I have taken a sort of break from the blogging world over the past month or so, not that I've run out of things to say (that’ll be the day), but because I've been a little preoccupied. Recently, the Lord has been dealing with me on the issue of trust. It’s not an area I am particularly good at or fond of. In fact, if I had to gauge my ability to trust others from 1-10, I’d rank right around 2. Perhaps I have been jaded by life, or maybe it’s just part of growing up, however you slice it, it’s the state of my heart: mistrusting.
In January, the Lord started to pull on my heart strings about trusting others. Those of you who follow my blogs could probably tell, as it came seeping out of just about everything I wrote. As the Lord revealed more and more of the condition of my own heart to me, I began to feel burdened to change. He started revealing areas where I had shut people out who could have helped me or vice versa, and as a result, my heart was getting hardened. Slowly but surely, I was taking my eye from Jesus and moving it to people and their actions. Because let’s face it, if I had really been trusting God, what people said or did to me would not matter, but it has mattered…in such a big way.
Everybody has their vice, their Achilles’ heel, and I’m not condemning that or them, but what is the point of keeping it? If you know about a chink in the armor, wouldn’t you want to fix it? Especially before going into battle? Here’s the thing: it’s not an easy fix. It’s not something that you can sit at home, on your couch doing while you watch the news. No, instead it is an uncomfortable moving and shifting and changing and disconnecting. It’s awful, really. You have to go and unhook yourself from every area where you have made room for your malfunction, every lie you have agreed with, every excuse you’ve come up with for not dealing with it. You have to look failure in the face and admit that you aren’t perfect. Maybe I’m only talking to myself here, but that last part really gets me, admitting that I am not perfect.
One of my greatest fears in life is/was to end up alone. Not in a romantic way, but in an isolated way. I could never think of anything worse than dying alone, so I surrounded myself with people, lots of people. Yet it never fails, at some point, people step on a landmine that exposes both of your imperfections and one or the both of you gets hurt. For me, that’s when a wall goes straight up. ‘That won’t happen to me again.’ Now, that person can’t come any further and I am effectively safe from them…but my safety comes at the price of being completely alone. Satan has done his homework. He knows what lies to sell us to get us to buy into his plan. Here I am thinking I can protect myself by walling myself in and I end up facing the biggest fear of them all, with no one to help. I am borrowing from Paul to pay Peter, and in the end, I lose, and that’s what Jesus wants to save me from. Losing.
Once I saw this ridiculous Ponzi scheme I had been a part of, I vowed to begin bringing down walls I had built. So the Lord obliged and together we started working on one of my biggest walls. At first I was restless, unrelenting, unwilling to budge or touch certain areas, but as I let Him work on me, I realized that He was pushing me to be more open, trusting, and vulnerable. He was not prodding me so that He could make it hard on me to teach me a lesson, He was undoing damage that had been inflicted long ago. He was softening a hardened heart so that it could be used again. That’s the worst thing about a hard heart, you know. A heart is meant to be soft and pliable. It’s function as a muscle demands that it pulsates, ebbs and flows. The harder it gets, the less movement it can actually make. Eventually, it will stop your blood flow. The Lord was massaging my heart to revive it. He was breaking me free from my own prison. He was giving me freedom, in a way I haven’t experienced before.
I’d love to say that I am finished learning my lesson and I stand here before you, a totally loving, trusting woman of God, but that’s just not true. I do stand here before you open and honest, and in that way I am taking a huge leap of faith, making myself completely susceptible to the opinions of others, but I’m also making myself completely open to God. I’m restoring my heart to a soft and pliable position, and I’m doing it as much for me as I am for you. Don’t be alone. Don’t let Satan offer you counterfeit protection at the cost of something much bigger. Open your heart to others and trust God with it. He has promised to never leave you nor forsake you, and that you can take all the way to the bank. Others will affect you, yes, but when your trust is in God, your heart is protected in the ultimate way.
I hope this helped you as much as it helped me. Until next time!
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