Note: This post isn’t about Thin Within at all. At least not directly. I continue to have a great relationship with Thin Within and with the Hallidays.
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God is slaying me.
I remember as a kid, a saying that my mom would use, “Oh, he just slays me!” It typically meant that whoever it was made my mom laugh a lot or, at the very least, have a good time.
When I say “God is slaying me,” I don’t mean it that way at all.
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I mean, he is killing me–my will, my affections, my desires, my longings, and many things that I thought were good and godly “things” that I have worked hard for almost all my adult life. I don’t understand how a good God could possibly do what He is doing when the very things he demands be put on the altar seem to be the things that he has asked of me. They are the things that have come about as a result of suffering. Now, I must go through suffering as I release these things to him? What is THAT about?
Shall the pot say to the potter, why have you made me thus?
If I just go with it, will it be better? I mean, I really wonder if suffering isn’t worse in some way, the more we cling to our “right” to go on without it, the more we insist that we deserve better, the more we insist, “But God, YOU said …..!!!” The more we claim that God’s “goodness” and “kindness” all mean what *I* think they mean and not what He IS, the worse life seems to be. Frankly, his ways are terrifying. It is impossible for me to trust him when his ways are SO terrifying.
I am so tired of striving with God. He wants to slay me and the very things that I thought he had hewn into the stone of my life. He wants the work I thought he had done to be crushed. Is it possible that it wasn’t him? How could that be? How could years have been spent building a life given to the Lord, only to have it be something that he now demands? Are the things he asked of me now dishonoring to him? Have I elevated the creatED to a place that is inappropriate? Is it an idol now?
I don’t understand. I want to understand.
Though, simultaneously, I am amazed at my arrogance.
Is this what “dying to self” means? If so, then we need to quit using it as a Christian catch phrase for anything and everything. It is brutal, violent, and devastating.
So what is really so bad about being slain? About losing my way? About letting go? Once he crushes me nothing is left to cling to. Grapes are crushed for their juice. Will anything sweet come out of me once I am crushed?
