Live Beautifully

Years ago I found myself surrounded by darkness.  I knew Jesus, but I was not living victoriously.  I was surviving at best. I felt defeated and questioned whether or not I even trusted God.  I was angry at Him. My heart had been smashed to pieces, and I had so many questions.  After years of struggling with infertility, I had finally become pregnant only to lose that baby.  And when it happened again, it was just too much.  I was hopeless, and I felt all alone. I was sure I had done something incredibly wrong. But in the middle of that darkness and in the midst of my loss, I found something precious; I gained something irreplaceable. I discovered this precious truth that began to heal my broken heart.

God’s Word is alive.  It is working constantly.  It has power we can’t even begin to understand or explain.  It is the very breath of God blowing like fresh wind into our very dry lives.

The prophet Isaiah talks about “treasures of darkness, hidden riches of secret places.” (Isaiah 45:3) This love for God’s Word was my treasure buried in that dark season I walked through hand in hand with Jesus.  In my struggle to find the words to pray to God, afraid He would not be able to handle my long list of ‘why’s and ‘how long’s, I learned that He welcomes all questions, and there is pretty much nothing He can’t handle.  Slowly, and over time, Jesus healed my heart completely and gave me purpose and a passion for His Word, along with a strange new boldness to share the story He has written for my life.  All of the parts- the good parts, the messy parts, and the downright ugly parts that led me back to Him.

Since that time, God has blessed us with two beautiful children who share a birthday and occupy a good chunk of my heart.  The journey to parenthood was a difficult one, but it was in that long treacherous hike that I really got to know my Savior and began to understand what walking with Him really meant. A transformation took place, and it seemed like the better I saw Jesus, the better I saw myself. The rest of Isaiah 45:3 says this: “And I will give you treasures hidden in the darkness— secret riches. I will do this so you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, the one who calls you by name.”

The whole point of the struggle, sometimes, is so that we may know that He is the God who calls us by name.

My journey with Jesus has looked very different depending on the season and depending on where He’s leading.  When I agreed to hand over my entire heart to Jesus, it meant that wherever He was going, I was going, too.  It meant that every part of my life was His.

I’ve walked with Jesus slowly, daily.

I’ve skipped along beside Him, beaming with joy and overflowing with gratitude.

I’ve crawled in the dust behind Him, desperate and dirty.

I’ve sprinted, trying to keep up.

I’ve run in the opposite direction, convinced I could hide from Him only to find that I couldn’t.

I’ve climbed mountains with Jesus that I didn’t think I could climb.

I’ve fallen flat on my face too many times to count.

I’ve sat in a boat full of holes caused by my shaky faith, wondering if I’d sink to the bottom.

I’ve watched from within the same boat as Jesus calmed the storm and flooded my soul with His peace.

I’ve asked questions. I’ve gotten it all wrong. I’ve messed up big.

I’ve spent precious time at His feet, wondering how He could love me this much.

No matter how my walk with Jesus looks, one thing remains the same.  He has never ever left me, and I trust He never will.  Trust is necessary for obedience.  You can’t have one without the other.  In fact, the word ‘obedience’ quite honestly makes me cringe.  It feels heavy, weighted, like punishment and condemnation are going to fall down on me as soon as I mess up.  Because I am going to mess up.  I am.

But following Jesus means there is no condemnation, because He took all of my sins upon Himself.  He already paid my debt on the cross and the curse of death and sin was forever reversed when Jesus rose from the grave three days later.  This is good news!  This means it is possible to live in victory, because Jesus already won the battle!  It means when I confess that I’ve mess up again, He is faithful to forgive me.  In Jesus, I have access to every eternal blessing, not because I have been obedient, but because He was. So obedience is just my response to His great love.  Obedience is a natural overflow of understanding how much Jesus loves me.

Obedience is my response to the gospel- the really, really good news.

Recently, I walked with Jesus through something I was convinced would turn out differently.  My version had a happy ending, not a painful one.   But obedience does not mean that everything will always turn out the way I expect.  Expectations get in the way.  They trip me up.  Expecting something in return for obedience means the motive of my heart is wrong.  I can trust Jesus, because He is trustworthy and obedience is what He calls me to.  Trusting is the faith part; obedience is putting that faith into action.  It’s walking even though I can’t see.  It’s continuing even when the path makes no sense and some days it just makes no sense. But each path He takes me down has purpose.  Every road leads to better knowing Him.

And because it is impossible to obey a God I do not trust, it is pretty important that I know Him.

Jesus is teaching me today about surrender.  It implies giving up after a struggle, a releasing of sorts.  The word surrender comes from the Anglo-French wordsusrendre.  The first part, sus or sous, means “an assistant,” like a sous chef.  The last part, render, has many meanings, but the one that caught my eye was this: “to represent by artistic or verbal means, as in painting.” Jesus is reminding me that I am not the artist, but the canvas.  The release of surrender involves accepting my role, and yielding to His authority. Obedience is surrender.

Before an artist can begin painting, a canvas must be prepared.  It has to be stretched really, really tight.  After the canvas is stretched on one side, it is fastened with staples to a wooden frame.  After the fastening comes more stretching. In fact, there is stretching and straining on all sides.  Then there is more fastening, because the artist needs to be sure that the canvas is firmly attached to that frame.  And after the canvas is stretched to its limit, the artist will sometimes take a hammer and pound those staples into the wood.

 

The gospel frames my thoughts, my perspective, my words, my actions.  The only frame I am fastened to is the good news of Jesus Christ.  It is why I follow Him.  It is why I trust Him.  It is why I believe His Word. And the goal of my life is to bring honor and glory to the Name of Jesus; it’s His goal for your life, too. And all of this makes obedience so much simpler. 

Surrender is handing over the brush to the Artist and allowing our lives to be stretched out, held tightly, and fastened to the frame of Jesus. 

Sometimes, it just feels like stretching. Sometimes, it can feel like there is no give.  Sometimes, the fastening is painful, the pounding unbearable.  But it is doing something. It is working toward a greater glory, a beautiful extension of the Creator Himself.  Believing that Jesus is worthy of praise and honor is one thing.  Allowing Him complete freedom to paint on the canvas of our lives is another thing entirely. Surrender means we allow Him to work even when the stretching hurts, even when the pounding of our flimsy, ordinary lives into that frame seems like it might never end.

It reminds me an awful lot of Jesus, stretched out in surrender, with nails through His hands and feet, fastened to the Cross of Salvation that now frames my entire being.

God knows that in or suffering, we get to know Him. We become like Him in the process and are prepared for the work of the Artist’s hand.  2 Corinthians 4:8-10 speaks of struggles, and I can’t help but think of stretched canvas.  “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.”

The most amazing miracle of grace is that God created a way for ordinary, imperfect lives like mine and yours to reflect and represent the life of Jesus.  That is how much He loves us!  And though this passage reveals hardships, questions, and pain, there is such richness woven throughout.

We are not crushed.

We are not in despair.

We are not abandoned.

We are not destroyed.

Living victoriously is living beautifully.  It’s allowing your life to be a place where the Artist can express Himself fully. Accept your role as the canvas and allow Him to create something beautiful with your life. Hand over the brush. Surrender to His loving hand. 

It will be worth it, because Jesus decided you were worth it.

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.  2 Corinthians 4:17-18