Self Confidence and Self Doubt

God has given me a complicated personality, an unusual mix of impulsive overconfidence and lurking sensitivity to other people's opinions.  This unlikely combination tends to lead me into a pattern of quick, impulsive decision-making, followed sometimes by slow, churning self-doubt.  I need God on both ends of that strange spectrum that is my personality.

"He must increase, but I must decrease." -- John 3:30

When I am impulsively bold and brilliant, I need God to remind me that He made me this way for His glory, and not my own.  I need Him to remind me that wisdom takes time and that He promises to give me wisdom if I will slow down enough to ask for it.

"For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God?  Or am I trying to please man?  If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of God." -- Galatians 1:10

And when self-doubt leads me to question my right to keep standing in the shoes of leader, teacher, mentor, mother, wife, friend, because of my many mistakes and failures, I need God's grace to remind me that it is precisely because of my weakness that He is made strong in the eyes of those to whom I minister.  I am not standing in those shoes because I am brilliant and worthy, but I stand in those shoes because He is brilliant and worthy.

"He must increase, but I must decrease." -- John 3:30

This is why I relate to Peter so much.  I just finished reading Mark, chapter 9 with my small group, and my heart was so happy when I got to verses 5 and 6 that tell how Peter spoke, not simply when he didn't know what to say, but because he didn't know what to say.  That's so me!  And yet, time and time again, Jesus calls Peter to His inner circle.  Peter is among the three that Jesus most often calls to Himself.  And Jesus chooses Peter as the rock on which to build His church.

So in the moments when I feel like I have failed, I am able to push through the insecurities to keep serving the Lord in every area of my life, knowing that, like Peter, God has chosen me.  That's the catch of all catches, God has chosen me, and you, His people, flawed and failing, to tell the world about His glory and His kingdom.

Lord, help me make much of You with every aspect of my personality.

A Date with God

Yesterday I found myself in an unusual situation.  It was the first instance in a looooooong while that I had a nice window of time all to myself.  Isaac was, of course, at school, and Abby had the happy (yummy) privilege of going to a cookie making class for kids at the YMCA.

It took me a while to figure out what to do with this precious and rare "me time."  When my kids used to take naps, I would prioritize how I would spend my time by asking the question: What is the hardest thing to get done with kids around?  Whatever it was, it should be done first!  By using this as a priority, I tended to focus my "me time" on quiet times reading the bible, napping, or writing, rather than doing laundry or cleaning.

So it was yesterday.  I have been feeling a little out of sorts in the past couple weeks and I really felt like it would be the best use of my time to have a date with God.  Once decided, I was as excited about planning my time with God as I would be in planning a date night with my husband.  How would we spend our time together?  Quickly I landed on a morning spent in prayer.  I didn't want it to be a morning of begging God to give me what I want in life, but rather some quality time spent together with the Lord.  If you're anything like me, the idea of spending more than five minutes in prayer can be pretty daunting, let alone a whole morning at it!  As excited as I was for my date with God, I was also nervous.  What if I couldn't last for a whole morning?  What if I got bored ten minutes into it?  I decided to use my time to walk through the ACTS prayer I learned of so long ago:

• Adoration: Praising God for who He is
• Confession: Asking God's forgiveness for specific sins
• Thanksgiving: Thanking God for specific blessings
• Supplication: Bringing specific concerns before God

Through each aspect of prayer I did a little bit of singing, some journaling, some time in prayer, and some time (the hardest part) in just quietly listening.  The morning flew by.

