Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Endless (01/09/14)
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TITLE: Scattered Musings | Previous Challenge Entry
By Frankie Kemp
01/15/14 -
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The idea is outrageous, really. How precisely does one come to the end of herself? I pose the question not out of contention or disrespect for those wiser than I but out of a sincere desire to shed light on the mind wrestling that I so often find myself in these days. Of late, I have walked through circumstances that have pressed me. Feeling worn thin and empty, desperate for the next assurance of the Grace of God’s hand on me, I have fought for joy, but no matter how thin I’ve gotten, “self” has always been there. I cannot escape her. Perhaps we call it “coming to the end of ourselves” and “surrendering” because our language is limited. We do the best we can to describe the mystery of the gospel working itself daily in our lives.
I would offer that “surrender” is a term we should use carefully. How can I surrender something that isn’t mine to begin with? Do I really believe that God waits for me to give Him permission before He acts according to His purposes? Maybe all I truly have to “surrender” is my own ideas of who I am and who God is and what He is up to. Maybe, when it comes right down to it, even my ideas aren’t something I “surrender” or orchestrate. Isn’t it really Something-that-is-not-me happening to me and then beginning to work its way out of me constantly moving to change my mind, heal my heart, and increase my vision? Maybe I have to wrestle before I can learn to be still and know that He is God, but is that “surrender?”
What if we wake up for a brief moment and realize that it’s not as much about “surrendering” or “ending” as it is about continually “becoming?” What if there’s a whisper or a constant light in the fog that calls us by name from the dark tomb of our dead selves? What if this call is exactly what woke us up in the first place and is the one that keeps beckoning us forward? What if God’s Word begins to sprout and linger in our thoughts and whisper on our hearts in a fresh and piercing way because we have found ourselves fighting to understand what is happening to us and have devoured that Word with growling stomachs? What if the brief moment of waking becomes something we desperately try to hang on to for as long as we can?
What difference do these musings make? All the difference for me. I’m convinced that we don’t really give in; we just get still so that we can see better. Giving in implies, for me, that what we have is better than what God has—as if He needed something from us before He could be God. He’s not the one who needs; I am. Nevertheless, I confess that I often have to reach the critical moment of impact where I hit the fortress of His sovereignty before I can come to this place of “different.” He jostles loose my joints so that I can get a grasp on the eternity He has put on my heart. Some would call it “coming to the end of myself.” Not me—not anymore, anyway. Instead, I now whisper to myself that God has let me see a bit of His robe, along with the place Christ’s blood has purchased for me under it. It reaches far beyond what my eyes can see. This isn’t where self ends. This is where she truly lives—forever hid with Christ in God.
--He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11, ESV)
-- For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:3, ESV)
-- None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”— these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. (1 Corinthians 2:8-10, ESV)
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