So many thoughts whirring in my mind and pressing on my heart...

At church last night, I was touched by P. Jamie's sermon.  The question posed in the end was about fear.  Is there fear holding me back from serving the Lord?  The answer was a resounding yes.  Fear of failure, fear of faithlessness, fear of burnout.  These seem to be the chains that continue to hold me down -- no, strangle me -- all of which stem from wounds that just need desperately to be healed.  These are old wounds that keep splitting open again just when I think I've been restored to full health again. 

The fear of drowning in the ministry of soul care and not being able to persevere with faithfulness is all mixed up with another deep wound that also seems to be immune to every type of balm.  In the last few years, I have lost a few loved ones to the grave's insatiable hunger, and though sorrow falls heavy with each passing, none has hit me as hard as the first.  And I wonder if anyone ever recovers fully from a loss such as this?  Can a wound such as this ever heal?  The answer for the whys only responds to my mind but never quite reaches my heart.  And the question that continues to hang over me is whether I will ever have the capacity to love again as I did before that loss.   

The theme song these days truly has been, "Chains be broken, lives be healed, eyes be opened, Christ is revealed ...please BE revealed."

I had a really vivid dream last night that a woman from my seminary prayed over me -- and then she spoke a word to me.  When I woke up, I didn't remember what it was until I started praying.  Then I remembered that she had told me to pray directly against the fears which have been hindering me.  So that's what I did.  And it was so freeing!  It was exactly what I needed to do.  I love that He spoke to me in a dream and provided the missing piece for my peace. 

The other night, I had come to realize some of my fears.  What has hindered me from moving forward in faith is this fear I have that my ministry will fail, fall flat, go splat.  I have this paralyzing fear that it won't work, I haven't got the right ideas, haven't looked at it from every angle or that it just won't work for everybody.  I'm afraid that I've evaluated things wrong, misunderstood where people are at and have come up with things that won't meet people's needs at all.  It's this dissenting, cynical voice that keeps making me doubt and second-guess.  But why am I listening to this evil voice?  It's satan's words of discouragement, and if I continue to listen, I will never move forward, and it will be my undoing.  To try and fail is better than to not try at all.  At least, even if I am "off" or "fall short", I am still able to communicate love.  I loved enough to try.  And in the trial and error, in the realizing I missed the mark, I will know better how to get closer to the mark next time around.  I have to try.  I can't throw my hands up in despair bcause I'm scared that I'll be the fool.  The fool is the one who does not take the step of faith to follow Jesus when He calls.  

And this is what I prayed about this morning.  I prayed against the dissenting voice -- that it will no longer be an influence in my life.  I prayed for God to give me the confidence that He is the one who gave me that certain vision; He is the one who is calling me forward.

Confession:  I haven't "poured myself out for God" for years.  Not since 2003 when I left the Nav ministry in utter and complete, immobilizing exhaustion.  What a sham of a Christian life I have been living all this time and nobody even knew it.  These last few years, I haven't refused to serve God, but I have been the one to carefully pick and choose what I will do for God if it seems good and safe to me.  I've held back from him, had an inability to surrender, because I just haven't trusted Him.  He didn't protect me last time.  And feeling like I can't trust Him has probably been the most painful part for me.

Looking back to the season of my life that started it all, I realize now that I had really high expectations of what I needed to do.  There were a lot of sheep to shepherd, and I felt a personal responsibility to care for them.  It was all motivated by love, but it was also motivated by a desire to control.  Things could have been different if I had asked God to make it different, but I didn't because I wanted to do it all, and I thought I was the only one who could do it.  It was my own fault, not God's.  But I've been running from Him ever since -- and finding that it is far more exhausting to run from Him than with Him in the way He wants me to go.

And these are the lies I've been believing since then:
1.  God will not protect you from exhaustion and pain.
    - He doesn't care about you.
    - He is impotent to help you.
    - You're on your own. 
2.  If you surrender yourself to Him, He will take advantage of you.
3.  If you pour yourself out for God, you will become so exhausted, you will be immobile.
4.  It's not worth it to love other people.  There will not be any reward for it.  You will be tired.
5.  Don't commit yourself to anything because you're just going to get tired anyway or change your mind AND disappoint those people you made a commitment to.

These are the truths I need to embrace:
1.  God will protect me.
    - He loves me.  I can trust Him.
    - He is powerful (able and willing) to save me.  I can trust Him.
    - He is with me and "for" me.  He is not against me.  I am not alone.  I can trust Him.
2.  If I surrender myself to Him, I will experience greater things than I can imagine.  He will lead me to amazing places and He will fill and satisfy me.  Surrender = Satisfaction.
3.  If I pour myself out for God, He will pour Himself out into me.  My cup will always be full to overflowing; I will never be dry.  (Just need to stay under the faucet.)
4.  It is worth it to love people.  This is the only thing in life worth investing in.
5.  I need to commit myself to the thing that God tells me to commit to (and not all the things I think I should), and He will give me the strength, energy and wisdom to invest to the end.

It really all comes down to believing that God loves me.  He loves me, therefore, He is trustworthy.  I can trust Him.  And when I surrender myself to Him, He will not take advantage of me.  Instead, He will take me to places that are beyond what I can fathom.  This is what I need to believe in order to move on beyond the pain.

[Edit:  God has taken me deeper since I posted this entry.  I need to change the first part of Truth #1.  God loving me does not mean that I will never experience pain.  I should never make that correlation.  Sometimes He will not shield me from pain.  But that doesn't mean that He doesn't love me.  This is a hard, hard truth.  But here it is:  God loves me.  Period.  I can trust God.  Period.]