A - Adoration.  I find that this is the part I tend to skip over most of all in my own private prayer life.  It is easy to worship God in the context of singing together with the church in guided praise.  For some reason, it is harder for me to praise God in the privacy of my own mind.  So, this morning, I spent my workout time on the elliptical machine listening to worship music on my ipod.  Normally during my workout I am watching some brainless TV show or other.  Not a terrible thing to do, but I must say that the worship felt like a much better use of time.  Since my mind is not trained on the art of private worship, I had to several times pray for God's help in focusing my heart on Him and helping me commune with Him through the time spent with Him.  Some instrumental songs on my mix allowed me to speak my own words of adoration to God.  The lyrics of the other songs led me to worship different aspects of His glory and character.  Fernando Ortega's "O Thou in Whose Presence" became a favorite of the morning.  These words were particularly powerful to me:

"He looks, and ten thousands of angels rejoice, 

And myriads wait for His word;

He speaks and eternity, filled with His voice,

Re-echoes the praise of the Lord."

C - Confession.  This tends to be the second most brushed over aspect of prayer in my prayer life.  I think that is partly because, in the eyes of the world (and myself), I'm a relatively "good" person.  My behavior is usually socially acceptable.  But I know that with God, the inward sins I harbor are as significant as the outward sins I refrain from.  If you don't believe that, check out Matthew 5:18-48.  In those verses, Jesus takes the letter of the law twenty times further by proving that it's what's in the heart that matters, and that, no matter how wonderful we think our actions are, there is always another step toward goodness that we failed to take.  In short, godly perfection is impossible.  God has even declared what we view as our "righteousnesses" to be like "filthy rags" to Him (Isaiah 64:6).  Maybe I am not so "good" after all and the topic deserves some introspection.  And so I took some time to confess my repetitive inward sins: pride, selfishness, self indulgence, ambivalence toward God, caring too much for the approval of others (need I go on to prove my point!?).  I also confessed some specific sins that I know I have committed lately.  Even though God knows all these things about me already, it felt good to be in communication with Him about them.  There is nothing withheld or hidden between us.  

T - Thanksgiving.  Counting my blessings is easy and I love to do it.  In my daily prayers I usually sprinkle in the obvious ones: "Thank You for my children, my husband, the financial ability to pay for the good life we live."  But it was good to spend some time really dwelling on all the ways God has blessed me and thanking Him for each one.  I find it really hard to have a bad attitude or feel sorry for myself when I'm focusing on thankfulness for all of these blessings.

S - Supplication.  This is the one that I tend to focus on the most in my private prayer life, so much to the extent that, without the other aspects of prayer, it seems like I'm using God as my own personal vending machine.  I hastily pop in my quarter, a quick prayer, a thin slice of time, asking God for something I need.  And I expect results.  Sadly, I understand how God feels when I treat Him like this, neglecting the other aspects of our relationship and only coming to Him when I want something.  There are many instances and many people who treat others this way and I have felt what He must feel like when supplication is the only aspect of prayer which I perform with regularity.  However, on this particular day, I had spent time in His presence.  I had opened my heart to Him in worship, I had grown closer to Him through the transparency of confession, and I had laughed and smiled with Him in thanks for all that is lovely and good in my life.  So then, when I came to Him with my requests, it was as a close friend revealing the desires of her heart to her companion, rather than as a beggar expecting a handout.  I'm not sure how He will choose to respond to my desires, but I know He has heard me and His response will be what He knows is best for me.


The whole experience today was wonderful.  It did nothing to make me any more holy.  It did not earn me brownie points with God or extra treasure in heaven.  But, like quality time with someone I love, this time with God has brought me closer to Him and I feel ready to head out into the world again, healthy and filled.  Sisters, I pray for you and me that we will find more opportunities in our days to make dates with God!

True Spiritual Growth, in Wind or Calm

With my youngest now in school I have regained my times of quiet and solitude.  I have relief from the constant barrage of requests.  I have been able to refocus my days in prayer and reading, in seeking God.  He is growing me and I am loving it. (See the blog post I wrote about this growth: Walking With God.)  But I just came across this statement that slapped me silly in John Ortberg's The Life You've Always Wanted:

"She had never been taught to see that caring for two young children, offered daily with expressions of gratitude and prayers for help and patient acceptance of trials, might become a kind of school for transformation into powerful servanthood beyond anything she had ever known."

