As the breezes of fall sweep over me the music plays on Pandora. There’s something about the words that hit a spot with me today, especially after finding this quote saved on my computer from October 14, 2012. I don’t know who spoke it. I only know it was saved for this day, 6 days shy of one year ago.
“If I do not experience awe in the center of a ferocious mountain storm, the storm is not lacking… my heart is lacking the ability to experience the awe. Something has happened over time that has caused me to protect myself from pain and unwittingly rob me of life. In a moment, when I am ready, God can break through to release my heart and that same storm will open me up to a world that I’ve forgotten.”
They sing the words that speak of Jesus overcoming and I realize there’s something to them. Like the breeze blowing past me revealing the promise of temperatures shifting, something has shifted in me. Much of life still lies unsteady, the winds of the storms are still quite fierce here. Therefore it’s not my circumstances. In this collision of saved quotes and songs currently playing, my eyes are opening to see what’s awakening. I am finding the world I had once forgotten.
One year ago I knew there was something about that quote. There was a sting about it, revealing something I was not yet ready to embrace. I had no ability to see the “awe” of the storms that raged, therefore the words were saved for a later moment. That moment was today.
Stormy seasons have often caused me to grade one of two things; my right standing with God or His with me. So much of life was about working harder to fulfill the demands of being His. If things were going wrong it must be something I had brought on myself through sin or some lesson to be learned from Him. Maybe if I could just get it right things would settle down. Maybe somehow, God would have favor and stop the pelting of wind and waves.
I often heard the verse in my head that talked about how God loved to give good gifts to His children. I struggled to find anything good being given. I allowed the circumstances of this world to speak to me of God. After all couldn’t He do something to stop the madness or at least lessen the winds? It caused me to hide away from the pain, allowing the throes of life to rob me.
As I’ve watched my son battle this through his own storms of late it’s given me reason to consider it all. The question that always comes to me is this. How would I be with my own? It led to a conversation which allowed me to see even more deeply the heart of the One who calls me His.
“Son, have you ever done the wrong thing?” Yea. ”When you do something wrong, do you think I withdraw from you?” No “Do you think I would allow hard things just to teach you something valuable or to punish you for how you’ve been?” No “Do you realize that I am crazy about you because you are my son?” “Do you know I would do everything in my power to make your life better?” Yea
The answers are easy to see when I think of my own. Never would I allow hard things for the purpose to teach or punish. I would do everything in my power to prevent them. My love is not based on behavior or performance. Never would I withdraw from him and leave him to himself to figure out what he’s not doing right. I would give my life to save his.
God’s gotten a bad wrap you know. Life has done that to many of us. We expect God to stop the storms we face as a result of a world broken by sin. When He doesn’t we wonder if it’s us or if we are honest, Him.
I can never relate to God by what I do right or what I do wrong. Does He not love with a greater love than my own? When I believe the right thing about the depths to which He saved me, peace settles my soul. It’s easy to hear the message of salvation for sin, but what about love. Didn’t He save me to love? It is the awareness of the measures that love would go that is the “awe” in the storm. It’s the “peace be still” of Jesus.
This is the release I’ve experienced in these last days that brings stillness while the winds and waves of difficulties continue. While I was still a sinner, God sent Jesus to find me. I did nothing, absolutely nothing.. He did everything.
Faith is being persuaded by that which is true.
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate me from the love of God. It is my “awe” in the storm.
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