“Total Renovation”

A few weeks ago I met with my pastor about what is going on in my life and where I am headed on life’s journey.  He has been an integral part of my healing process and giving me direction.  I shared with him how hard it has been to write and how heavy my heart has been.  His advice was to keep writing.  So, I decided to follow his advice; to pray about what God wants me to write about and just do it.  Yesterday I wrote about three pages in my book and I blogged.  It felt so good to put something down in print.

This morning as I got ready to blog I felt no peace about what to write. Nothing in my head felt right.  But I feel God gently nudging me to share what I read in my devotional this morning.  It spoke to me about why God allows us to go through trials and I needed to hear that.  I know from talking to some of you that you guys do too.  So here it is.

God uses His obstacle course of faith to break through our layer of long-standing habits — those deep-seated attitudes we have formed during busy years of active service, high (often unrealistic) expectations, and success-oriented motives that only feed our carnality.  All that is ultimately stripped away, and at this stage we begin to understand what God has in mind:  The total renovation of our entire being.  And it is here that we learn humility — the crowning accomplishment of God’s inner working.

Five Meaningful Minutes a Day
– Charles Swindoll

“to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and to show true humility toward all men.”  Titus 3:2

To be quite frank, this hit so close to my heart.  I know that I have many bad habits that are keeping me from having the kind of relationship with God that I desire.  I know that over the years I have not said “no” to serving, especially in the church, because there is angst that I am not doing enough, being productive enough or serving enough.  I have gone overboard, left myself reeling with my obligations to commitments and been unable to truly serve with a willing heart.  And to say that I am a perfectionist with high expectations may possibly be the understatement of the year.  I want everything I do to be done exceptionally well with clearly visible results.  And when I have served and been able to see things accomplished I have taken pride in that.

As I read th last portion of the devotion I looked at what Mr. Swindoll wrote about God wanting a total renovation of being.  And specifically at learning humility.  I went to my Bible resources and looked up the Greek word used in several of the verses supplied and what it means is: “lowliness of mind” (Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words).  As I started to think about this I recall the verse that says “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:9 God’s ideas are so much higher than ours and unless we are willing to humble ourselves and put ourselves under His authority and become who He created us to be we are totally missing the reason that we are here on this earth.  So if you are like me and in need of a renovation of humility, join me in pleading with Him to show Himself to us and open our hearts to His leading and teaching us to be humble and serve Him sincerely.