quiet

Repentance and rest is your salvation

Quietness and trust is your strength

~Isaiah 30:23

I don’t know how I always forget. Forget that He is my Source and Strength. That He alone is the One I must rely on – He is my Life. It only takes ten minutes in His Presence to be reminded that I am not alone- that I am held by His mighty arms. But what if I gave Him ten hours? Ten days? Ten weeks? Ten years?

What if I gave Him my whole life? If in ten minutes He can transform something in my heart and reorient my worried being into a place of stillness and rest in Him, how much more could He do if I laid bare everything in my soul for Him to do with as He pleases, for as long as it takes?

How healed and whole could I become? How full and free?

As I re-read Ann Voskamp’s The Broken Way, I am reminded of what it means to fully surrender to His ways, even and especially in the broken and painful places, where we have been resistant to Him for so long. It feels nearly impossible sometimes; as though these things inside of us are irreparable. As though we’ve lost something we can never get back.

But He’s always inviting me to truly let go. And to trust that He really loves me, and He really is the truest thing about me and a real Person I can have an endlessly intimate and loving relationship with. That He really can redeem my past and give me hope for my future. That my future is found completely in Him, and I don’t have to worry my way into it. That worry actually hinders His good plans.

This is not just hopeful talk or a way to make us feel better about ourselves, our lives, and the world. This is real; He is real. And I am not ashamed to make my life completely about Him- to be completely dependent on His grace alone. The world will keep being the world, and life will keep throwing us under the bus. We will keep facing struggles, trials, and temptations- we should expect them and not be surprised when they come. But His love will not change, and we can learn how to abide in it every moment of our days: to allow the daily bread He gives us to be enough to sustain us.

I am not ashamed to be weak; I long only to be a vessel of His glory and goodness, and if I must remain limited in my human capacities to do so, then I accept my limitations with thanksgiving. And I praise Him all the more. He is my Father and He provides for me because of my weakness, not in spite of it, and He exchanges it for His strength.

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

~2 Corinthians 12:9