How Long Does It Take?

This is a long posting…

How long does it take us to get it?

It takes me awhile. I’m hard headed (or as a good friend of mine says, strong-willed).
But when I get it, I get it…

For the past few emails, you have heard me talk about pride and lessons learned…and it’s easy to sit at a computer screen and say a lesson is learned. It’s easy to hide behind the keyboard and empty words, which is what I so often do. What matters, as someone older and wiser in the Lord has told me time after time, is those words leaping off the page and showing in my life. And they haven’t been…I mean what I say, but I haven’t believed it.

Three years ago next month, I got saved after running from God. Two years ago I started the music ministry after running from God. He has found me, yet I still try to keep running. And you know what? I’m tired. God has truly been cleansing my heart of lots of things - things that are ugly and I don’t like it one bit. I fight it tooth and nail. But God has told me the condition of my heart (The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the LORD search the heart , I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings - Jeremiah 17:9-10) and He knows me better than I know myself. He made me - and He knows me.

When the music ministry started, I asked God to make my heart the heart of a minister. I’m here to tell you, you better make sure you really want what you pray for - because God is serious. So, God started working on my heart…He had to heal me of bitterness and anger towards others. And I fell many times…but God put people in my life to show me His Ways, and to be there for me to help me back up again.

But again, my heart needed more purging. And I continued to grow and learn, but still harbored many of these feelings in my heart. My dependence went where it didn’t need to be…I began learning this lesson when we did the “Quieting The Noisy Soul” (www.quietanoisysoul.com) at my church (www.ridgecrest-baptist.com). I learned that my behaviors were rooted in my unbelief - not believing that God is enough for me. And in my heart, even though I was listening and learning from the study, I held on tighter to the things that caused my soul to be noisy - and I did not believe that there was nothing I could do to make God love me any more, and nothing I could do to make Him love me any less. Even through the end of the study, I thought I had let go, but my heart was holding on tight out of fear - and the fear came from unbelief. This has been a struggle for me my whole life, but God is showing me where I am wrong.

I love my brothers and sisters in Christ - I thank Him everyday for the people He has given me, to love and support me, and to pray for me and with me. But I made a huge mistake. I placed my dependence in the people God had put in my life instead of God Himself. And in putting that dependence in the wrong place, I put those people in a place they didn’t need to be. And I put pressures and expectations on them that they didn’t deserve - my heart was being selfish. I did things to make sure I got my way. And that caused stress and tension that didn’t need to be there…and that caused NOISE. Did God create that for me? Not at all - I did it myself. See the pattern? I didn’t, but I do now…I didn’t even see it for what it really was until today. And when it hit me as hard as it did, it made me sick. I listened to everything people had to say to me…but today I understood that listening and hearing are two different things. You listen with your ears. You hear with your heart.

Today my heart finally got what my ears had been listening to. I said with my mouth that I understood, and I did to a point, but today I passed understanding. I came face to face with my sinfulness. And it hurt more than I think anything ever has…and I poured it out to God. I know that struggles will still come, but my dependence needs to be on God. He gives us friends and family to support us and love us and pray for us, but our dependence needs to be on Him. I hate who I have been, but I know I have to depend on God to show me who He wants me to become. I need to let everyone in my life off the hook (off my hook) and love them for what God has given them to me for…but not put them in a place they don’t belong and create so much tension…and noise…and sinfulness.

This past weekend, I went on a spiritual retreat. I had the blessing of house-sitting for some new Christian friends, and I took the opportunity to spend some time in the Word. God led me to Psalm 121 and spent some time in there studying what those verses mean. God opened my eyes to the need for dependence on Him…as I sat on the front porch early that Saturday morning, I saw the beauty in God’s creation…the sun that had just made it over the mountain to wake up the day, and the mist that blanketed the trees reminded me of how close God is to us each day. It reminded me of something I wrote awhile back…that we should be so close to Him that every time we breathe, we say His name…Jesus. The notes in my KJV say that this Psalm “fits well against the backdrop of a pilgrimage for it is concerned with the uncertainties one faces on such a journey”. My help comes from the Lord - in my journey, my help comes from the Lord. My faith, my hope, my belief, and my strength comes from the Lord.

Philippians 4:11-13 says: “Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased , and I know how to abound: every where and in all things am I instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me”.
I know now where my help comes from…where my strength comes from…where my hope comes from. I know where I have been wrong…and now I see it. So many things can get in the way - we put so many things in the way. But He is the source of everything we need. And now I more than get it - I believe it.

I am a Christian today not because someone explained the nuts and bolts of Christianity to me, but because there were people willing to be nuts and bolts - Rich Mullins.

Be God’s,
Melissa