This slapped me silly because it gave me a new lens to see the past seven years.  It slapped me silly because, with that new lens, I was able to see how, as hard as they were for me, those years were extremely transforming.  I am not the same person now that I was when my first child was born.  This begs the question: if those years were hard for me, if finding time to read God's word and concentrate on prayer was next to impossible, if I didn't feel God's wind beneath my wings for spiritual growth, how did such extreme transformation take place?  The answer is in the question: I didn't understand true spiritual growth.


True Spiritual Growth
John Ortberg defines spiritual growth as growing in love for God and in love for others.  That's it.  If we are growing in love for God and others, we are growing spiritually.  With that being said, it is the end that matters, not the means; it is the heart that matters, and not the actions.  A person can do one action and get two completely different heart results.

For example, I have read my bible in a way that grew me in love for God and others.  I also have read my bible in a way that allowed me to check a box on the "good Christian to-do list," growing me only in love for my self and my accomplishment.  Again, I have provided a meal for friends-in-need in a way that grew me in love for God and others.  I also have provided a meal for friends-in-need in a way that caused me to yell at my children for getting in the way of my good deed.  One action, two different heart results: one is spiritual growth; the other is toxic.  True spiritual growth, however it happens, causes us to grow in love for God and in love for others.


The Cause of Spiritual Growth
The honest truth about spiritual growth is that it is God's business, not ours.  It's not that we don't play any part in it, but the growth itself comes from God, not our effort.  John Ortberg gives the analogy of driving a sailboat.  It is God's job to provide the wind; it is ours to maneuver the sails to make the most of the wind when it blows.

Interestingly with this analogy, in my experience God grows us both with the wind and the calm.  The wind is what I am in now: a time of intense and joyful growth; where His presence is so close; I feel His spirit nudge me often; and I am lifted up by the fun, almost tangible feeling of His walking alongside me.  But the calm is what I have just emerged from: a time when He took His wind away for a while; a time of not being able to feel His presence regularly or feel His spirit nudge me often; a time of distraction with the cares of this world, the busyness of raising babies; a time when I felt much more like I was floundering than soaring.  And yet, looking back, I realize that God grew me immeasurably during the calm, as He is during the wind.  The calm was not as fun, but it was still growth, the growth of learning to trust in Him, to wait on Him, to believe that He loves me, to believe that He will one day bring back the wind.


True Spiritual Training
As the mother in the quote above, I had wrongly assumed that my spiritual growth was tied solely to bible reading and prayer.  I judged my spiritual growth based on whether I was reading my bible often and, more importantly, with quality and depth.  I judged my spiritual growth based on whether I was able to spend quality time with my hands folded and my head bowed.  Was I listening to God?  Was I hearing from Him?  Usually, the answer was, "not enough."

What I had failed to see was how God used that time of calm to train me in so many other areas.   While bible reading and prayer can be wonderful disciplines for spiritual growth, there are many more in which God was training me, without my even realizing it:

• Humility.  I am not, by nature, a backseat sort of person.  I like the spotlight.  I chose teaching as a profession partly because it allowed me to be center-stage every day.  I enjoyed the recognition of my peers when I created a spectacularly creative lesson plan.  I loved reaching my students through my wit and humor.  In contrast, every single day of stay-at-home motherhood was a training in humility.  It was not about me.  I received no admiration for my skills, no applause or accolades.  I felt trapped by insignificant, mundane, repetitious tasks.  Countless times I questioned whether staying home with my kids was really what I wanted to do.  And yet, every day I chose again that there is nothing greater to which I can give my life than raising my children.  Time and time again I chose them over myself.  God used each choice to train me to put others first.  Humility.
• Servanthood.  When I worked full-time, household chores were tasks that were in the way of real life.  I did them as quickly as I could so that I could get on with the important stuff.  You should see the way I clean my house now.  At home alone, with my sweet music playing, my cleaning has become a task of serving, an expression of gratitude to God and of love for my family.  Mondays are my cleaning days and it is ridiculous how much I enjoy them.  It's ridiculous how much I enjoy the insignificant, mundane, repetitious tasks of laundry, dishes, and cleaning.  God has spent the last seven years training me to serve my family in love and to use those acts as expressions of gratitude for all that God has given me.  He has transformed my heart and helped me to do small things for Him and for others.  Servanthood.
• Stewardship.  When Isaac was a baby and we had two toddler boys come over to play, I was horrified at how destructive they were, little tornadoes in my well-ordered home.  These days, toddler boys are still little tornadoes.  What has changed is me.  Through all the phases of motherhood, God has been training me to release, little by little, my white-knuckled ownership of my stuff.  This house is His.  The stuff is His.  If He leads me to invite fifteen little tornadoes into my (well, His) well-ordered home, who am I to stand in the way?  Each time I make space and grace for others, it is yet another opportunity to give what I have, and to serve with the "stuff" and the time God has given me.  It's all His anyway; I just get to use it for a while.  Stewardship.

