"Bring me joy, bring me peace, bring the chance to be free
Bring me anything that brings You glory
And I know there’ll be days when this life brings me pain
But if that’s what it takes to praise You, Jesus Bring the Rain" MercyMe
This was my prayer this entire summer. I cannot even begin to explain to you the summer I had this year. It was the most fulfilling time in the Lord I have ever experienced. Everyday I had girls to pray with me and over me to start my mornings off. Everyday I had people who constantly uplifted me and encouraged me every time we saw each other. Everyday I could literally feel God fighting my battles. Everyday was something new and fresh. Everyday was a new lesson from Jesus. I can honestly say that it was one of the highest points in my spiritual walk thus far.
I began to hear this song a few times on the radio this summer and started to really cling to it. This song soon turned into a prayer for me. I was at such a high with God, I wanted absolutely nothing but to bring Him glory and I didn’t care how that would happen. “Lord, if I will bring even more glory to you through the rain, then Jesus bring the rain.” Who would have ever known what I was truly asking?
So summer ends and the amazing family of Christians I was surrounded by were gone. School starting and reality sinks back into my life. I actually was excited about going back to school for the first time in college. So many things were going all too well for me in my life...relationships, friends, family, and just life in general. I couldn’t have been more satisfied in Jesus at that point. Then things begin to happen. I don’t even know where it started, but bit by bit the clouds begin to roll in. At first I am ok with that because I told Jesus rain was ok, and I really meant that. Then came a monsoon like I have never experienced before. The prayer that I had lifted up to God was about to wreck my world.
Do you remember the story of Jacob wrestling with a stranger in the night? It is quite an interesting story in Genesis 32. Jacob is fleeing from Esau because he had stolen his blessing. One night Jacob comes across a man and they begin to wrestle. The man realizes that he is getting nowhere with Jacob so he just touches his hip and Jacobs hip was put out of joint. Immediately Jacob knows that this is the Lord and asks God for a blessing before he leaves. God blesses him and then changes his name...to Israel. Israel became a blessed man and the descendant of many nations. Do you get the significance of this story? Jacob has to wrestle with God before his name is changed. And once he got his blessing, Jacob still walked away with a limp. I think God made him walk away with a limp because he wanted a physical reminder for Jacob of what he had to go through before he was changed. Not a burden that he would have to always carry, but a reminder of how merciful God is to his people.
Does God call people to fail? Does he call people to wrestle with him? ABSOLUTELY. I cannot be more certain of that. He called Ezekiel to fail, point blank. He told him that he would fail. See for yourself in Ezekiel chapters 1-3. Ezekiel has to learn to wrestle with God. He is a prophet and there is absolutely nothing easy about his life as a witness. God has called me to failure. God has called me to wrestle. There have been so many things recently that God has called me to that “bring the rain” in my life I guess you would say. Things I thought the Lord promised me he would never let me go through again or just has not delivered me from yet. Where did I ever get the notion that God promised me from certain hurts in my life? The enemy, that’s who. I guess this is why it’s all so hard. I have been deceived for so long about how God would act in my life.
Wrestling is not easy. It shakes your faith. It makes you angry, and I mean really angry. It makes you stubborn. It makes you want to get away from the world…literally. I haven’t wanted to be around a soul. But at the same time, it sucks being alone like this. I feel like no one can understand just how hard this is to do: wrestle with God while keeping the faith. Let me tell you one thing, if you thought you knew where you stood in your faith, wrestling will SURELY bring that to the surface of how much faith you truly DON’T have in Christ.
I can so well hear God saying to me right now, “I am here”, but he is quiet as I have ever experienced. I can’t explain it, but he is here and not speaking. Well at least not for a while he wasn’t. Just this past week have things turned for the better and a new beginning is around the corner. See, I understand that God is calling me to a deeper and more intimate relationship with him than ever before. And this is not your typical Christian faith. God is calling more and more of his followers to go below the surface of this Christian life and dive deep into HIM. Mediocre and content faith walk for me is not in God’s plan for my life. Extraordinary and abounding is what He wants for me. That’s what I want for me too. But to get to that point, the highers get better, and the lowers get harder... much harder.
My low is right now, and it is very low. I feel like I haven’t been able to breathe this past month and a half. Sad every moment of the day wondering when God is going to show up and make it all feel better or at least give me comfort. This past week I got to come up for some air. It’s not over by far, this wrestling, and I may walk away bruised and scarred for life, but that is what makes me beautiful. This is how I will learn to trust God in and out of EVERY situation. This is how I will know God more intimately. It is not a typical response, but this is a privilege in my walk. God is calling me to wrestle because he has huge plans for my life.My name will be changed and I will be used in ways I cannot even imagine (Ephesians 3:20). How honorable/unfathomable is that? It is something I have to remind myself of everyday because I just want to get through this, but being able to wrestle is a privilege.
I am finally coming up to breathe.
