There's a familiar hymn that I sung a lot growing up: "I need thee every hour." Sometimes I think they should have changed the words to that song to be something more along the lines of "I need thee every moment." It's a funny thing about life. Just when you think you have it all together, all your ducks laid neatly in a row, you're head screwed on straight, a giant trial creeps up and knocks you over. At the beginning of this summer, I remember praying to God, "Give me a trial, I'm ready." The thing about asking God to put you through a trial is that He usually does. Not out of malice or a desire to cause us harm, but in order to give us a chance to show Him how much we love him back.
Despite my confident prayer, I wasn't as ready as I thought for the trial He put before me. One of my biggest flaws is resting on my head knowledge of the Bible and of my faith to get me through. I know a lot of scripture, I know the right answers to the Sunday school questions, I know the right thing to do and most of the time I want to do the right thing. But as Paul says in Romans 7: "I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing."
When we stumble sometimes it's just a scrape other times it's a deep gash. The consequences of sin can be long-lasting and painful as God shines a light on the parts of us we didn't even know we hadn't given over to him. The really incredible part of this summer isn't that I failed. It's that even though I failed, God keeps loving me, which really doesn't make any sense to me at all. And He not only keeps loving me, but he loves me enough to want to change me in a way only our heavenly Father can. Think of it at sort of the same thing as when your parents would tell you "I'm only doing this because I love you," when they grounded you or when they wouldn't let you go to that one place you just knew you had to be or your life was over. I keep coming back to Hebrews 12, which reminds me that even though the refining process is sort of like going through detox, ultimately, it's going to heal me:
"It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed."
No matter which way you spin it and no matter the magnitude, trials are painful--especially when I have played the biggest part in bring this trial upon myself. Still, even when I'm running hard towards everything but God, He loves me with a crazy love I'm still only beginning to understand. He loves me enough to strengthen my weak knees and lift my drooping hands. He loves me enough to heal me. Can I let go of myself and let him?