The Result

Those seven years of training in humility, servanthood, and stewardship all grew me in love for God and in love for others.  I am a work in progress, and am perfect in none of these areas, but, wow have I grown, not to my glory, but to the glory of God in me!  And those three areas are not the only ones where God has been training me.  There are more: thankfulness, joy, patience, dependence.  He has done so much in those seven years of calm to grow me in love for Him and for others.  

This realization gives me so much joy.  I know stay-at-home motherhood is not hard for everyone, but I also know there are mothers like me, for whom it is a daily challenge as well as a daily joy.  I want to share with them my retrospect that, though bible reading and prayer is so hard to do with either quality or quantity during those years, God is still at work.  If you are in a time of calm, when the Spirit of God is not blowing through, raising your sails with tangible growth, hold on to the truth that God is still at work.  Every day that the calm remains, remind yourself that He is at work in you, whether you feel it or not.  Train yourself to apply Colossians 3:17 to every task of motherhood: "And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him."  A heart that learns to do that is the kind of heart God can grow in love for Him and in love for others: true spiritual growth.

Walking With God

How many of us can honestly say, "For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain" (Phillippians 1:21)?  I get the "to die is gain part," especially when life is hard and I just want to be glorified and endlessly joyful with Christ in heaven forever and ever, amen!  But as for "to live is Christ," I feel like, all to often, a truer statement would be, "For to me, to live is activity in some way connected with Christ, and to die is gain." 

With my youngest child now in kindergarten, I felt God calling me to strengthen my relationship with Him rather than just busy myself with activity.  So, I have said "no" to many activities and sought Him these past two months.  And wow, has He opened my eyes to a different kind of living.  Some of the believers I most admire have told me about their own spiritual life.  They claim to enjoy their time spent with the Lord, in His word and in prayer and worship, so much that they don't want to break away to accomplish the activities of the day.  

  

This is amazing to me, as I find it hard to pray for more than five minutes, and reading God's word can easily become another activity required simply for bible study group discussion, another check off the to-do list.  I do those things and base major life decisions on what I know is God's plan for my life, but am I truly investing in my relationship with God?  This reminds me of Noah, a  story I just finished reading to my children.  The bible explains that Noah "found grace in the eyes of the Lord" because "Noah walked with God" (Genesis 6:9).  When I reduce bible reading to a check list, and prayer to a few moments of muttered requests (with a "thanks" sprinkled in here and there), am I truly walking with God?  I don't think I can make that claim.  I think it may be more true to say about me that I walk, with God somewhere in the vicinity.  God and I have moments of "with-ness" but too often I walk on my own, leaving God in the background until I remember how much I need Him.  

