Hello All,
I'll be headed to Teen Challenge in just a little bit and still have to cook and get ready, etc., but I wanted to find a spare moment this morning to do a little reflecting. I was reading in the past week on the website Velvet Ashes (velvetashes.com) about the initiative to focus on just one word in the coming year rather than making resolutions. I've never really been one to make resolutions because I know myself too well and am too realistic. But, in thinking about this concept of one word, I reflected on what words would describe this past year of 2014. I also live with this idea of one word and have, rather unconsciously, since moving here, but the one word is really one passage of scripture that I ask God for to give me direction and a purpose and a guide for what to expect for the future. For the first three years of living here, my guiding passage of scripture was Isaiah 37:30-32:
"This will be the sign for you, O Hezekiah: "This year you will eat what grows by itself, and the second year what springs from that. But in the third year sow and reap, plant vineyards and eat their fruit. Once more a remnant of the house of Judah will take root below and bear fruit above. For out of Jerusalem will come a remnant, and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.
That passage sustained me for three years. God gave me plenty of other rhema words for specific situations, but these verses were a reoccurring anchor. It was what God prophesied over my life, and its truth was revealed with each passing year. My first year in Honduras, I worked in areas that were already sown by Alvin and Nelly and was just trying to find my niche. The second year, I worked with seeds already sown by others in 21 de Octubre, and now 21 de Octubre, the building, is being used for adolescent girls and what was the institution of 21 de Octubre now doesn't exist after Honduras' IHNFA (Child Services Department) was abolished. But, in my third year of living here, God gave me the privilege of being the one planting in the lives of my children and to a certain point, reaping. It was in the third year that my weary prayers for Raúl were finally answered, and he renewed his commitment and relationship with Jesus and began to take root once again in his Christian life. I knew because of this verse to hold on for that breakthrough until the third year, without giving up on him. I also knew because of this verse that I would only be left with a remnant of children, a band of survivors. After having up to 9 in Teen Challenge, I am left with that small remnant, and to be honest, there are days where I wonder if it may turn out to be even smaller when the dust settles.
This year, my passage was Isaiah 27:2-6:
In that day-- "Sing about a fruitful vineyard: I, the Lord, watch over it; I water it continually. I guard it day and night so that no one may harm it. I am not angry. If only there were briers and thorns confronting me! I would march against them in battle; I would set them all on fire. Or else let them come to me for refuge; let them make peace with me." In days to come Jacob will take root, Israel will bud and blossom and fill all the world with fruit.
Every time I would pray about my spiritual life and relationship with Raúl and what God was doing when things seemed just exhausting or hopeless, God brought me back to this verse. And He showed me on more than one occasion a massive tree with a thick trunk, the branches were ablaze, burning away all the deadwood that wasn't giving forth fruit, to expose new green growth beneath. Meanwhile, the roots tunneled forward and deeper, curling into the depths of the soil with more and more shoots multiplying. I was the branches, and Raúl was the roots. And, it's been an accurate picture because a good word to describe this year would be prune. I look back on this year, and I see just how God has restored me, purified me, and strengthened me through placing me in tests and situations to confront past fears, to pick myself up to receive healing, and to take a stand against the darkness. I know I say it every year (but every year it's true)--this has been the hardest year of my life. I think that's how it's supposed to be, so I keep growing and maturing, but it is painful! On numerous occasions this year, I have asked God, moaning in small-child agony, "How much longer? How much more pain do I have to go through?" This was my cry even just last night after spending a day crying nonstop, just wanting a relief, a hope. How much longer? The thing about being pruned is that it's not an action the self can do. It's a condition induced by someone else. The tree cannot move to escape the flame. It is anchored by the roots. It cannot do anything to make the process go by faster. It just remains still and lets itself burn. I am, perhaps, not a very good tree because I've struggled with letting God burn me to life and have wanted and tried to speed up the process or move the roots to escape the pain. But, no one said purification was easy or pain-free, but it is necessary.
I look back at this year and realize that God gave me irreplaceable opportunities to re-face demons that had defeated me before, knowing that our rematch would result in victory, strengthening my faith. I have had to make numerous decisions of sacrifice this year laying my deepest heart's desires at the feet of Jesus and leaving others' judgments of me in His capable hands. I've had to learn (and keep learning) to keep silent and let God defend me instead of trying to defend myself and that my greatest weapon oftentimes is actually REST. Yes, rest. No one ever thinks about going to battle armed only with rest, but the Kingdom of God is always backwards. 2 Chronicles 20 gives us a prime example of how joy and worship can deliver victories, and Jesus showed us the way when he slept on the boat in the middle of the violent storm. We've had major battles as a family this year. We confronted issues that I thought we'd never get out of. But, God's faithfulness has been endless, and His mercy has sustained us, making me understand just what is possible if we only believe and receive instead of striving. (I'm still not great at it.)
In the past couple of months, I have been praying for a new word, for a heads-up about what is coming and how much longer this pruning process is going to last. I can't say for sure whether these words are what God intends to be in place for the entirety of this coming year or if it perhaps even applies for years to come, but they do give me hope even if I don't have a set finish line for this marathon or a date of relief.
Habakkuk 2:2-3
Then the Lord replied: "Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it. For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.
Ezekiel 12:21-23, 28
The word of the Lord came to me: "Son of man, what is this proverb you have in the land of Israel: 'The days go by and every vision comes to nothing'? Say to them, "This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am going to put an end to this proverb, and they will no longer quote it in Israel.' Say to them, "The days are near when every vision will be fulfilled. . . . Therefore say to them, 'This is what the Sovereign Lord says: None of my words will be delayed any longer; whatever I say will be fulfilled, declares the Sovereign Lord.'"
Thus, I enter this new year holding onto these words and words prophesied over me in 2014. I choose to keep delighting in Jesus, trusting that He will, in His time, give me the desires of my heart. There are days when it's incredibly difficult. I see pictures of friends' weddings and engagements, announcements about births and new homes bought, nice cars purchased and dream jobs acquired. I look at my reality as a single mom without a "real job" with children that sometimes have attitudes that make me cry and want to hop on a plane in escape. I ponder the independence lost since I can't just leave my former drug addict sons at home by themselves all the time, which means I can't just pick up and go out with my boyfriend whenever I want. (And, trust me when I say there is absolutely no one lining up at my door wanting to give me an evening of relief.) I examine our little rented house on the hill and sigh about my ever-dirty car that had such nice interior before kids, that has a trunk that fills with water when it rains, whose door handle has broken now 10 times. I think about how much longer it'll be before God releases me to get married, or whenever the little girls from church come sit in my lap, think about the little girl I'd like to have (in the midst of all these boys!). And in moments of doubt, I wonder if He's forgotten my heart's desires. But, when I put my eyes on Jesus, when I ponder the sacrifice He made--how He left Love itself, streets of gold, choirs of angels, and the land of perfection to become a poor, unattractive, homeless, adopted carpenter, seemingly illegitimately born to die a violent, undeserved death--my heart burns with passion again. My eyes fill with tears and my mind with the deep belief that all of this is worth it because He is so worth it. He never stops being worthy no matter the cost. He is the prize. He is the reward. He is the Lover of My Soul. There is no other.
So, we start 2015. And, I let the words of a spontaneous worship song by Bethel Music be the song of my weary, still burning, still-ablaze-from-pruning heart...
Don't give up the fight. Don't grow weary. He will come like the rain. Don't grow weary. If you walk, you will not faint. He will come like the rain. He will come like the rain. Won't You come? Won't You come? Won't You come like the rain?
All my love and blessings for a new year full of new miracles,
Sarah
