Today Pastor Elijah was preaching on our great need for repentance and a Savior, and noted that "salvation is really nothing more than unclenching our fists and opening our hands to Him."
He was talking a church of beggars--among whom I am the neediest--to a place of turning from self and turning to Him...talking about rejecting the world and repenting our trespasses and being reconciled to God.
The aim may have been the unchurched or the far away, but the visual targeted me and stung my hands.
There are things I'm clenching I'm needing saved from...concerns and pains I'm holding onto that He longs to free me from...things I'm holding onto that He longs me to trust Him with.
Many times these past months, I have felt a deep, subconscious , intense need to find my phone, to call someone, anyone, to get someone to please HELP me. How many times I have reached out shaky hands for my phone, longing to call Aunt Sharon and asking her to please. fix. dad's. dead. To call Elisa and tap her wise and beautiful heart into telling me what the future holds, into making what is so broken whole. To call Matt and ask him to please rewind the time, to please make possible what is never again.
I catch myself, irritated, despairing, helpless.
What am I doing, Stacey? WHO am I gonna call? Who is gonna fix this? Who is gonna bring grandpa back into my kiddos future? Who is in any place to know if our family is seven or nine?
Salvation is really nothing more than unclenching our fists.
There is no freedom for my broken heart in a phone call. No reconciliation in begging a brother or hounding a sister to do that which they cannot do.
What I have being offered is to be close to Him. What He's pouring out is walking with the Healer, living in the shine of His light, trusting fully in the shade of the Lord of Heaven's Armies.
What we are, 2 Corinthians 5:11 says, is known to God. Christ has drawn me to himself and giving me the ministry of drawing others to Him, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
What I'm searching for is what I have, and the only thing to hold.
Amen. So true. 🥲🤍
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