"All that is not the love of God has no meaning for me. I can truthfully say that I have no interest in anything but the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. If God wants it to, my life will be useful through my word and witness. If he wants to, my life will bear fruit through my prayers and sacrifices. But the usefulness of my life is his concern, not mine. It would be indecent of me to worry about that." Dominique Voillaume
I read these words today in Brennan Manning's book "The signature of Jesus", a fantastic book that I am already to the middle of (and wishing I didn't go so fast so there'd be more to read longer!) since starting it Thursday.
I read them and so wished those words spoke of my soul, my heart, my love and relationship with Jesus. I read them and thought, this is who I want to be.
I've spent so many years (and especially recently) trying to "figure out what I want to be when I grow up", and today I thought "THIS!" This is not what but who I want to be. What I do is secondary to who I am, and what I want to spend my energy and focus on is being.
I want to live for, from and through the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. I want to not be concerned whether or not my life is "useful", because my life is His, and He will do with it what He will, for His purposes and His glory.
I want to not care about my appearance, my reputation, my accomplishments, and what others think. I want to count it all as white noise.
I want to be single minded, I want to live a simple life. If as quote above, Dominique Voillaume lived a simple life it is because he had only one priority: the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. Everything else pails, everything else fades, everything else is fluff.
I've spent so much time thinking, worrying, planning and striving focused entirely on myself. And where have I gotten? I am still as lost I have ever been. But one thing continues to grow over the years. My desire to get closer to what Manning calls "the center". My desire to be closer to the simple and powerful truth of Jesus Christ grows as I get older and keeps me awake at night, inconveniences me while I go about my day, interrupts my selfish and idle thoughts. And I thank God for it. I want to live in His interruptions, not in my plans. I want to live in His inconvenient setbacks, not my carefully concocted agenda. I want to live in His uncertainty, because He is all that is certain.
I haven't been honest. I have been carefully staging and covering and maneuvering so as to appear. Appear smart, deep, well read, sensitive, spiritual, you name it. Appear. I still act, and talk and post so as to appear a certain way. What an incredible waste of time and energy. I am not here to appear. I am here to live by the love of God who is in Christ Jesus. I am here to love and cherish and point to Him. What I want to appear as and be is the love of God .
I don't know how. But I do trust Him, and it is the desire of my heart. And He says something about that in Psalm 37, doesn't He? Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.
My desire is to delight in Him, kind of a "chicken and egg" situation, wouldn't you say?
It would be just like God to make it this simple: I desire to delight in Him, and He promises to give me the desire of my heart.
3 comments:
"It would be just like God to make it this simple: I desire to delight in Him, and He promises to give me the desire of my heart."
Yep! He usually is just like that. We're the ones who make it complicated. Which often looks like "doing" rather than "being", and/or our many (vain) attempts at "appearing" what we think others want to see. No need! Rest, and be, and see the fruit God cultivates in us. He's good at it!
Indeed!
The difficult and heart wrenching part of me has been admitting my idolatry. My arrogance.
I want to appear, more than I want Him
I want to feel loved, more than I want Him
I want to do good things, more than I want Him
It isn't that I don't see that all I need is to be and rest in Him.
It's that I stubbornly am still holding onto my Ego.
I am letting go....God have mercy on me a sinner.....I want to let go
I was just telling our kids recently that if they learn nothing more from me, please hear this: the degree to which you can "let go" of you, be unfettered by your need to take care of your own needs (any and all of them), that is the measure with which you will be able to enjoy and live life to its fullest. We are created/designed to be alive in him. If we try to take the place of that Life (whether to have security, or maintain some appearance, or any other self-serving, self-focused thing) then we are missing out on real, true, full Life. Kinda funny how the life we strive for, as believers/followers, can't be had until we throttle back the striving :) But once we do, and we just live/be in Jesus, our Life, then we often live the life we're hoping to live, as God fills us, and then usually the others with whom he surrounds us. And again, it's all at his orchestration, and in him first and only. Neat. :)
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