But God has used these past two months of setting aside activity to show me what that kind of "walking with God" relationship can look like.  I have learned a few things about myself and how I can walk with God daily:

• ABOUT READING.  I need to schedule time (outside of my quick morning reading of the word) to read.  This is key to my spiritual growth.  In between loads of laundry, as I eat breakfast, laying for half and hour on my bed, before I pick up the kids from the bus stop, I read.  I read the bible, I read books on faith and spiritual growth, and I read theology and studies.  I have about four books going at any one time, at least one of them being a book of the bible.  God has taught me that the reading itself can be a form of prayer.  While I read, my mind is conversing with God.  I am consciously seeking His wisdom to discern what I read and He is constantly giving me Holy Spirit nudges of how what I'm reading applies to something in my life.  That's relationship.  That's prayer, sister!
• ABOUT PRAYER.  Prayer does not have to look like what I always thought: sitting in one place, hands folded, head bowed.  As I said above, seeking God through reading is conversation with Him.  It is prayer.  So is writing.  Not everyone is a writer, but for me, when I write, it is another opportunity for me to seek God, to talk to Him in prayer as I write.  I write personal journals of my own spiritual growth so that I can further process what God is teaching me, and as a memorial of His redeeming work in my life.  I share my writing with others.  I write letters and emails of prayer and encouragement for others.  When I get an email or text message asking for prayer, I have moved from just saying, "I'm praying for you," to replying with an actual written-out prayer.  When I go on my daily walks and runs, the reading and writing I do gets turned over and over in my head and the conversation with God continues in the quiet of the morning sun.  In a sense, almost everything I do now is prayer, although I'm not spending any more time than I used to in the position of hands folded, head down.
• ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS.  God has been teaching me the importance of continuing in prayer as I talk with others.  We all have people in our lives who look to us for guidance, who come to us for advice.  I am learning that I need to be in prayer when I am listening to someone tell me what is on their mind.  I am learning that if I don't prayerfully engage in the conversation, my answers and advice does not reflect God's heart in the situation.  I have learned to listen, ask questions, while praying, "God I don't know what to say to help this person, so I'm just going to listen and love and support them unless You provide some wisdom that I can offer them."  He has been very faithful in helping my mind connect His word and His wisdom to the situation, but I have to ask and wait (James 1:5).  
• ABOUT MUSIC.  Now that my kids are in school and the house is quiet, I have reconnected with my love for music.  And God has used even that to help me walk with Him.  I have a certain Pandora station that plays quiet and thoughtful Christian music, sometimes with words and sometimes without.  This station plays quite often throughout the day as I am at home, cleaning, reading, getting dressed.  God has used it as yet another way to teach me to be in constant prayer with Him.  Sometimes it is just in the background, enhancing the mood of contemplation and connection with God.  Sometimes a song comes on that reinforces exactly what I have read and I am moved to tears at God's amazing grace and love for me.  Sometimes I am so moved that I stop any activity and just join in praise with the heavenly host. 

This depth is new to me.  I feel like I am consistently walking with God now like never before in my life.  It is more of a daily dependence, a daily connection.  And I know God is not finished refining me yet.  There are still areas of my days that do not include that same connection with Him.  Once my kids get home from school and that peaceful time of searching stops, I still find it hard to keep close to God.  I get distracted and I feel like God has to teach me how I can walk with Him in times of activity as well as in times of quiet.  But I know I never want to stop the new depth of our relationship.  I only want it to grow.

Lord, continue to grow me.  Help me preserve and protect the new walk I have with You.  Help me to learn to walk with You that closely when I am interacting with my family as a mom and wife.  When I am ready, help me walk with You as I add activity back into my life and minister to others.  Help me to seek You first, daily.  Lord, I want it to be said of me, like Noah, "Megan walked with God."  Amen!

"Earth's crammed with Heaven,

And every common bush afire with God,

But only he who sees takes off his shoes--

The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries."

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

(Check out the blog entry I wrote about God desiring relationship with us: Jesus Sighs).   

Peter and Me: Holy Screwups

"But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us."  -2 Corinthians 4:7

I'm really thankful for Peter.  Sometimes I have awesome moments where I am able to be that earthen vessel, plain and available, emptied of self, so that God's wisdom and grace can shine through me.  And sometimes I am a holy screwup.  I say that lovingly because I am holy, set apart by grace, even in my biggest screwup moments.   But that is why I'm thankful for Peter.  Peter was a holy screwup too.

