Several weeks ago Skip Moen spoke at our church and one of the things he said really struck me. He said that life is about tension because the areas of tension are the areas where God is working. When He is filing away the rough edges, that’s tension. When He’s drawing attention to an area of sin, that’s tension, too. Lately I feel like a lot of life has been tension for me. The more I learn about the writers of the Bible and the context in which it was written, the more I realize how little I know and how far I have yet to go. And the fear that I’m somehow hurting or angering God by “doing it all wrong” haunts me. But then, He gives grace when I don’t deserve it. I’m still quite overwhelmed with what He’s opened my eyes to see, but the tension there is His work, and I’m glad He’s working. I must have a lot of rough edges, though, because that is certainly not the only place where there’s tension. Between finances, job situations, family and living situation issues, there seems to be a lot of tension. My eyes should be watching to see the lessons to be learned, the rough edges to be softened. However, I realize that once those areas of tension ease, there will be more to come afterwards. YHWH how I long to understand Your truth so I may walk in Your ways. Yet, You are holy. Amen.
I feel spiritually drained today. Last night I sat through a particularly ineffective family meeting regarding late-night gaming and sleep deprivation. Neither party really understood the other side’s argument. There was much gnashing of teeth, although not much wailing (except for the occasional one by my son who didn’t want to be in bed). Pretty much nothing got resolved. One party couldn’t make a point clearly enough to be understood and the other party, well, didn’t get the point that was being made. It wasn’t pretty. Ultimately, BOTH sides still need to be open to hearing things that they may not believe to be true. And, perhaps even more ultimately, it needs to be remembered that this isn’t our home. God tells us that we should honor others before ourselves, thinking of them as better than ourselves. I think this will fall into that category. I don’t always understand what God’s trying to teach. Probably responsibility and self-control. And patience. Always patience. As thankful as I am for this place to live, I will be SO excited when we are finally in our own place. But until then, I need to buckle down and learn these lessons so I can stop repeating them. I wonder, can a person be so used to ignoring,overlooking, discounting or dismissing something God’s trying to tell them (perhaps something they often do that’s wrong or perhaps something about their life that needs to change) that they no longer feel that “check” in their spirit therefore causing them to believe that they’re not in the wrong? Oi. God loves to challenge me! Growth isn’t easy.
Jeremiah 18:3-4 So I did as he told me and found the potter working at his wheel. But the jar he was making did not turn out as he had hoped, so the potter squashed the jar into a lump of clay and started again. Sometimes, when working with clay on a wheel, small lumps and bubbles in the clay make it spin unevenly or make the pot bumpy. If it spins unevenly, eventually the pot will spin itself to pieces because it gets unbalanced. A lumpy pot or a pot with air bubbles is not strong and will be unreliable. I think that when God is working on us, it’s like that. We all start out lumpy and full of bubbles, and God kneads us to get some of that out. And as He’s working on a particular area of our lives, we either learn as He work on us and become a beautiful pot, or we struggle against the process becoming unbalanced and showing our bumps. If our imperfections are worked out in the process of creation then we move on to the next step (drying, firing, glazing, display). If we spin ourselves to pieces because we aren’t ready or unworkable, then God has to squash us down again and start from scratch. To some degree we have some say in the matter. Will we choose to be workable and learn? Or will we stubbornly choose to stay as we are and have to go through the process over and over and over? True, there will be many lessons, but will we learn the first or second time, or will we make it more difficult and have to learn it three or four or more times?