The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing

Today my quiet time could not have been more spot on, seriously if it wasnt 7 in the morning I would have tears running down my cheeks. However, if you know me (Monica), you know that I am incapable of crying before noon. I am currently reading "The Pursuit of God," by AW Tozer. It is the sequel to the book I just finished called "God's Pursuit of Man." I recommend both, but first read Tozer's "The Knowledge of the Holy," because outside of the bible that book has been the most powerfully used tool to radically transform my heart. Its deep, though, so get a highlighter. I would re-type the entirety of Chapter 2 called "The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing", but since that would make for an even longer post than my normal ones, I will give you the best parts. Its still gonna be long, though, this is TOO GOOD. "In the deep heart is a shrine where none but God is worthy to come. In Genesis is the account of creation, but these are simply created 'things'. Our woes began when God was forced out of His central shrine and 'things' were allowed to enter.....Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God's gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by this MONSTROUS SUBSTITUTION. ...Within each of us is also an enemy who's chief characteristic is possessiveness. To allow this enemy to live is, in the end, to lose everything. To repudiate it and give up ALL for the sake of Christ's sake is to lose nothing at last, but to preserve everything unto life eternal. ...And the only effective way to destroy this foe is the cross." Ok so there is the set-up. Tozer then accentuates the tragic searching for "God-and". "There is little we need other than God Himself. The evil habit of seeking "God-and" effectively prevents us from finding God in full revelation. In the 'and' lies our great woe. If we omit the 'and' we shall soon find God, and in Him we shall find that for which we have all our lives been secretly longing for." He goes on to give the account of Abraham and God's demand that he sacrifice his only son Isaac as an example of Abraham's idolatry of the heart. Matt Chandler always talks about how things that were originally created to be good things, turn to evil because we get possessive of them. They then risk becoming idols, overtaking the shrine that was meant only for God. Oh how I know that all too well. "From the first moment Abraham held his son, he was an eager love slave to him. The child became at once the delight and idol of his heart. God went out of his way (in the bible) to comment on this affection. ...As he watched him grow, the heart of the old man was knit closer and closer with the life of his son, till at last the relationship bordered upon the perilous. It was then that GOD STEPPED IN TO SAVE BOTH FATHER AND SON from the consequences of an uncleansed love." Abraham's son was such a blessing to him. A blessing from God. Abraham loved Isaac so well, so selflessly with the love of Christ, but he soon loved Isaac more than he loved God. I can only guess that he started caring more about Isaac's thoughts about him than God's, and wanted to spend time with Isaac more than he wanted to spend time with God. Tragic. Although I know not how it feels to idolize my child, I do know too painfully well what it means to idolize a friend, or a family member. I joked with Becca last week about how I longed for a relationship that would lead to a marriage, but then every time I ask God for that, He lovingly/sarcastically reminds me that I am still co-dependent on essentially everything that moves. My constant need for affirmation is just further proof of my deep heart disease. I then quickly change my request to something more along the lines of "Please God prepare my heart for that future relationship, and help me to be completely aware of my sin of idolatry before I even meet him. I do NOT want to struggle with co-dependency on my husband. And God, be working on his heart, because Lord knows he is gonna have to be really strong in You and equipped to deal with the train wreck that I sometimes am." Becca laughed, because she knows that is SO true. Anyways can you even imagine being asked by God to KILL the one person in the world that you love the most? Ask me to kill Brittney and see what happens. I would look at you and laugh. Talk about agony that Abraham must have been going through that night. But he was faithful, he obeyed God. "God let the suffering old man go through with it up to the point where He knew there would be no retreat, and then forbade him to lay a hand upon the boy. He now says in effect, "I only wanted to remove him from the temple of your heart that