• Just like me, Peter lacked faith to follow Christ boldly.  He chose to fear the wind and water, rather than trust in the Power of Christ.  (Matthew 14:25-32).
• Just like me, Peter put his foot in his mouth.  He rebuked Jesus for his plan to die on a cross! And He got scolded for it.  Ouch.  (Matthew 16:20-23).
• Just like me, Peter speaks even when he doesn't know what to say.  When Christ is transfigured and glorified in front of Peter, with Moses and Elijah talking to him on the mountaintop, Peter speaks out of turn, offering to build three tabernacles.  While Peter is still speaking, God's voice interrupts him, saying, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.  Hear Him!"  Basically, God is saying, "Shut up Peter.  It's Jesus who needs to speak right now."  How many times that happens to me! (Matthew 17:1-5).
• Just like me, Peter didn't fully understand Christ's plan.  He cut off the servant's ear when they came to capture Jesus.  (John 18:10-11).
• Just like me, Peter chose self-protection over faithfulness to Christ.  He denied three times that he was a follower of Christ.  (Mark 14:66-72).
• Just like me, Peter acted on rash impulses.  He jumps out of the boat in a frenzy to get to Jesus, while the other disciples calmly row the boat the short way to shore.  Why the rush Peter?  You may have gotten there a few minutes faster, but now you're wet.  Ah me, Peter, why are we so rash? (John 21:7-8).
• Just like me, Peter grieved his mistakes. He grieved when Christ asked three times if Peter loved him, in an echo of the three denials Peter had earlier made of loving Christ. (John 21:15-17).
• Just like me, Peter had to be corrected, sometimes publicly. He was being a hypocrite by eating with the Gentiles only when important Jews weren't around.  Worse than that, as a leader, Peter was influencing others to do the same.  Paul called him out "face to face."  Again, ouch.  (Galatians 2:11-21).  

But, just like me, Peter, holy screwup that he is, can still be used by God!  Christ tells Peter he will be the foundation of His church and hold the keys of the kingdom (Matthew 16:15-19).  Peter's first act after receiving the Holy Spirit was that he preached a message that brought 3,000 new souls into the kingdom (Acts 2:14-41).  Peter had an amazing ministry of healing, teaching, and leading.  He wrote some of the Bible itself.  He was the founding father of the church, the followers of Christ.

Now that's a holy screwup!  I'm in good company.  I may not be the rock on which the church is going to be built, I may not lead 3,000 souls to Christ, but I am certain God has a plan to use me for his kingdom.  Use me, God!  Help me be faithful, available, and teachable, and to let You do the rest.  Help me be the earthen vessel, or as my aunt says, the cracked pot, and let Your glory shine.

Jesus Sighs

Last week I started reading through the book of Mark.  At this point I've come to where Jesus is traveling around, healing people wherever He goes.  But this morning I came across a phrase that made me pause and think.  As Jesus was healing a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, "He sighed" before speaking the words that healed (Mark 7:34).

That phrase made me ponder, why would Jesus sigh?  Was He frustrated, tired, stressed, bored, sad, lonely, wistful?  Those are all the reasons I can come up with why people usually sigh.  (And I love that Jesus is so human that He shares these emotions with us.)  This question made my mind go back to some verses I had read just moments earlier. In Mark 7:24 it describes Jesus going into a house and wanting not to be found.  I think He was sighing because He was exhausted.  

Jesus had been traveling from place to place and healing people in droves.  The past several chapters are filled with stories of various healings and allusions to healings so numerous that they are not individually accounted for.  In chapter 6, He even sends out His disciples in pairs so they can accomplish even more healing and preaching in His name.  But when the disciples came back to Him after all their work, He says, "Come aside by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while" (6:31).  Jesus recognizes their exhaustion from their work and offers them rest and solitude, peace and quiet, for a time of recovery.  And when Jesus, the human, equally exhausted (or probably more so), tries to hide away for some peace and quiet, He "could not be hidden" (7:24).  

