New Dreams

I’ve watched this cursor dance in the same spot for about 3 minutes. The backspace button is my best friend in this moment… I’m scared.

When Mary, the mother of Jesus, was told all that God was going to do in and through her, all she could do was ponder all the beauties of God’s promises in her heart. She was speechless, and overtaken with complete awe of what she had just been told… That’s how this heart of mine feels right now.

For 3 1/2 months God has spoken to me through His Word, His people, and His creation. He has sweetly, tenderly, graciously, counseled me with His Words (Psalm 119:24). God has proven Himself to be my Father, Husband, Faithful Friend, Provider, Sustainer, Protector, and Strength. Each encounter with Christ in these few months has left me bereft of speech at times. This experience has been like drinking from a fire hose: one minute I’m ravenously thirsty in need of Living Water, the next I have so much of His Living Water coming at me that it brings me to my knees in overwhelming adoration to God’s goodness towards me. My self-inflicted suffering and God’s afflicting me through His discipline has only proved God’s faithfulness more true, His love more sure, and His character more steadfast.

Such. Grace. All of it. Such. Mercy.

However, I still needed help. Desperately. God offered me what no person, no program, no man-written book could offer me: Himself. He was my Helper. As I scoured through books, articles, wise counsel, and other literature, I found nothing that would help… Except God’s Word. With each brush against the same Words that spoke the world into existence, and made God flesh, I was trained to see how God proves Himself sure and true. Repeatedly. I believe the Lord has given me a dream. A new dream. Through this journey I’ve been on, of coming face to face with my self-made mess, I have found more truth of who God is and who I am IN HIM through the sweet counsel of His Word than anything else. In the book of Psalms, David, the man after God’s own heart, confesses his sin to the Lord openly quite often. When he does this, he often explains how there was no one there to comfort him in his self-inflicted madness. Nothing except the Lord. During these few months, I have found that writing about all I’ve learned has helped me to process the pain, the suffering, the frustrations, the deep hurts, the fears, and the failure, as well as the incredible HOPE I now have. It has also produced a shape. He used the tools of His wisdom and understanding to create shapes inside of my soul that I was not expecting: words. Sentences. Paragraphs. Stanzas. Metaphors. All of this to preach to myself as well as share with others what God says about our disobedience, our sin, our deliverance, our redemption, and the steadfast hope we have because of the perfection of Jesus. When I could find nothing concise that had been written about this specific topic, God became my teacher. His Word my textbook and guidebook. For centuries men and women have been writing about the beauties of salvation. I’ve read countless books about the need for holiness, the call to believers to make war with their sin by the power of the Spirit, and to make Christ my highest treasure. But, what happens when a redeemed child of the Most High God falls. Hard. Terribly hard. What happens to one who has the indwelling Spirit when they choose to sin. Willingly. Horrendously. My question is not “what ultimately happens to a believer who sins”, but rather what happens TO them? Their mind, their emotions, their body, their spirit, their soul? What’s happening to them as a whole person? This is what I believe the Lord has taught me over the past 3 1/2 months. I believe this will be what He will continue to teach me for quite some time until He sees fit to finalize the learning.

The late Toni Morrison once said, “If you want to read a book, but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it.” I want to create something that I did not have 3 1/2 months ago. A resource for the chief of sinners. A resource for those who really messed up. I want to gather all the sweet morsels of ooey gooey goodness in Scripture and meet a need for God’s people who have made choices, even while being God’s child, that may have caused them to question their sanity, reality, identity, or even if they truly are God’s child. I want to share the grace and comfort I have been given with those whom Christ came to save: rotten sinners like me who mess up bad.

Friend, there is no one or no thing more capable of handling the messes you have made than the One who allowed the mess you made to pass through His hand first. This is the hope I want to write to believers.

The dream I believe the Lord has given me is to write a book. This desire is a burning passion deep inside me as I look into the eyes of countless people who carry the burdens of their broken realities due to sin. My heart longs to reach out to touch each person who has messed up so badly that they think they should be the judge, jury, and executioner of their lives due to their sin. I want to hold them. Closely. Maybe my words can bear them up? But, more importantly, I want them to be held by the hope that Christ offers not only to our souls, but our minds, our bodies, and our futures. My prayer is that this book that I write finds its way to the hurting, the confused, the shamed, the guilty,  in order that the Gospel of Christ meets them in their despair to chase the darkness from their present circumstances and hopelessness in order to set them free. I will share my story, both the broken parts and the redemptive parts. The redemptive parts are still being written, and I believe will be a rippling effect until I am dead.

Pray for me. The fear is real, y’all! Questions run wildly through my mind constantly about whether or not I am supposed to do this. However, at the end of it, I want to be like King Solomon offering praise and adoration to the LORD for fulfilling a dream and allowing him to be part of bringing God’s presence to His people (1 Kings 8).