I might reign unchallenged there. I wanted to correct the perversion that existed in your love." ...Now he was a man wholly surrendered, a man utterly obedient, a man who possessed nothing. God chose to cut quickly to the heart and have it over in one sharp act of separation. It hurt cruelly, but it was effective...The sense of possession..was gone from his heart. There can be no doubt that this possessive clinging to things and people is one of the most harmful habits in this life. ...We are often hindered from giving up our treasures to the Lord OUT OF FEAR FOR THEIR SAFETY (that hits home bigtime). This is especially true when those treasures are loved relatives and friends. But we need have no such fears. Our Lord came not to destroy but to save. Everything is safe which we commit to Him, and nothing is really safe which is not so committed. The Christian who is alive enough to know himself even slightly will recognize the symptoms of this possession malady, and will grieve to find them in his own heart. If the longing after God is strong enough within him, he will want to do something about the matter. Now what should he do? Let him trample under food every slippery trick of his deceituful heart and insist instead upon frank and open relations with the Lord. ...This ancient curse will not go out painlessly; it will not lie down and die in obedience to our command. It must be torn out of our heart like a plant from the soil; it must be extracted in agony and blood like a tooth from the jaw. It must be expelled from our soul by violence." Is it a coincidence that Matt Chandler's newest sermon is titled "When violence is OK" and it is about making war against the sins, small and large, in our lives? I think not. I think God is trying to say something here. Idolatry is a common sin, but not tolerable. We all have at one point or another taken something good and elevated it to an unhealthy level, making it in our lives more important than God. We have created an idol in our hearts and when this happens, God must painfully remove it in His MOST LOVING act. He would be unloving to let things that will never eternally satisfy us remain at the core of our being, the most important thing. He knows that HIMSELF is the only thing that reigns effectively in the 'shrine of our heart' and therefore will only let Himself fill it. He is so good for doing this, and it hurts so bad. Everything in our sinful nature wars against this idea, as we place things and people as the ultimate in our lives over and over again. Thanks to God's brilliant idea of 'free will,' (personally my portion of 'free will' is retarded in epic proportion, and I kind of wish he would have just created me naturally obedient to Him without choice) we will each get to choose either God or something else. And God will wait to be wanted. "If we would indeed know God in growing intimacy, if we are set upon the pursuit of God, He will sooner or later bring us to this test. ...So we will be brought one by one to the testing place, and we may never know when we are there. At that testing place there will be no dozen possible choices for us--just one and an alternative--but our whole future will be conditioned by the choice we make." Tozer concludes by praying: "Father I want to know You, but my cowardly heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide the terror of this parting from You. I come trembling, but I DO COME. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that You may enter and dwell there WITHOUT A RIVAL. Then You will make the place of Your feet glorious. Then my heart will have no need of the sun to shine in it, for You will be the light of it and there will be no night there. In Jesus' name, Amen." I'm with Tozer. My prayer is likewise. I love that he says, THEN his heart will have no need of the sun to shine in it, because God will be his light and where there is God there is no darkness. OH that is so glorious!! We will not need circumstances to go our way, we will not need health or wealth or affirmation--(shocking), because we will have God, and God plus nothing equals everything. That doesnt ring true in our flesh, but it must ring true in our spirit. "The man who has God for his treasure has all things in ONE. Many ordinary treasures may be denied him, or if he is allowed to have them, the enjoyment of them will be so tempered that they will never be necessary to his happiness. Or if he must see them go, one after one, he will scarcely feel a sense of loss, for having the Source of all things he has in One all satisfaction, all pleasure, all delight. Whatever he may lose he has actually lost nothing, for he now has it all in One, and he has it purely, legitimately, and forever."

