Sunday, October 25, 2015

Hungry for Light.

Dear Mom,
I've attempted to write something 3 times since moving here, and somehow it just hasn't happened...funny how that is.

Yet something has been stirring in me these last few weeks and I just have to get it out on paper. Mom, I'm hungry and I'm thankful.

A re-occuring theme of our ADS class is that we are marked by hunger for more of God.  Staff and speakers alike have spoke it into existence and boy have we been living it out as a class! Yet with all this hunger there can come a complacency. A complacency that the enemy brings. The idea that tries to root when a people group is on the cusp of EVEN MORE...the idea that everybody already knows we're hungry so we don't need to do anything more...we don't need to surrender more, or claim any more victory, give over even more of our day to worship,  or fight anymore battles because the enemy convinced us that what we've given is already enough. BUT God wants more. He calls us to not be complacent in our hunger now, but to hunger more. To identify the walls we have. Walls that stand as the extent of how much we feel we're capable of dreaming with God, the representation of our fears, the limitation of what we think is all we can have in God.
The truth is though, there is so much more freedom to be had when we empty ourselves to the fullest extent, when we come to Him as broken vessels in every area. So much more to freedom when we decide to identify our brick walls, and then we punch holes in them. We let the light flood through. We give others standing on the side of the wall with us an "out"...a path to follow. By those holes we proclaim freedom and victory, and a desire to be even less so that He can be even more. 

When we identify the walls in our lives and then actively punch through them we are hungering for more, We are getting even closer to the feet of Jesus by the power of His blood and the word of our testimony. He gives us the strength and the opportunity to punch through the wall. It's not by ourselves. It's by our humility and our surrender. It's by our hunger and our action that follows. It's by GOD and submitting our piece of The Church to Him daily to be changed, molding, and directed by Him.

This is NO call to be perfect. This is NO call to not struggle. THIS IS A CALL to be broken, to be emptied, to embrace vulnerability and to walk forward (despite fear or inadequacy) with confidence that the Lord called you to give Him more of yourself. With confidence that the Lord called you to be beautifully broken every day.  To live out your messy-ness for all to see, so that they know the goodness in you is not you, but Him.

I'm convinced that my wholeness in Christ will not be found in perfection, or in legalism, but in relationship that invites me to thankfully and graciously accept God's call to be broken every day for His glory. To be humbled and transformed in every area, no matter the challenge or cost, so that I may join The Church in changing the world...by giving Him my entire being and serving Him by nothing of my doing or creating, but everything by God's power, courage, and utmost our relationship.  And it is because of this that I know brokenness isn't always bad or less than.

It's a messy process that won't end, but it's worth all I have to let Him take my life over... of that much I am certain.

Love Always and Forever
Your Daughter, 
Brittany