feet. He’s been showing me how much my life, and I know the lives of so many others as well, are directed by emotions. By our circumstances. By our comfort. By our limited desires. We become the people that we “feel” we are rather than the people that God is calling us to be. We compromise, we become defensive, refuse to take an honest look at ourselves. Sometimes, those things stick with us for a season. But other times, those things petrify and remain for a lifetime. 

We stay with sinful things in our hearts because, instead of fully accepting the example that the Bible tells us to live by, we allow our feelings and perspective to shape us. Instead of being generous, we say that our personal situation doesn’t leave room for us to give, and we just don’t feel comfortable giving to others freely. Instead of praying and spending time with the lord, we say that we’re too tired or that we just don’t personally see the importance in praying. Instead of fleeing immorality and the very appearance of evil, we let unhealthy relationships and people and questionable habits slip into our private, personal lives and say that it’s okay because “we’re just figuring out what to do” or “we still have enough room for an escape route if we need it.” Instead of speaking the Word of God boldly to others, we say that it’s just not our personality or gifting. Instead of fixing our eyes on heaven and our lord, we prioritize our circumstances and we view God as though he is far off and for a later time.

We live off of excuses and half-hearted attempts.

We say that we can't, but the truth is that we just don't want to be held fully accountable to what God is able to do in our lives. 

It is so easy to live by our feelings and to let our lives be shaped by ourselves instead of God. It’s so easy to make excuses and to let our desires and preferences define us in a way that pushes God away, turns a blind eye to our responsibility to grow, and a deaf ear to our need to be obedient. We are excellent at slowly crafting a small, safe box for ourselves, walled in by so much of our flesh that God asks us to shed. I’ve found that the longer than I allow my feelings to reign, the louder they get and the more they shut up God's voice. The longer I let my comfort reign, the less willing I am to rise when God asks me to. Complacency grows, thick and heavy and hot, and instead of walking on the edge of the world with our lord, we end up in our little honeycomb, slave to ourselves. We need to stand up, and strike back. 

Strike your feelings against his wisdom.

Strike your flesh against his spirit.

Strike your loneliness against the cross.

Strike your thoughts against his voice.

Strike your desires against his instructions.

Strike your preference against his will.

Strike your circumstances against his promises.

Strike your insufficiency against his ability. 

Strike your blindness against his vision.

Strike your present against his eternity.

Strike your life against his word.

Letting the pride and poison of “having our way” slip into our lives is so quiet and easy. It’s gentle and comfortable, ripe with small excuses and compromises that slowly build up into a bolted door and a turned back. We need to humble ourselves. We need to say “enough” to ourselves and we need to stop making excuses. God has not left us the option to say “well, this is just what I’m like.” He has given us the power that raised him from the dead to live as a new person, with our flesh crucified. He has provided the avenue to wholeness in him. We just need to walk it out.

I don't want to stay in my spiritual complacency. I know that it will be hard to rise from that chair, but that it will be worth it. I am confident that although I have doubts and weakness surrounding me right now, my God is faithful and able to deliver me. I am sure that even though I have fears and uncertainties, he will deliver and grow me as I press into him. So often I let myself stop at the start because it’s easier to be weak. But it’s simply not worth it. I pray that wherever you are, whatever your complacency is, and no matter your struggle, you will come to the father. It's not worth it to live a life where you have to make excuses for your actions or feel awkward for your behavior. His discipline is gentle, and his help is sweet. His love is great, and his presence is clarity.

The LORD is gracious and righteous; our God is full of compassion.

The LORD protects the simplehearted; when I was in great need, he saved me.

Be at rest once more, O my soul, for the LORD has been good to you.

For you, O LORD, have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling,

that I may walk before the LORD in the land of the living.

Psalm 116:5-9