I have this unending eagerness to serve God and to give all that I have and all that I am to Him in every moment of my life, and and undying passion to share God's love in every way that I can. Which has made it so difficult to be at home, not interacting with people and reaching out, not being relational, and not doing. I keep asking God what next steps to take. What do I need to do now as I prepare for my future ministry, in whatever it might be? The answer has been simple: just rest.
It's been a hard thing to accept that God might actually want this for me right now. I'm just so excited by everything that I want to do everything nownownow, but God has been showing me how to just spend time with Him and Him alone, to not pray or do, but to just be in His presence. I am so, so happy I got to go to Boston Sunday through yesterday. What a blessing it was to walk again! What freedom that gave me, and what joy!! Being able to meet up with people was also a joyous experience, but God has also been showing me that my identity is not based on how many people I meet up with or the quality of my conversations and relationships, but that my identity is solely based on the fact that I am the Beloved of God. More on that in another post though. I'm kind of getting sidetracked. I think the point of sharing the fact that I went to Boston was to share a particular moment.
On Monday, in addition to doing a lot of walking, I also had the opportunity to spend time with God in not walking. I went to the Christian Science building and outside there's this really pretty fountain. I was just sitting there and about to journal and to pray, but then God put one single word on my heart: MARVEL. In that moment God did not want me to be praying or interceding or petitioning or journaling or processing, but to just be marveling at His creation, and marveling at who He is. And so, I spent an hour and a half just looking and breathing it all in, quite literally. I think that for me, God sometimes reveals His presence to me through smell. On several occasions when I felt that His presence was strong, I would smell this really fragrant flowery smell, even if there weren't any flowers around. I smelled it then, and I actually smell it now too... it makes me so happy knowing that God actually wants to be near me and spend time with me, and that there is nothing required of me in those moments but to just show up and be with God.
And so, it's an everyday pursuit while at home to find rest, to know what that means on that particular day and what it looks like. In this time of rest (from now until I begin working) I think God also intends it to be a time of refinement. The image that Esther shared with me from Daniel really impressed upon my heart. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are bound and put in the fire. They come out unscathed and nothing is different about them except that their binds are unloosed, symbolizing that as we go through the refiner's fire, we come out looking exactly the same only that the things that bound us before are now loosed and we are freed from those things. Maybe being home right now and how I feel its difficulty in the testing of my faith is God perfecting my faith in a way. In reading The Cost of Discipleship and having read James today, as well as Psalm 119, I found that my prayer this morning was for God to show me how to walk in the way of truth and of the Word. Not just read the Word and drink it in and process it and interpret it and fall even more in love with Christ, but to actually live out what it says. And, as it is such a challenge to be living it out, particularly in the context of my family and in this place where I feel it is so spiritually dead, I need God to help me to do it, to refine me and perfect me and break me and show me the parts of me that I need to let die in order to fully put on the new self that is a life lived for, in, and through Christ. Maybe it isn't exactly a doing thing, not that I'm supposed to be doing things right now in terms of doing productive things or doing ministry, but maybe it's more like a passive process... being open to God pointing these things out in me and being open to God changing those things and burning off those impurities.
So I guess with wanting to live a life of service and servanthood and ministry, God is not saying no... maybe just not right now, not in the next month and a half. Maybe the next month and a half are supposed to be God's ministry to me.
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