We don't know how some days, like our purses, get so stuffed, so overwhelming, so messy, so unorganized, so unplanned, so not how we want them to look. But their contents snatches our breath at the overflowing and unmanageable, exhausting and exasperating. Sighs surface and heads bow as heavy hands relinquish to a draining heart.
Days that turn us inside out and upside down, we just can't carry them anymore; the baggage consumes us. The dump we cling to, the chaotic clutter, has to be dumped to find what we are searching for. We have to refuse the refuse that deposits in the middle of our days, the work spaces, the heart crevasses. Because there is a consumption that occurs from the inside out. It is the separated soul suffocated in the abyss.
There I was on the highway trying to drive to St. Louis while searching through my purse for the item I was certain I possessed. It must have settled deep down in my purse, unable to be seen or felt. And deep down don't my frustrations come because I know somewhere I have what I just can't seem to muster for that day. Frustration brought me to the place of surrender, the final straw, the clearing, the unloading, the beginning again. Fiercely shaking my purse, I dumped all its intentionally, well-packed, crucial contents.
Contents laid bare on the seat quickly quieted my rage as it supplied my lost item. And when I am undone by life and wander in my forfeit of peace, when my mis-placed harmony falls between the cracks, can I just abandon the baggage and count all this that entrenches me as loss and lay my soul bare before the seat of the One who calms the fear and anchors my soul?
Speeding 70 miles per hour down highway 70, I was blindsided by a truckload of truth. In my full-speed pursuit of God and His abundant life, the contents of my life become like my loaded purse.
This life overloaded with its contents to help in my pursuit of God has actually weighed down my pursuit. For my life found within Him, dissolves all of me and reveals His truth, throws off all of my importance and knows His. Dumps all my pursuing importance for a life that knows to rest in Him, completely within the life He offers.
7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. Philippians 3:7-8
This is the new life, highway truth: this abundant life I seek is not a pursuit OF God but rather IN God. It is one of pursuing God with the baggage I carry, for He doesn't live outside of who I am. My soul continues to seek hard after Him because my life is already and only found IN Him. This desperate need, crave, desire wasn't because I didn't have Him; I already did. It was because
He pursues me.
12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Philippians 3: 12
But the contents of my life, my purse, my pursuing need to be dumped to get to the heart of the matter, to find the contents I really need to carry.
In finding the desires of my heart and in a search for abundant life in Him, will I position myself to continue to seek with Him or speed blindly after Him all the while He is lost in the cracks of my pursuing. One is a continued trust that He actively leads this race we run together knowing He is the one winner already, and the other is a continual, furious chase after a trophy whose benefits I apparently know not.
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Days that turn us inside out and upside down, we just can't carry them anymore; the baggage consumes us. The dump we cling to, the chaotic clutter, has to be dumped to find what we are searching for. We have to refuse the refuse that deposits in the middle of our days, the work spaces, the heart crevasses. Because there is a consumption that occurs from the inside out. It is the separated soul suffocated in the abyss.
There I was on the highway trying to drive to St. Louis while searching through my purse for the item I was certain I possessed. It must have settled deep down in my purse, unable to be seen or felt. And deep down don't my frustrations come because I know somewhere I have what I just can't seem to muster for that day. Frustration brought me to the place of surrender, the final straw, the clearing, the unloading, the beginning again. Fiercely shaking my purse, I dumped all its intentionally, well-packed, crucial contents.
Contents laid bare on the seat quickly quieted my rage as it supplied my lost item. And when I am undone by life and wander in my forfeit of peace, when my mis-placed harmony falls between the cracks, can I just abandon the baggage and count all this that entrenches me as loss and lay my soul bare before the seat of the One who calms the fear and anchors my soul?
Speeding 70 miles per hour down highway 70, I was blindsided by a truckload of truth. In my full-speed pursuit of God and His abundant life, the contents of my life become like my loaded purse.
This life overloaded with its contents to help in my pursuit of God has actually weighed down my pursuit. For my life found within Him, dissolves all of me and reveals His truth, throws off all of my importance and knows His. Dumps all my pursuing importance for a life that knows to rest in Him, completely within the life He offers.
7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. Philippians 3:7-8
This is the new life, highway truth: this abundant life I seek is not a pursuit OF God but rather IN God. It is one of pursuing God with the baggage I carry, for He doesn't live outside of who I am. My soul continues to seek hard after Him because my life is already and only found IN Him. This desperate need, crave, desire wasn't because I didn't have Him; I already did. It was because
He pursues me.
12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Philippians 3: 12But the contents of my life, my purse, my pursuing need to be dumped to get to the heart of the matter, to find the contents I really need to carry.
In finding the desires of my heart and in a search for abundant life in Him, will I position myself to continue to seek with Him or speed blindly after Him all the while He is lost in the cracks of my pursuing. One is a continued trust that He actively leads this race we run together knowing He is the one winner already, and the other is a continual, furious chase after a trophy whose benefits I apparently know not.
Because in this PURSUIT with JESUS, HE IS NOT AN
ACCESSORY THAT CARRIES OUR NEEDS. HE IS THE NECESSARY THAT HOLDS US THROUGH OUR LIVES'S BAGGAGE.
ACCESSORY THAT CARRIES OUR NEEDS. HE IS THE NECESSARY THAT HOLDS US THROUGH OUR LIVES'S BAGGAGE.
IS Jesus an accessory to your life? Or the necessary?
Next blog:
So the question becomes:
What are the key contents to place back into purse=ing God?
So the question becomes:
What are the key contents to place back into purse=ing God?
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