BEFORE I MET JESUS, I had no idea I needed him, except in a pinch when all else failed. Even then, I was never sure he was for real but only the icon of the religion I was taught as a child to pray to.
For help in times of trouble.
After I met him, I could clearly see that I needed him, but in my case, it wasn’t for things out there, but for things inside me.
While I had plenty of money, good health, power, and position, I still could not find it, the elusive place where I could have peace, rest, and the assurance of my purpose in life.
Jesus gave me those things, and on the day I met him, I intuited his forgiveness that removed a weight of shame and guilt that had plagued me for years.
He gave me a feeling of security that money failed to deliver, and on the day I met him, he gave me a sense of being loved just as I am, something I was unable to find out there.
As I became the dutiful church lady, I told others in need that Jesus was the answer to their problems, and I really believed it to be true. What I did not know, because I had lived eighteen years in prosperity, was that it can become difficult to believe Jesus is all you need when you don’t have a job, and there isn’t enough money in the bank to pay the mortgage. That’s where I found myself during the recession that hit in 2008.
As I look back, I don’t think I would have become a Jesus follower, even after meeting him up close and personal, without the eighteen years of prosperity that followed.
I think I would have been similar to the seed planted on rocky soil, or a shooting star that loses its luster in a flash if that had been my story. Matthew 13:19-23
I’m saying this because I have been in what the church people call a “desert” or “wilderness experience” for ten years now, the antithesis of my early journey with the Lord.
For most of this time in the wilderness, I struggled to find a moment of peace and rest and the assurance of his promises. No longer do I live in the security that money provided, and rather than bless me with power, position, and purpose, Jesus has chosen to make me fully dependent on his provision.
I never knew that self-sufficiency, self-confidence, and self-reliance are the number one enemies in my life.
I did not know because I did not know.
But, in these years where it has felt nothing less than Jesus taking a hammer and beating these things out of me, I see that I thought self-sufficiency, self-confidence, and self-reliance were it, that place where Jesus would be so proud of me.
Along with all my self-righteousness.
Faith in the Lord must be tested in order to be real. But it is not the test of my trust in him, for that is only the lesson, which shows where I truly put, and do not put, my faith.
The true testing of faith in the Lord is all about him. For it is during the painful circumstances of loss that he proves himself trustworthy.
The question is not will you trust him, but rather, can he be trusted? You cannot really know until you know. And when you do, you will find it, that place of freedom from the faulty beliefs and counterfeit strategies that kept you captive.
He must increase, but I must decrease.
He who comes from above is above all.
He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. He who comes from heaven is above all. John 3:30-31
2 Corinthians 13:5,1 Peter 4:12,Proverbs 17:3, James 1:2-4,Matthew 17:19-20,1 Thessalonians 2:4, 1 Peter 1: 6-7,Psalm 26:2
As always, it is my intent and hope that my words may encourage you wherever you are in your journey.
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If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.–Jesus (Mark 4:23)
