The Lifter of My Head....

There is a great Brandon Heath song that pleads for God to give him His eyes to see the world around him. And that includes seeing where God is at work–Even if that work is in our own lives, not just the world around us.

It should be the cry of every Christ-followers heart, but too many times my eyes are on my circumstance instead of on the Lifter of my head and that can blind me to what He is doing….in me.

I’ve been discouraged lately. I know I’ve been discouraged lately and if I listed all the reasons why, you’d be discouraged too….so I won’t. Hate to have you join me at 101 Down Trodden Street!

Suffice it to say, if I shared my pity party with you, you’d understand because we’ve all been there at one time or another.

Now, I’m a glass-is-half-full kind of girl. I get it from my mother who is the eternal optimist. I’m glad about that, but for months, I haven’t been my normal cheery self. My circumstances were kicking my tail and I couldn’t seem to rise above them.

Oh, I’d swim to the top long enough to gulp some spiritual air and even float on top of the cess pool of my pity party for a bit, but then I’d allow myself another trip to the depths of my despair. It has been a joy killer, for sure. 

Until this last Sunday when I met with God. Or rather He met with me. And realized He’d been there at work all along.

I attended Grace Community Church in Houston while in town for an anesthesia conference. Grace has a different physical address than when I attended church there in 1992, but the heart of the church is the same. And just like the first time I walked through the doors and felt the truth of their 1990′s tag line, “Come as you are, you’ll be loved!” once more I let His love wash over me as I walked through the doors into their mega-church Sanctuary.

In 1992, Grace was a big church to me. Growing up in rural Kansas, attending small churches, I thought a church like Grace would be overwhelming, but from the first night I visited, I was welcomed, loved and given a home. It was a healing, growing time in my life. I was a single parent, broken and hurting from my recent divorce. A recent move and job change had left me without a support system…..until I found Grace.  The church and the unmerited favor of God.  

It was life changing. 

So was my Sunday at Grace.

Pastor Steve Riggle took a walk down the memory lane of where Grace has been to illustrate where God is taking the church. I cried because part of that history is mine. And then, the songs sung, the Scriptures read, the prayer time, the sermon illustrations were orchestrated by a God who loves me to remind me that He is still God in heaven and I am still held in the palm of His hand.

My faith grew by leaps and bounds while at Grace. I was broken and God loves broken vessels.  The Hound of Heaven had run me down and I had finally realized the only place to run was into His loving arms.  And I did.

I returned to Grace last week, broken by circumstances not of my choosing, hurt and discouraged, but ready to hear His still small voice, ready to see through His eyes instead of my own pain.

Gently, He reminded me of lessons I’d first learned at Grace. With mercy and the healing Balm of Gilead, He washed my wounded heart with His blood, clearing away the infection of unforgiveness and misunderstanding, pressing His nail-scarred hands against my broken places to make them whole. He lifted my head so that my eyes beheld only Him and not my circumstance. And He let me see that just because it is hard, it doesn’t mean He is not there.

I hate to say I’d forgotten how difficult growth can be, but I had. I’d been so busy being discouraged, I’d forgotten to ask Him what He wanted of me.  The answer was the same as it was those many years ago….He wants me. My whole heart. My whole life. All of me. And that includes following Him when it is hard and I am discouraged. 

The Psalms are full of David’s missives written when enemies surrounded him, his life was bleak and God seemed far away, but then David would call upon the Lord for rescue….and he was always rescued by the Lover of his soul.  I stood in the miry clay for so long because I struggled against the clay instead of setting my feet upon the Rock.

As I ponder how to end this, again He speaks through music as Barlow Girl plays on the radio…..”You’re enough, You’re enough, You’re enough for me!”  Yes, Lord, You are.

“The LORD is my light and my salvation–whom whould I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life–of whom should I be afraid?” Psalms 27