Yesterday, my Day 29, Harley was still not out of the woods, but I was more at peace that God is God. I clearly have “expectations” that God will “behave” a certain way if I am going to “submit” willingly. It really isn’t “submission” or “surrender” if it is conditioned on what I feel about how God is doing His job. Do you hear the arrogance in that? The pride? It can be so subtle, too. I have found that this really is the heart of the matter for me. I knew it was pride…any idol is established because pride gets a root going, it seems to me, but pride is insidious and stealthy as well. It may not be obvious and before you know it there is all out war declared on God.
I have to really pray through this and beg God to truly work a humble heart in me. A heart that seeks to live as the clay and God is the potter. A heart that says “Though He slay me, yet will I trust him.” He is God and I am not.
Day 29
These things greeted me yesterday as I opened my book and asked for God to meet me.
No one but God could have worked such a change in your heart.
I know this is a FACT. A lot has been accomplished in the past month and a half. It is stunning to me. When I consider my intimate involvement with the book manuscript and the Thin Within program from the beginning…and all the things I was missing…Yes, God did many things back then. But I had continued to withhold some things from Him. I had “held out” a pocket of resistance, resentment in my heart….that God had disappointed me. Frankly, God *has* disappointed me. I can’t pretend this isn’t true. Yet I see afresh that this response to His ways is borne in pride that I deserve one thing and He does another. In all honesty, I deserve nothing but death. I am born into sin and live sin easily and well. Rather than meet me with judgment, God provides His grace. What more could I possibly demand? Good grief! God forgive me!
I pray that I will see “disappointments” with God more from His perspective. Everything He does is done with a heart of love. My understanding is incomplete at best, more likely, it is warped, perverted. He sifts all He does through the nail holes in His hands.
And now that you have been restored, we rest in the knowledge that each of us really is a temple for His glory. Our bodies, our schedules, our affections, our very lives are not our own. We have been bought at a price. We affirm again that we gladly submit to the yoke of Christ, because we’ve learned that to do so gives us peace, rest, and abundant joy.
This *is* the heart of it for me. I really believe that if I can maintain the above attitude in my heart and mind and life that my “issues” with food are gone. Pride must be demolished. If I “protect” it, it is an idol. I must allow it to be demolished…abolished, destroyed. I must welcome the process. If I don’t, I will continue to battle the same issues for the rest of my life…the food, fear, more fat…and lousy health. All because I insist on having my way like a big baby. Enough!
God is clearly doing a NEW thing….
Sometimes on that show on TV, Extreme Makeover Home Edition, the crew decides that they can’t help with a refurbishing or remodeling of the home that is currently standing. They bring in a demolition crew. Sometimes they have used a mammoth front loader like tractor thing…and just pushed it over. Sometimes they have used other means. Well, God has chosen now to show me that we aren’t just remodeling here. This is a demolition project and we have to start from the ground up….truly. My foundation has been off kilter.
I welcome the change. This may be the end of this book…but it truly feels like the beginning of a journey.
