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"Hey
girl. :) Just wrote something this morning and wanted
to share... been an interesting last couple of days
for me. Let's just say the Lord's been giving me a good
workout. :) And by that, I mean He's been working the
"me" out so that He can get in. Hope you're
having a good Thursday. Love you! ~ Cami"
Jeremiah
6:16, “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for
the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk
in it, and you will find rest for your souls.”
There’s
no better way to put it than to simply say this: It’s
been a very rough three months.
It’s
been the kind of three months where life is turned absolutely
upside down, inside out and trampled on by a stampeding
herd of wild buffalo. It’s been the kind of three
months where you wake up, stumble to the bathroom only
to look in the mirror and wonder how on earth the complete
stranger you see before you stole and is wearing your
pajamas. It’s been the kind of three months where
you really do begin to believe that maybe you actually
do have multiple personalities. It’s been the
kind of three months where I’ve spent a lot more
time thinking about me than I have thinking about Him.
So
many times we wait until our most desperate hours to
ask God for help, when had we stopped and asked along
the way our hours would not seem so desperate at all.
But I’m not going to talk about the “If
I had only!” rush that comes to us at the acknowledgement
of our own block-headedness. I’m going to talk
about right where I am at… the point of repentance.
It is only here, today, with a repentant heart that
I find the rest I so desperately seek. It is only here,
broken, that I can receive the mercy and forgiveness
that I need. It is only here that I can be restored.
The
Spirit has tugged and pulled and pleaded within me for
weeks.
“Come, sit down and spend some time in My Word.
Come rest awhile. Hide in Me.”
I can’t Lord. I’m too busy. People need
me. I have chores to do, errands to run. I can’t
get enough time alone to concentrate. Maybe later…
“It doesn’t matter. Spend five minutes with
Me. You need to talk to Me. I can to help.”
Help? Can you clean dishes? Great! Why don’t you
do that, and I’ll clean my bathroom and we’ll
chat later?
“That’s not the kind of help you need. And
I’m not liking the attitude.”
Yeah, well… I’m just stressed God. I’m
tired. If only I could get a break. Then maybe I could
get it together enough to be able to keep going.
“You’re sinking your own ship, you know.
I’m here. Let me know when you’re going
to actually let me do something to help, okay? And by
the way, I don’t clean dishes… but I do
clean hearts. Ask anytime.”
I
ignored His warnings. I raged. I ranted. I cried. I
tore down those I love. I made excuses. I became an
emotional box of chocolates… you never knew just
what you were going to get. I became someone I didn’t
want to know.
It
seems absurd after leaving a wake like a tsunami behind
me that I could find anything positive in this experience.
Don’t get me wrong either. I would have much preferred
to have forgone this entire catastrophe, avoided paining
those around me, and walked in His light through my
circumstantial darkness. But I didn’t do that.
The
Lord, even in our failures, is faithful to show us His
goodness. And that’s just it… it’s
the Lord who is good, not me. If there is anything good
that comes out of me, it is to His glory, not mine.
Christ says in John 15:5, “I am the vine, you
are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him,
bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.”
And that’s just what I was doing…a whole
lot of nothing. My “good” that I was trying
to do by pushing through life was only to everyone else’s
detriment. To abide, or to remain, exist, stay, endure,
survive, last, prevail and rest in Christ was something
I was not doing in the slightest. My “nothingness”
was quite apparent.
We
cannot afford to rely on ourselves if we are to be faithful
to Christ. It doesn’t matter how long we have
walked with the Lord. It doesn’t matter what we
did yesterday or the day before. If we are not fed by
His Word daily, and if we do not meet with Him daily
in prayer, we will not be successful in our walk of
faith. We cannot rely on the past to sustain our future.
We are only sustained by His presence in this very moment.
Unless we abide in Christ through every moment, we can
do nothing. Our best effort on our own is but naught
in comparison to our weakest attempt done in faith.
Jeremiah
6:16 says, “Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is,
and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.”
Perhaps we should spend a little more time at the crossroads.
Two roads were once before me, and I chose poorly. Two
roads lay before you: the Lord’s and your own.
With a little imagination, it isn’t difficult
to see what our own paths turn out to look like…
twisted and overgrown with obstacles. Don’t become
too busy to spend time with Him. Don’t stare at
the circumstance and neglect to look into the eyes of
a wise and loving Savior. The rest you crave isn’t
found in being “better”. It isn’t
found in a performance you can give on your own. The
rest you want comes when you abide in Christ, and there’s
only one road that will get you there. The good way
is the Lords. Walk in it daily.
Written
by: Cami Terpstra
“Scriptures
taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION.
Copyright p1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society.
Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.
Scripture quotations marked "NKJV™"
are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright
© 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission.
All rights reserved.
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