AJ Michalka - Desert Song

The Desert, The Fire, The Battle, The Harvest.

Over the past year, I have experienced all of these places.  I have been in the desert, where everything in me feels dried up and dead.  I have been in the fire, where I am so weak, that I can barely hold my head up.  I have been in the battle where I was fighting a losing battle. And I have been in the harvest where I can see that God's hand was directly guiding me.  

It seems my devotionals over the past week have talked about living in the desert.  I'm reading, Extravagant Grace, by Barbara Duguid.  (If you haven't read it, it is a "must read".)  She talks of the Israelites as they leave Pharoah's control and begin to trek to the Promised Land.  She speaks of this trek as a "wilderness of conflict in which the sinfulness of our hearts is repeatedly and loving exposed by God.  One of my favorite quotes thus far is, 

Wilderness experiences are times of genuine need, sorry, suffering and pain that tempt us to complain against God and turn away from him.  When difficulties overwhelm u s, we find it hard to remember what God has done for us in the past and trust him with the present and future.

 Looking on the other side of this past year, I see it... God brought me to the end of myself and all I knew to be good so that I would learn my need for total dependence on me.  I learned that its not about how good I am or how much good I do... its all about him.

Another book I am reading is Heart of the Matter, which is published by CCEF.  Today's thoughts center around desert experiences.  It says, 

The desert in the Bible is a place of Death.  There's no water, no food.  It's hot.  There are dangerous predators and poisonous snakes.  It is a place where your faith is tested.  Yet, It is also the place where faith flourishes... As you deepen your trust in God, your desert will become the place where you find God's living water of hope, mercy and blessing.  God's living water is in his presence.  "he says, "I am with you." ... His presence means that even in the darkest of circumstances you can be unafraid.  He is with you.  Because God is with you, you will be fruitful, even in the midst of suffering. 

I don't want to be like the Israelites who trusted God and praised him for rescuing them from slavery and providing for their needs, only to complain in the next chapter about something else.  I want my desert experience to always remind me of God's faithfulness and when I think back on the past, I want to say with my whole heart,

Right now, at 10:08 I would declare that I am living in the harvest, favor and providence are flowing from above as I continue to experience God's grace and unfailing love.  But as the song says, 

I know I'm filled to be emptied again,

this seed I have I've received I will sow.  

Crowder - I Am (Lyric Video)

It's been a year...a stormy year since my life was forever changed.  I'd like to say I got the answers I was so desperately searching for at that time.  I'd like to say that all is right in my corner of the world.  I'd like to say I have overcome the valley that I was placed in.  But I haven't done any of those things.  I still wonder why it had to happen.  I still struggle to make day to day decisions.  I still feel weak and vulnerable.

But...  There have been positive experiences... a faith that I can trust in, even when I can't see or feel it...a stronger relationship with Peanut, my teen age daughter... a new home that I couldn't have dreamed of last year... intimate new friendships where I can "be me."

Maybe that's where I am supposed to be.  Still giving myself grace for the days ahead.  Being patient and forgiving when I feel I should be stronger.  Trusting God despite how I feel.  Leaning on him to guide me.  Holding on...

I AM holding onto you.
I AM holding onto you.
in the middle of the storm
I AM holding on
I AM 

Love like this, oh my God to find
I am overwhelmed what a joy divine
Love like this sets our hearts on fire

This is my resurrection song
This is my hallelujah come
This is why its to you I run
There's no place that his love can't reach
There's no place that we can't find peace
There's no end to amazing grace.

I know this last stanza will one day be the anthem of my life.  I will see this time as a resurrection and sing hallelujah.  Not today but one day in the future.

Moriah Peters - Brave (Official Lyric Video)

When I feel at a loss for words, I look to Pinterest for quotes to help me move forward... Here are some good examples...

He gives me the ability to overcome. 

He provides all I need... day by day and moment by moment.

I have a choice on whether I stay in the storm or whether I let it go and let God.  

Most importantly:

You Make Me Brave (acoustic) Bethel Music Cover -- Lauren Daigle

Mark 4:37 - And there arose a great storm

"Some of the storms of life come suddenly: a great sorrow, a bitter disappointment, a crushing defeat. Some come slowly. They appear upon the ragged edges of the horizon no larger than a man’s hand, but, trouble that seems so insignificant spreads until it covers the sky and overwhelms us.

