Thursday, March 20, 2014

The Hand of God

In December, the Hand of God jarred me awake.


I wanted to keep sleeping...sleeping in the dark that I had made with my words and with my own hands, but He wouldn't let me.

It's time, He said.

But I kept begging for Him to leave me alone.


For two and a half months I begged Him to back off. To let sleeping giants lie and to move on.

But He didn't.


His Hand began to press hard and I dreaded the morning, that moment I woke up and He would be there, reminding me that He is God and I am not and that it. was. time.


He began to close doors - that house we were supposed to move into at the beginning of March? Two days before the lease signing a gentlemen walked up the steps of that house and offered to buy it.


And I knew...he came because I wasn't obeying and I had a choice.

So I continued to ignore the God I claimed to love.


Until every word I said burned in my mouth. Until every thought was consumed with all the wrong I had done, until every breath that left my lungs heaved with 15 years worth of regret...

Until I whispered back in complete surrender,

You are right...It's time.

And as I peeled back layers and began to deal with the shame I had hidden, uncovering all the covering up I had done, He was there.

He was there in the forgiveness offered and in the weeping out of the poison I had let in.

He was there in the broken, trembling admittance that I was wrong.




I have been silent - nearly crushed under the weight of my sin.

And then silent again because of undeserved grace.


The God Who names each star and forms each bud has interacted with me - in the most painful and yet beautiful of ways.

His grace carried me when I tried to forget for all those long years and His grace wouldn't let me stay in that dead space and His grace peeled back the curtain and pressed hard against my soul until my heart burned back to life with His words,




Two days after I submitted to the leading of Jesus? The buyer walked away from the house.

Five days after listing our own home? We found a renter.


We move to the inner city April 1st, but I am no fool anymore.


Jesus is living and real and active and my life is His, no questions asked.

His hesed surrounds my days and I am safe here, in the center of His will.