Learning

I just happened to be the one that answered the phone. That’s how I ended up with an angry lady yelling at me on Monday. She had jumped to a conclusion (that we wouldn’t hire her) and no amount of telling her she could be hired would sway her. Each time she questioned why she wasn’t hired, she would interrupt me just a few words into the answer with a new conclusion (a new wrong conclusion that supported her old wrong conclusion) that she had come up with based on just those few words.

I had a three hour drive home that evening to consider the lesson that woman had taught me.

If I’m forever drawing conclusions, then I’m probably not learning.

When I go to God seeking answers, I wonder how often He’s in mid-lesson for me when I draw my conclusion that supports what I’m already thinking. So basically, I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t want to jump to conclusions.

It’s tempting to come up with a solid answer, because it would ease this helpless, and hopeless feeling. It’s hard to describe feeling hopeless without people thinking you’re unsaved. So getting this out right is unlikely. But here’s what I can tell you, and I can only hope it makes sense.

Sunday, sitting at the piano feeling broken, I came to a full realization that I am hopelessly lost without God. Even in my salvation, without God working in the day to day events in my life, I’m hopelessly lost and utterly helpless. Trying to do good on my own just meets with failure. My salvation; who I am today, any good trait you see in me is only by His grace and more than that, it’s only by His willingness to overcome me. I’m the flaw in His plans for my life. I’ve had God show me this chasm before, the chasm between my wretchedness and His goodness, but it’s easy and comforting to shove that memory to the back of your mind. So He showed me again.

In the posts on the gift of healing, I said the right words. And I thought I meant them. But I didn’t, at least not as He would have me to mean them.

I said I didn’t need to see to believe, but expect to see because I believe. That’s not true. I thought it was, but it wasn’t. I need to see to help me believe. I need to see. I want to see. I'd love for Him to write on walls, send angelic messengers, or have people wake from their graves in the cemetery and flip a city upside down. Anything, anything that would erase the notion that I really am just walking around with an invisible friend. Even if you're convinced your invisible friend is there, you always wish He weren't invisible. It's as simple as that.

And worst of all, I said I hoped it wasn’t my fault I didn’t see signs and wonders. In my heart I had already declared it wasn’t my fault, it was Gods. And so God gave me a perfect opportunity to use my alleged faith, and I failed. God put me in one of the easiest positions possible, He told me to lay hands on my nieces shoulder (she has a abnormal bone growth there) and I didn’t. I didn’t. Those words probably don’t echo for you when you read them, but they’ve been reverberating in my ears and in my heart for the last 3 days.

People have often jokingly say they were surprised when God answered their prayer and that they guess they shouldn’t have been. I think that statement defines a problem many of us have and that I in particular failed in. You think you have faith, until God does something and you realize you didn’t really believe He’d do it.

It’s hard not to draw a conclusion from all this right now. This helpless, hopeless feeling is far from comfortable. But it has me reaching out for my only help, and my only hope.


God, please don’t give up on me. I confess I’m foolish and stubborn beyond compare and I’m sorry. I feel helpless to change it without Your help. Please, work Your will in my life, despite me and use me, despite me. I came to You before in arrogance, and I was wrong. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I hate that, of all things, I failed to reverence You in my quest for more of You.
I still want more of You Lord, now, even more than before. I’ve liberally thought of You as a friend for some time, but now I have a stronger sense of You as a Savior, as my Savior. I needed to feel that. My foolish demands for signs and wonders have changed now. Father, I am weak, so I beg You to fill me with Your strength. I’m faithless, so I beg You to fill me with faith, and a knowledge of Your faithfulness. And Lord, I’m hopeless, help me to hope in You. I still seek Your gifts, for I believe the desire itself comes from You. But I pray You’ll help me to seek them humbly, and then one day use them boldly.
I ask these specific things Lord, not so that my days might become easier. But so that I might be a vessel that brings honor to Your name. I fear I have failed to do that, and I know I will never bring You honor on my own.
Search me, O God and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts, see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.
In the name of Jesus Christ Your perfect Son, I, Your imperfect child come to You.
Amen.