The Promised Land Ain't Easy

I've been mulling over this church thing, and over this marriage thing...I've wanted both for a long time.

I wanted this church for a long time, and now it's here, and I'm still struggling. I tried to get into the auditorium today just to sit and be still, and the doors were locked. I went back to the old building, too, so that maybe I could find that quiet place I was seeking, and it, too, was locked. I feel like my church isn't mine, perhaps...I need someone with keys to let me into everyplace, and that's a change. Don't get me wrong, people...It's beautiful. It's God's house, one that He built, and I do love it. I love its grandeur...The Lord deserves all that and more. But I struggle anyways, just in my human-ness, with the newness of it.

I wanted this marriage for a long time, too...I invested in a relationship, and now I got the very thing I wanted, and again I struggle. Not with the choice, whether it was the right thing...I'm struggling with me, my own heart. My selfish flesh doesn't want to conform, doesn't want to submit, doesn't want to be told anything other than its own opinion. And now, every day, that is challenged and I am forced to be molded. Either that or live miserably.

I feel like those Israelites that didn't want to live in the Promised Land. I kind of understand why they didn't go in. It was a change, one fraught with opposition. I'm trying to get my heart around it, that the Lord has great things planned for His people if they'll go all the way with Him. And so I'll try not to fight this building, try not to complain about it and make it more difficult than it is, I'll minister in it and take ownership...And my prayer is that God will make it part of my heart. Ironically, I hope that I endure hardship in this new building, and that I weep before God there. I hope that I cleave to this house the Lord built...Not the building, per se, but to the knowledge that He is just as much in this building as He was in the last.

And as for marriage, I'm in it for the long haul. I know it'll never be a breeze...I married a stubborn one just like me. God obviously has a sense of humor...I've met my perfect match.

I see the Lord stripping me of every little thing. I see Him chiseling away at me...At my pride, at my insecurity, at all of the things that I control. He's getting the "me" out of everything, and I must say, it's pretty painful. In the end I hope that I'll be a vessel of the shape and size and capacity that He wants me to be.