Passage: James 4
Ok so I am really struggling this week and the first verse of this chapter hit me right between the eye. It’s hit me so hard that it has been a war within me to write this evening.
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?~ James 4:1
I honestly don’t know where to start or even what to say. There is a fight within me. God demands my all, everything, even the things I value so much that I was too proud to admit I was still hurt about.
People wonder why crazy ‘God things’ happen to my husband and I and why we share so openly. Maybe the answer is in the question. But it’s draining. I can’t even tell you how drained I am right now. I want to do His will but than actually doing it requires so much of me. God likes to use us in ways that seem impossible to us and to others around us because that’s God’s way of showing Himself through us.
You might say, “Why isn’t it amazing to be used by God?” Sure maybe to some everything looks great on the outside but most would have no idea the hurts and the emotional roller coaster that some of our ‘callings’ or ‘faith walks’ have caused us. Take our family photo for example. Two parents and a cute little girl, lovely curls and big gorgeous hazel eyes. Few know that when I see our family photo these words come to mind: open adoption, depression, grief, infertility, worry, anxiety, birth mom, drama, crying, unanswered questions. But remove all that junk and you have GOD and the miracle HE did in our lives to bring us all together. But not before we SUFFERED because it seemed impossible!!!
My struggle this week is the ‘WHY’? Why does God want to make it so ‘hard’ for us and how does God intend for this to make me draw nearer to Him? I think that the first step is when I admit right here and now that I have been proud in the past in saying that I’m over it. I am not over it. I am content with what God has done in our lives, in fact more than content, I am truly blessed and thankful. But I just learned that being content and hurt are two different things. I am content about the ‘now’ but I’m left feeling hurt about the ‘how’. So I humbly say that I am mad and sad. I am thankful and content but mad/sad about how hard it is sometimes and I can’t keep proudly try to hide it.
“God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”
7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. ~James 4
I am now going to go to bed and draw nearer to Him with my mad and sad self but also thank Him for all that He has done despite the ‘how’. I think I can be thankful and grieve, mourn and wail all in one prayer. David did it all through the Psalms so tonight I pray my own ‘Psalm’. But I’m also convicted to faithfully pray that God would help me to continue know the good I ought to do. Even if it’s way bigger than me. He has shown me miracles in the past and I know He is before me now.
17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.~James 4
in the clay,
Chantal Dube