I've created a very small gallery of the latest family photos. My nephew Conor just tested for his orange belt, so he's excited about that.

I'd like to post here a response I wrote to a reader this morning who is feeling discouraged. She responded to something I said in the faith blog. You can read it at www.jacksonsun.com/blogs on yesterday's entry (Sunday, Nov. 18).

 

I hate to hear you're in the desert, but at the same time, I'm glad to hear it, because it really is during those times that God is working something on the inside that couldn't be done any other way.

You've said it well.

I've pretty much been in a desert place for, oh, six months or more, easily.

I'm not dreaming about anything significant. I'm not feeling much like I'm getting any special revelation when I'm reading my Bible. I'm not particularly motivated to pray and worship like in times past. I just feel bone dry inside. But I'm doing it anyway, because I know that this thing is not about a feeling.

And that's when it's most difficult to stay motivated and encouraged and happy about life in general. It's also for me the hardest time to stay committed to prayer, feeling like my prayers are hitting the ceiling.

I was telling the Lord the other day, "I don't feel encouraged." And instantly I remembered that passage in scripture where it says "David encouraged himself in the Lord."

I realized that I must be looking too much for people and things going on to keep me encouraged, when what I really need to do is go to the source and drink of that living water all day long. Still it doesn't seem to be slaking my thirst.

When it really gets down to it, I'm finding that no church program, no ministry, no friendships and no free time activities have the ability to make me feel satisfied and fulfilled. It's only time with the Lord that brings that lasting grace and fulfillment.

And even in spending time with God, I'm not feeling particularly excited about much of anything at all, but I know that He's working to get me to the place where I'm not looking for a feeling but am secure in trusting in the relationship, whether I see anything happening in my life or not.

Somehow I always feel that I am always just on the cusp of great things happening in my life -- and yet they take so dog-gone long to come to pass. I'm always waiting on something, unable to enjoy the now for what it is. I can't stand that about myself.

That covers many areas, and I told a friend recently "Sometimes I feel like a prisoner of my own life" because the Lord has me hemmed in. It's so hard to explain, but somehow I know that you completely understand what I'm saying.

I read most of "Dark Night of the Soul" by St. John of the Cross a couple of years ago when I was going through hell personally. It took forever to get through that book because it was written so long ago and was hard to understand. I had to go back over paragraphs two and three times to get the gist of it sometimes.

And some of it is just way too "mystical" for me. I guess that's why he's called a mystic in Catholic circles. But there is a kernel of truth in much of what he's saying about what he called "The Dark Night," when we basically find ourselves in what seems like a black hole, where there's no life, wondering, "Where are you God?"

He's basically saying that not only is God in it, He's orchestrated it. He mentioned at one point the idea that in the darkness we feel when we're in that wilderness thing going on, God will shine a light on an area that needs to be conformed more into His will and that it's a painful place to be.

I remember reading something somewhere about how people who do the most intricate sewing have to work in the dark, with only a tiny light shining on the work that's being done. That enables them to work very carefully and to see the details so that the work can be perfected.

I think maybe that's a good word picture for how God is working in our lives when we feel like we're in the dark and can't see what's going on around us.

I swear, I went through it for two years solid, from feeling completely alone and misunderstood on the back side of a desert to then feeling like I was going through an intense refiner's fire.

I asked the Lord at one point, completely exasperated, "When are you going to take me out of this fire?" I don't remember getting any indication of a response.

I just remember one day that I woke and the burden had been lifted and that I felt like I could breathe easy again, as if that cloud of oppressive darkness had finally given up its hold.

I think that God is working something in the Body of Christ right now that is so essential and authentic that even the elect don't quite know how to handle it.

It's as if He's stripping us of everything that makes us feel fulfilled and comfortable about our relationship with God and how we approach Him, whether that's in a church setting or all alone in quiet devotional time.

Personally, many of my casual friendships with Christians who are not in a mentoring role have been stripped away. I started noticing it a couple of years ago, that people started dropping out of my life -- people with whom I'd spent many hours praying, worshipping, discussing my personal life, enjoying fellowship.

I think that God has been stripping away a whole bunch of stuff in an effort to help me to stay completely focused on Him and for me to find out what really is most important to me.

I still do stuff with people, but not like before. Now I'm the one who is in more of a mentoring role to others, rather than having a bunch of friends to just hang out with who are on the same level spiritually.

It can be a really lonely place. I'm learning how to take up my cross and follow, knowing what God has promised to me, knowing that the path on which I carry my cross leads me nowhere but death to self in pretty much every area of my life.

 

I need a jumpstart worship-wise. I found these videos of Rick Pino on YouTube. He was leading worship at a conference I went to in Florida in April, and it was an awesome experience, literally. The awe of God was in that place. Here are a couple of examples of the kind of worship I need right now.

 

 

No matter how much you seem to get done, there's always so much left to do. It never ends. There's always something that needs to be completed, researched, discussed, planned, brainstormed, practiced, figured out, studied. It can be exhausting.

I had a friend who used to say "Come on. Let's go. You can sleep when you're dead." And I lived by that motto for years, rushing from here to there, always striving, always on top of everything, always in hyperspeed, making sure I never dropped the ball in any area for any reason (I am a good juggler -- I learned how to do it while working a Opryland in Doo-Wah-Diddy-City).

I just can't live that way anymore. In a world where you're only as good as what you accomplished yesterday -- or even today -- I'm unwilling to constantly be striving to be or do something. I think I've finally come to that place of rest where I'm recognizing that God really doesn't love me just because of what I do for Him or how much time I choose to spend seeking Him but that He just loves me.

This idea is hard for me to understand, that He would want to spend time with somebody like me, that He would create me to be His own, that I would ever be on His mind for any reason.

I tell myself from time to time that if the Lord didn't believe in me -- or if He was willing to give up on me -- then He would never have made me in the first place. He didn't allow me to be born just to fail.

I have to remind myself of this -- that His grace really is sufficient and that I don't have to be as perfect as I require of myself to still have His love and constant care.

Hard to believe, but it must be true, because those "great and precious promises" found in His word are for me, too.