Yet it is in the storm that God equips us for service. When God wants an oak He plants it on the moor where the storms will shake it and the rains will beat down upon it, and it is in the midnight battle with elements that the oak wins its rugged fiber and becomes the king of the forest. When God wants to make a man He puts him into some storm. The history of manhood is always rough and rugged. No man is made until he has been out into the surge of the storm and found the sublime fulfillment of the prayer: “O God, take me, break me, make me.”

A Frenchman has painted a picture of universal genius. There stand orators, philosophers and martyrs, all who have achieved pre-eminence in any phase of life; the remarkable fact about the picture is this: Every man who is pre-eminent for his ability was first pre-eminent for suffering. In the foreground stands that figure of the man who was denied the promised land, Moses. Beside him is another, feeling his way—blind Homer. Milton is there, blind and heart-broken. Now comes the form of one who towers above them all. What is His characteristic? His Face is marred more than any man’s. The artist might have written under that great picture, “The Storm.”

The beauties of nature come after the storm. The rugged beauty of the mountain is born in a storm, and the heroes of life are the storm-swept and the battle-scarred.

You have been in the storms and swept by the blasts. Have they left you broken, weary, beaten in the valley, or have they lifted you to the sunlit summits of a richer, deeper, more abiding manhood and womanhood? Have they left you with more sympathy with the storm-swept and the battle-scarred?"

—Selected

Source: Daily Streams

This devotional says everything the last year of life has been.  I have been in the storm wondering, "Why me?"  and "Is this ever going to end?"  It has not been pretty or fun.  It has been painful, irritating, deeply wounding....  But at the same time, I have a different life now than a year ago.  I hope that in 5 years and in 10 years, I can look back on 2014 and see that God used this experience to make me brave, strong and more in tune with his desires for my life.

Brandon Heath - No Turning Back (Official Lyric Video)

Welcome to 2015.  This is my favorite song as the clock strikes 12:00.

"I leave it behind...  I'm moving on,.. not looking back..."

Though I may wander, I am not lost.
So many distractions, but I look to the cross
I made up my mind, I leave it behind. 

I pray this year will be another year of moving forward, pressing on and refusing to go back where I have been.

Edited note:  On the afternoon I wrote this blog, I posted a comment to Brandon Heath's facebook wall to tell him what this song had meant in my life.  A couple of days later, I received this on my facebook wall.  Someone from "Brandon Heath world" took my comment and made it pretty.  

How cool is that?!?!?!

Mandy Moore - Only Hope Lyrics

I started a new devotional this year.  "Heart of the Matter" which is a devotional from a collection of authors.  Today's insert comes from Michael Emlet.

January 13, 2015-  Colossians 1:24-29

"Your suffering occurs alongside Christ's.  Your life story is embedded in His story.  Your suffering, therefore, is actually a participation in the sufferings of Christ.  Consider Paul's statement: "Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you and I fill up my flesh what is lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of the body which is the church" Paul is not saying that your sufferings add anything to Christ's work on the cross.  There's nothing deficient about Jesus' suffering and death.  He is saying that there is a purposeful link between the sufferings of Christ and your own suffering.  Your connection with Jesus means that your identity is bigger than what you suffer.  Paul says: "If we are children then we are heirs-heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory" (Romans 8:17)  Paul is saying that your suffering acutally confirms your identity as a child of God.  It does not undermine that identity, even though it sometimes feels that way.  This perspective reminds you that as you suffer, you suffer in Christ.  Your life (both suffering and ultimately glory) is intimately connect with his life"

I love how this short writing reminds me that my life is just a small thread woven in God's redemptive story.  It is only when I struggle and suffer that I connect with Christ on an intimate level.  In the scripture passage, Paul says, " God decided to let his people know about this rich and glorious secret in which he has for all people.  This secret is Christ himself who is in you.  HE IS OUR ONLY HOPE OF GLORY."

I give my destiny.  

I'm giving you all of me.  

I want your symphony 

singing in all that I am

at the top of my lungs

I'm giving it back