Jesus was being swarmed and followed by people who came to Him for healing.  Jesus began His ministry, way back in chapter 1, with healing.  He used healing as a tool to demonstrate His power, to show compassion, and sometimes to call attention to Himself.  As silly as that may sound, I think Jesus used healing as a way to get people to notice Him and begin to question who He was and how He came by such power.  Jesus often chooses to heal with touch.  I believe it's His way of compassionately connecting with those who seek Him.  But He demonstrated several times, most recently in chapter 7, verse 29, that all He has to do is speak a word and it is done, even when He is nowhere near the person being healed.  

So all of this line of thinking brought me to the ultimate question: if Jesus was sighing because He was tired, because He was being followed by all the needy people who wanted to be healed; if He was capable of healing everyone with only a word (after all, though He is human, He is also God); if He has already received the attention He needs as He pursues His purpose, WHY does He not just speak a word, heal everyone simultaneously, and be done with it?  He could, you know.

The only conclusion, is that healing is not ultimately what He came here to do.  Forgive me for my amazement at the obvious, but Jesus did not come here with the sole purpose of healing.  If He had, He wouldn't have sighed from exhaustion before healing the deaf man.  If He had, He would have just spoken and wiped out all sickness with one word.  And if He came just to heal, wouldn't the ultimate manifestation of that be to defeat sickness to the point of defeating death?  He could just live among us and continue to wipe out disease with a word and we would never have to die.  But healing is not what He came for.  In fact, way back in Genesis, just after sin entered the world, God sent Adam (and Eve) out of the Garden of Eden, "lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever."  This may come as a shock to us, but God does not want us to live forever!  At least, not the way we are right now.

Jesus came with the purpose of healing, not just our bodies, but also our souls.  He had a greater purpose than healing the sick.  And I wonder how many of those people that He healed missed it.  His ultimate purpose was our salvation (the point where we accept His death and resurrection as our sole means of getting right with God) and relationship with us (the point where, after salvation, we enter into that daily walk with Him and follow Him with our lives).  Many of us know that (yeah, yeah, yeah...heard it a million times).  But how many times, like those people who wore Jesus out seeking healing, do we miss it?

How often do we today seek God for healing, but not salvation or relationship?  We pray when we need something: we are sick or a loved one is dying.  We pray for physical healing as well as emotional healing and the healing of our fragmented lives: divorce, job loss, illness, stress.  We pray when we need healing.  I believe that to do so is good and right.  God wants to heal, wants us to come to Him (even in His exhaustion, Jesus didn't turn the deaf man away).  But to do only that causes us to miss out on His ultimate purpose, a purpose more important than our physical, emotional, mental, or financial well-being.  

When we're suffering, it's often hard for us to understand how God can allow it, how He can have any more ultimate purpose for us than our health and well-being.  And we should find it comforting that God does have plans to do away with death and suffering forever (Revelation 20:13-14 and 21:1-4).  But in the meantime, we would do best to remember that sigh of Jesus, and remember that His ultimate purpose for us is not for healing.  He wants us to come to Him for salvation.  And then He wants us to come to Him for relationship, daily, minute by minute, reading His word and talking with Him in prayer.  

He reminded me of this last week when He called me back into a daily time of reading His word.  I had meandered away from the daily habit and found myself stretched and unbalanced, turning to other means for comfort and strength.  But He gave me gentle reminders that He wanted to be my only source of comfort and strength.  And so I have begun again to read my bible in the mornings as I lay in bed and the summer sun shines through my windows.  It is a wonderful way to start my day.  Being in His word has refocused my days, re-centered me, and revitalized my prayer life.  How I need that daily time with Him!  His ultimate purpose is relationship.  He lets me know that with a sigh.