Rebellion

If you know me well you know I am experiencing a sort of mini-rebellion, as my emotions have gone completely haywire with the overload of change that is going down in my life right now. I have busied myself with everything in the world to distract me from the drastic coming change. I have made 2 recent trips to the lake with the boys and Cara and Haley and we have had a blast. I am exhausted. I have been going ninety to nothing and skipping quiet times left and right, as time alone with the Lord always forces me to stop and deal with my junk which I am currently avoiding like the plague. I just did/do not want to deal with anything. I just wanted/want to "live in the moment" and do whatever made/makes me (temporarily) happy for a while. This funk has been the definition of the past week or so. That decision is stupid and does not work. It actually ends up leaving me physically full of shallow happiness and spiritually empty, lacking a deeper joy. Not to mention I get to now deal with regret, guilt, and the task of asking for forgiveness. I always feel like a dog with my tail tucked when I have to drag my idiot self back to the foot of the cross in brokenness. I do not understand my heart. Its literally got a learning disability I think. God has taught me the same lessons repetitively and still I cant completely grasp it. I am still a kid at heart, and I need all the help I can get. The fact that Christ welcomes me back again and again with open arms makes me tear up, and makes the hairs on my arms stand at attention like tiny army soldiers. If I was God, I would have given up on me a long time ago. Thank the Lord that I am not God. Not even close. So as I have been driving out of control at 120mph, the Lord was faithful to finally wreck me this morning. Again He loved me enough to stop my deadly rampage. I was so convicted about running from Him that I came home from the lake and just met with Him in the porch swing on my back porch for a while. I cried. I was so ashamed that here I was again in this position. I mean come on Ally get your crap together right? He loved me through it. Here are the gifts I am most aware of as I type to you at 1:48AM: 1. The fact that God is still working on me. I am not by any means perfect or even close to perfect, and realizing it over and over again makes me just unbelievably thankful that a perfect God is still molding me, still cares enough about me to take me out of the drivers seat of my life knowing that its suicide. He knows how much it sucks to be me because He KNOWS me completely. We laugh together, cry together, and he metaphorically high fives me in the good times I think. Today though we cried together. I am so painfully aware of this awful, beautiful process of progressive sanctification as he is peeling flesh from my heart and continuing this work that he began in me. I rest in the fact that he will be faithful to finish it: "Being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." -Philippeans 1:6 2. The gift of being free to come to Him in anything and every situation. Matt Chandler says that a true mark of Christianity is when things get rough we run TO God and not from Him. Although I started off following the demands of my flesh, God graced me with mercy by allowing me to do a 180 degree turn and return to my first love who never left me. *Side note, speaking of Matt Chandler, if you havent listened to his latest sermon: "Grace Driven Effort" you need to immediately. It was spot on. 3. The assurance that God is completely in control, sovereign, and LOVES me. He knew I would pull this little stunt. He knew I would run away from him. He knows me fully; wholly. And yet he loves me still which is in any other case a joke. He prolly wants to knock me upside the head more frequently than not but he loves me more than anyone else in the world. He loves me flawlessly. God, the perfect trinity by whom and for whom all things were created, loves me. David Crowder says he loves like a hurricane, and I am a tree bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy. He loves me regardless of every other reason besides that I am HIS. Oh I love being His. I love that he has ownership of me and WANTS me even in my sick broken state. 4. The fact that God cheers when we take steps and then fall. Like a toddler learning to walk, so we are with Christ. Wobbly and retarded, our Christian walk alot of the time is step, step, step, fall. I fell this week. My knees are all scraped up and I am frustrated with myself. But God is faithful to dust me off, wipe the tears from my eyes and encourage me to take a few more uncoordinated steps. He applauded my last pathetic attempt. He just requires that I keep walking, keep focused on my goal, keep my eyes on Him like the child who stumbles toward her dad who is prompting her, video camera in hand, excited about each attempt even the failed ones. My sad attempt at walking is mostly clumsy, awkward, and extremely ungraceful, yet all of Heaven celebrates over my wobbly steps. 5. The blessing of good friends in my life who will be faithful to call me out on my junk and then love me through it no matter what. Even when I avoid them as well as God. I cant even wait to see Becca Feagin this weekend and tell her all about how bad I messed up so she can punch me and then hug and cuddle me. I get giddy thinking about it. And also I'm thankful for friends who make me laugh, especially the high school crew that I have re-united with lately. Brent makes me laugh so hard that I have to concentrate on not peeing my pants. Cara cracks me up. Jake and Haley are hilarious. God knows that laughter is one of my favorite of His creations and has placed people in my life that are so very good at evoking it in me. Well its 2:15AM currently, and clearly past my bedtime. Time to get paddling again in my boat. My favorite analogy to use in my Christian walk is that I am in a boat. Sometimes I fall out of my boat. Sometimes I get pushed out. Sometimes I jump out like this past week. Then I have to swim and struggle and feel like I am drowning, but as of today I have climbed back into the boat, with Gods helping hand, out of breath and shivering cold. Tomorrow its time I start paddling again, on the never ending road to God's glory/my joy. If only I would trust Christ to carry me, we would sure get there a WHOLE heck of a lot faster.