Originally published Thursday, 08 January 2015.
When you read this now, you should know one thing: you are pursued. It's a weekday, I know, and there is a lot to do. But what feels the most pressing--even more urgent than tasks to complete--is letting yourself recognize how desperate you are for God. And you are desperate, you know.
Can you imagine beginning each day acknowledging--and then claiming--your desperation for God? Can you imagine celebrating it. Embracing it. Jumping up and down and yelling out with joy, "I am desperate! For I am desperate for love; I am desperate for surrender; I am desperate for rest; I am desperate for hope; I am desperate for joy! I am desperate for these things because I am made to be desperate for God!"
Desperation is, really, such a good thing.
We can get things twisted up around that definition of the word desperation, especially at this time of year, a new year on the calendar, when we're invited to get our acts together and enthusiastically embrace resolutions that will usher in a fresh start.
A fresh start, yes. That's always what we want, isn't it? How can an attitude of desperation be in any way involved in one's "fresh start"?
I wonder this, as I realize I cry out for a fresh start daily, as I rise each morning to the chill of the house and leave my warm bed. As I greet my children with hugs and kisses at breakfast. As I look in my husband's eyes and seek his arms around me before we part ways for the day. Each day I am desperate to recognize the Holy Spirit's presence in me. For, in obedience, when I recognize He is in me, I am more able to claim my desperation for God. And, in effect, I am living in the freedom--the confidence--of believing in who I am, in Him.
Let us not forget what a fresh start, with God, really means.
For a fresh start is more than hope-filled resolutions scrawled on a piece of paper.
My husband, Justin, is the guy in my life who loves to make things practical. When I share with him my ideas for fresh starts, it is my personality to address the bigger picture--the vague--yet exciting--dreams I hope to realize. And he listens. And then Justin, who knows me so well, encourages me to look at the practical steps for how these dreams can be realized: What steps do I need to implement, what practices do I need to exercise, to experience the dream I have in my heart to live out?
So I talk to God about my desire for a fresh start, particularly in this season, when the New Year rolls around. And as I listen, I am reminded how the realization of any fresh start stems from my obedience to claim whom God has made me to be. One's depth of relationships with God is tied to our obedience to Him. When we are obedient in living out what God has told us is true about us--that we are loved, that we are complete in Him, that we are perfectly made--we are more able to realize our identity in Christ. And that's the kind of fresh start I am desperate for; that's the kind of fresh start that never gets old.
We are each desperate to realize--to live--the reality of our identity in Christ. In community with other believers who know us and who love us, we remember something true about our desire for a fresh start: fresh starts happen each day we exercise faith through obedience.
Fresh starts happen each moment we claim the truth of who we are, in Christ. Fresh starts happen when we claim the things we know are true but which we cannot yet see. Fresh starts happen through acknowledging the Holy Spirit who lives within us and who fills us with His strength. Fresh starts happen when we claim our desperation for God's love for us and we listen hard for His whisper to our hearts: you are mine; I am in you; let me show you, through your obedience to me, how you are to live your life specifically, uniquely, desperate for Me.
What will happen, I wonder, if we spend time each day intentionally embracing our desperate need for God? What if we spend time each day practicing obedience, practicing listening to the love song He sings each moment, practicing remembering who, in Him, in I Am, we are?
I bet these moments, piled one of top of the other, will translate to a life of surrender, of freedom, of greater faith. What do you think about this? Want to claim a fresh start, this year, moment by moment, with me? Wouldn't it be beautiful to do it together? Shall we begin thinking of ways we might, in a practical sense, exercise obedience to God, saying yes to whom He has created us to be?
SHARE
