Mercy, Mercy, Mercy

What a month this has been.
My heart has a lot being tossed around in it right now but there's a few things I've decided:

Well-meaning people  can tell me all they want what they think is best for me, or they can tell me that I should be careful about what I'm thinking or deciding is "for me" or "not for me", but it really comes down to one very simple fact: No one knows better what God is guiding me to do than I do.  And no one knows better then I do, the way He speaks to me.

With that understanding in my heart, I feel liberated to fully pursue what I must to bring glory to God.
I'd like to share an excerpt from one of my most recent journal entries about an epiphany I had that will change my mind-view forever.  Now that I'm thinking about it, I don't believe I've ever written any of my personal journal entries in here before!  So making new history in this blog which is seven years and running, here goes.

"This has to be my view - my attitude.  Regardless of how I benefit, Jesus is deserving of all glory, all honor and all praise.  Who do I think I am, expecting to somehow know every reason for why things don't always go my way?  Who cares, besides me?  My point exactly.  I'm so self-centered and I somehow think its my RIGHT to know what and why God lets things play out the way they do.  But here's ONE thing I can rest in: Whatever is happened  whether fair or not, whether just or not, whether explainable or not, whether logical or not, God is a very deliberate God.  EVERY thing will bow a knee to His voice.  He absolutely WILL get the glory in every situation, and He will do everything it takes to get the glory that is due to Him because in MY life, I owe it to Him.  He has been my salvation.  Therefore, it is not a sacrifice but a PLEASURE to suffer whatever affliction comes my way FOR the cause of the glory of God."

I'm being pretty transparent by sharing this thought with all of you - but I am not called to hide the human in me - I'm called to let God's glory shine through my weakness.

Here's the deal:  My desire is to walk in a way that is worthy of my calling.
However God chooses to make me holy as He is holy, I choose THAT way as well.
I'd be an idiot to think that God would allow me to feel comfortable all the time on this path with Him.

Coming back from my trip to IHOP-KC, I was met with 3 conflicts immediately.  3 conflicts that required 3 confrontations which - if ONE is uncomfortable for me, TRY 3 within a 24 hour period.
I'm not actually bad with confrontation, I just hate it, that's all.
As uncomfortable as it was however, the situations were taken care of in a matter of minutes or at the very most, a half an hour.  Why do I worry and get so uptight?
I just need to tackle each thing as they come.

There's so many things I need to process right now - but one thing I CAN say:  If there was ever a time where going somewhere else completely confirmed that where God HAS placed me is exactly where I'm supposed to be, its now.  And I'm so very glad that I have something to go by.

One other thing I know is going on right now:  I'm clearly in a place of waiting and in the waiting, watching.  It is so apparent to me at this point in my life that I would be ridiculous if I try to deny it.  People have said that MAYBE God has other dreams for me than what has been placed in my heart right now.  However, I am a firm believer that if that were the case, He would share a few of them with me so I could at least have a vision and run with it.
But He hasn't given me any other dreams.  He's only expounded on what has already been in my heart and added to that, has given me assignments for this present time.  Those assignments include all the components that make up my working life and so I fully intend on fulfilling God's desires for me in all of it.

But waiting - AH waiting!!  What a time of patience and humility.  What a time of the Spirit silently destroying the very way my mind has been resourcing my heart in expanding my knowledge of God.
The thought is overwhelming: I've been all wrong.  And not on a surface level, either.  My entire make-up - my entire human being is completely backwards in relating to the uncontainable God; and, in order to continue on the Journey I so deeply long to finish and to finish well,  everything I thought I knew and everything I believe I've learned must be undone.
Woe is me for I am RUINED! Because I am a man of unclean (impure) lips  and have a heart completely consumed with my own ambitions. (Isaiah 6:5)
All of it, in vain.  My eyes are just beginning to see the Lord of Hosts.  And every time I see Him better, all I've know prior, is undone.
Praise God for extending mercy to my heart and - (unbelievably added to that!), has also adorning me with grace to safely be changed into a person who reflects His Son, Christ Jesus.

This waiting thing is changing the paradigm of my very breathing existence.

While I watch my watch, could it be an idol?

And He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, "So, you men could not keep watch with Me for one hour? Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." - Matt. 26:40-41

What if what I call "waiting" is really an invitation to see.
I sing, "Open the eyes of my heart, Lord.  Open the eyes of my heart..." but then I complain because in my arrogant assumptions and inability to listen,  I've mistaking God's invitation to WATCH and wait with an invitation to  ONLY wait and then somehow feeling like I've been left behind.

I have been proudly marching around and demanding God's blessing and favor with the kind of ignorance of a workman on strike who hasn't done his research or talked to his boss to know what the real issues are - looking like a fool and exposed to the world when the legitimate truth is revealed that actually, the CEO has been silently at work on benefits and raises the workman couldn't of even dreamed of.  Instead of talking to the Boss and watch what He will do, I've been openly making God out to be small and opposite of all He has promised, and of all I have preached to others.  Double-minded and two-faced.

And yet - though I have been a fool, God still clumps me back together and begins molding me on the wheel again.
I have been softened some more.
What mercy.

Woe to me, for I have been undone.

I'm so glad God is undoing me in every part of my life, in every season of my life, and that He is faithful to complete and perfect me until the day of Christ's return (Philip 1:6) - where I will finally look like Him because I will see Him for all of who He is (1 John 3:2).

Maranatha! Amen!!!