Love that's greater than a "quick-fix"...

I warn you before you start, that I'm totally ignoring Tim's advise to keep these blogs short! This one will be my longest one ever. But God has shown me so much today that I can't keep from sharing it. I'm like Jeremiah with a fire in my bones. (Jer. 20:9)

Last night Tim and I received some news that really disappointed us. We have struggled over the last eight months because our house in Georgia has not sold. So we have now put our “retirement” home on the lake up for sale too. We have resigned ourselves to the necessity to sell one or the other. Within an hour of putting the for sale sign in the yard on May 30th, we had a couple knock on the door wanting to see the lake house. Unbelievably, I had just cleaned the house that day, even cleaning out closets!! That in itself is a miracle. I just assumed that even my housecleaning was part of God’s plan to sell this house. The couple loved it and came back to talk seriously about buying the house on Saturday the 31st. That’s significant because I have been confident for the last few months that God was going to settle our issues with these houses by May 31st. Ever since Tim and I have been in ministry, May has repeatedly been a month in which God settled things for us.

So, with all that in mind, I had pretty much let myself get all excited that the lake house was SOLD. They were to call us on Monday to make a firm offer. We got home from a meeting Monday night fully expecting to receive good news and be released from the stress of owning three houses. When the couple called and told us that they had changed their minds for no sensible reason, I crashed. I was so discouraged that I bordered on questioning God’s wisdom and even His love for me. I was angry, frustrated, and confused. None of which were emotions that were of God. I surprised myself that I could react as I did. I cried. I yelled. I told Tim that I would never have let one of my children get all excited about something and then “pulled the rug out from under them” like God had done to me that night. I begged God to show me what He is doing with all of this.

Then today I got a devotional email from a source that has never emailed me before. Of all days for them to start communicating with me!!! The basic message of the email devotional is that God’s goal for my life doesn’t always match my own. My goal is to be successful in ministry; and by that I mean that I want God to use me to reach and teach people TRUTH – at a level by which I measure success. But God’s goal for my life is for me to come to KNOW Him better and LOVE Him more and ENJOY Him fully and to become confidently assured of His love for me.

At first my response was, “Well, You’ve chosen a really odd way of showing me that’s Your goal for me!” But then I kept reading the email. It spoke of God using our afflictions and suffering to bring us to a point of abandonment so that we could reach His goal of knowing, loving, and enjoying Him and being assured of His love. I protested that I had nothing left to abandon. Honestly, I have a loose grip on everything because I learned a long time ago, that there is nothing more important or fulfilling than being right in the center of God’s will. In my reasoning, my willingness to sell anything we own to be able to do His will was “abandonment.”

But then I had a sudden and clear understanding of what God was saying to me through the email. What if God didn’t sell either one and He instead left me in the struggle for some reason that only He knows? Have I abandoned my right to have Him work for me just like I want Him to work; to “fix” my problems in one of the ways I choose?

I started considering that what was keeping me from “enjoying” Him lately was that He wasn’t responding to me as He had always done and therefore I was confused and frustrated. I suddenly realized that the only way I can come to KNOW Him more (His goal for me) is for Him to progressively reveal more of Himself to me, which will by necessity mean that He will not always respond to me in the same way. He responds to me in different ways as He takes me deeper into my understanding of Himself and as He matures me spiritually. In other words, He deals with me in one way until I understand a particular characteristic of Himself, then as He matures me, He can deal with me in a deeper way that I wouldn’t have been able to handle before.
I also had to admit that I felt that He “owed” it to me to sell a house because I had “obeyed” Him in following His will to Sylacauga, AL. And when He didn’t sell my house, my reaction shocked even me by revealing the attitudes that had been lurking within me; attitudes I didn’t even realize existed within me. I was reminded of the process of “refining” and how the process brings to the surface all the dangerous impurities that devalue and weaken precious metals. God has made me perfect and holy at salvation, but within me there are lingering misunderstandings about God and His ways, so I still respond with emotions that aren’t so perfect and holy. And those emotions and misunderstandings lurking within me, keep me from enjoying Him fully and also keep me from being confidently assured of His love for me. So God has faithfully brought those attitudes and misunderstandings to the surface so that I am now aware of them and can let God deal with them.

My goal is successful ministry by the standards I’ve set. God’s goal is for me to KNOW, LOVE, ENJOY, and be CONFIDENT in Him. Here’s what He has shown me. Until He corrects those lingering misunderstandings, (which sometimes best occurs through the process of afflictions and sufferings) neither His goal nor my goal will be met. But when God’s goal is realized in my life, then my goal will be realized as well. Until my goal for my life matches His (until I want to KNOW, LOVE, and ENJOY Him more than anything else) then I can’t possibly be successful in ministry!!! And by the way, I couldn’t be trusted with a successful ministry with those lingering misunderstandings and attitudes.

But when KNOWING, LOVING, and ENJOYING Him becomes the most important pursuit of my life, ministry will be as natural as breathing and it will be successful by God’s standards!!! And I will be increasingly, continually, and permanently assured of His love for me.

If I saw my child hurting, but knew that allowing that child to continue in the hurt would be to their ultimate benefit, the most loving thing I could do would be to endure the pain of watching them continue hurting. If fixing their problems provided temporary relief but cost them a greater gain, then I would not be a good mother if I fixed things for them. And my love for my children doesn't even begin to compare to God's love for me. I am so thankful that He loves me so much that He refused to give me the easy way out of my problems and instead He endures the pain of watching me suffer so that I can receive the eternal benefit He wants to accomplish through my afflictions.