Resignation
The daily email from Ransomed Heart today was talking about being resigned to life as we experience it, rather than the fullness of life that we have been designed for. “Resignation is the acceptance of the loss as final. … Evil is no longer suprising; it is normal.”
And it talked about how God takes us beyond that. Not “ever onward and upward” into raptures of ecstacy, but rather He leads us through the dark times of life. In fact He strips away all that we cling to, all the walls that we have built around ourselves to protect ourselves, all the cardboard heroes that we have aspired to, until all we have left is us and Him.
But this side of Eden, even relationship with God brings us to a place where a deeper work in our heart is called for if we are to be able to continue our spiritual journey. It is in this desert experience of the heart, where we are stripped of the protective clothing of the roles we have played in our smaller stories, that the Message of the Arrows reasserts itself. Healing, repentance, and faith are called for in ways we have not known previously. At this place on our journey, we face a wide and deep chasm that refuses us passage through self-effort. And it is God’s intention to use this place to eradicate the final heart walls and obstacles that separate us from him.
Only then can we live the life to the full that Jesus promised. Then we start to grow and blossom, our hearts swell in the fullness of God, rather than the artificiality that we previously accepted as a poor substitute of God’s best.
This email was such an encouragement to us. As we have got to the point where we are no longer able to provide for ourselves - where my (Tim’s) illness means that we cannot earn enough money by our own efforts to pay the bills - we have had to totally trust in God to provide. I have no other options. There is no quick, simple solution.
And we were starting to think that maybe we were doing it all wrong. Maybe we were taking the hard road, where we should have been just taking the easy road. Other people at our church are having a renewal experience, where they are recapturing their first love, enraptured by Jesus and what He is doing in their lives, experiencing breakthroughs and blessings and joy. Why aren’t we? What is wrong with us? “Just claim it and receive it!” we are told.
But no, we believe that God is taking us through this journey, that we are on necessary part of the trip that involves going through the darker valleys for a time (and after a few years, it seems like a really long time!…). But it does get difficult to stay true to this, to continue to seek God’s lessons and to learn and grow, instead of just scrambling for the nearest exit. And emails like this one help us in this process. Give us the assurance that what we are going through is valid, is just part of our journey of growing closer to God.
Thank you, God for that assurance, for that validation.
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