Grace To Obey

(Quick shout out to Beloit College! Happy Homecoming, especially to the lucky runners hitting my favorite course tomorrow! And a thank you to Beloit, who is giving me a more fulfilling education than I ever could have imagined)

Because the last 9 months or so have been so incredibly chaotic (did you realize I've moved 4 times, and lived with a total of five families?!) I hope it doesn't come as a terrible surprise that I am still processing and putting pieces together.

I was thinking about how I often felt dry this summer. I was teaching Sunday school and reading/talking theology with my pastor and his wife and playing guitar for worship and studying the Bible and praying - overall, I was more plugged into the church than I have ever been and yet, God felt the least real to me as He ever has. I am so thankful that it is not based on how I feel, but on the fact that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. He gave me the faith to worship and love and trust and serve Him even during that thirsty time, but I knew I needed more.

Being in Senegal, I daily depended on God to be my comfort, deliverer, strength and provider. He was my Father and best friend. I went on ministry trips, and worshiped with the minority every Sunday. I attended quad-lingual Bible studies twice a week. I saw people so desperate for the Lord Jesus that they were willing to turn their backs on parts of their culture, their families, everything they knew. I shared the gospel with people who had never heard it. It was extraordinary, and like nothing else I'd ever before experienced. So when I stepped back into American Christianity in your average, mostly white, traditional, Evangelical Free setting, it all felt different. That felt more foreign to me than singing besub tey jii yalla moo ko def.

And now I'm here. Mangi fii. I still say yalla bax na when I read a wonderful verse or have a great time of prayer and worship. But I'm just saying, the Spirit is moving here. There's an authenticity, characterized by vulnerability and gut wrenching revelations of deep, cherished iniquity. It's a painful process, to be stripped bare before the throne of God, but He is able to fill me with His goodness and truth. He has the power to conform my heart and mind to His own perfect will, through obedience to the Holy Spirit.

I read The School of Obedience by Andrew Murray, and in it he says,
"Christ's obedience is the treasury out of which, not only the debt of our past disobedience is paid, but out of which the grace for our present obedience is supplied"

And on the slow process of knowing God, Rick Joyner gave a lecture to us in which he said,
"It took them one night to get out of Egypt, but forty years to get the Egypt out of them"

We are given the grace to love God, and to live according to His purposes, but we are not immediately perfected. The work Christ began will be brought to completion, but not yet.

Here are some verses God's been working into my heart lately. I'm loving the Amplified. Can't help it.

Let him sit alone uncomplaining and keeping silent [in hope], because [God] has laid [the yoke] upon him [for his benefit]. Lamentations 3:28 

Mary took a pound of ointment of pure liquid nard [a rare perfume] that was very expensive, and she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped them with her hair. And the whole house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. John 12:3. My friend Lady V had that one for me during group prayer the other day, and it so speaks to my heart right now! 

Establish my steps and direct them by [means of] Your word; let not any iniquity have dominion over me. Psalm 119:133

He restores my soul. He leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Psalm 23:3 

Therefore also now, says the Lord, turn and keep on coming to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning [until every hindrance is removed and the broken fellowship is restored]. Joel 2:12

This last one is particularly strong. God is relentless in our pursuit of us, but also in His process of sanctification. At the start of a new journal, I always pray for a verse for the season of my life that it will be for. This is the verse that I got. 

I know I've posted it before, but Aaron Keyes' "Sovereign Over Us" is so good. No matter how hard it feels, His plans are still to prosper! 

Oh, and here are the books I've read lately: Jesus Plus Nothing Equals Everything, The Knowledge of the Holy, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr, Spy, The School of Obedience, Miniskirts Mothers and Muslims, There Were Two Trees in the Garden, and I'm currently reading Abide in Christ and The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment.