Where I live, we don't get snow very often. We may get a day or two...it shuts down the city, then we thaw and life goes on. We had a VERY strange TWO WEEKS of snow. It started to snow the first Sunday during 8am service at church. The next Wednesday night was cancelled due to snow and ice, the next Sunday was moved to another location we dared not to venture toward, and Christmas Eve was CANCELLED.
The Arctic Blast 2008 began a period of Arctic Blast in my heart. I longed for fellowship with my church family and that iron sharpening iron that occurs with each meeting. But I can't blame it all on the snow or lack of church, because my walk with the Lord lacks depth if I only rely on fellowship and outside teaching to fill my soul. But for some reason, my flesh got the best of me and I just wasn't in the Word. I can't tell you what I did, but I can tell you what I didn't do...I wasn't prayerful and I was absent from the Word. And because of His goodness, the Lord let me trail off, but not too far and just in time, He called me to His arms.
I won't go into specifics, but let's just say that the enemy had a field day with me. My usual routines of running, study, prayer, shuttling of kids and going to the gym were reduced in such a way that I was pretty much paralyzed. I shoveled snow for exercise which was a great work out and quite satisfying but a total pain in the lower back. As I shoveled the snow, I thought of moving the snow off the walk as a way of removing obstacles between me and those around me...to make fellowship and relationship easier. It parallels how I feel about the relationship with my parents...which has helped me understand the spirit of adoption as a child in God's family...but that's another topic. But honestly, the snow on the walk between me and them requires a shovel much bigger than I can handle...yes, you could say a God sized one. And that's the problem. God can use that shovel without me, but He wants me to be part of the process...perhaps you could even say He "needs" me to help...by opening my heart and allowing Him to plow through the hardness in my heart towards the people who gave me life. Every visit I try to go at it with my puny shovel...and of course I start somewhere in the middle and blame them that I can't get closer to their side...when really I haven't shoveled out the snow built up around my side yet.
So where did all this come from and where is it leading. This is my devotion for January 2nd as found in "Each New Day" by Corrie Ten Boom:
Fresh Starts: May I give you something to do for the new year? Go alone before the Lord, and together with Him, examine yourself. Do you know that you are forgiven? Have you forgiven others? When you do that, God will give you a victorious new year. "You have on the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator." Colossians 3:10
Lord Jesus, at the start of this new year, we ask for a fresh beginning. Wipe our sins away with your precious blood. Cleanse our hearts of bitterness toward others. Help us to live each new day in close communion with You, our True and Faithful Guide.
After reading this my mind began to race back to my study on the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hoshannah and Yom Kippur. Rosh Hoshannah is the Jewish new year. It is a time to look back at the mistakes one has made in the past year and to look forward to how to do it right in the new one. The 10 days between RH and Yom Kippur are called the days of awe. They were days set aside to make things right with those who you wronged in the year before and to make amends. Then, Yom Kippur or the "day of atonement" was when the Jews asked God to forgive their sins and be forgiven for all their failures of the previous year. Because Jesus is my atoning sacrifice, I have eternal forgiveness...but I also have access to daily, hourly or minute by minute to be made new. How? By living according to my new nature which I received when I died to my flesh and was born again in the Spirit of God through accepting Jesus' death as payment for my sins. And in this new nature, I am constantly renewed as I seek to know my Creator daily through His Word, which is also Christ Jesus.
Praise God. PRAISE GOD for Your Son JESUS! I am so thankful that He doesn't just let me steep in my sins for a year at a time because I would be toast before sundown day one! But even more so, I am so thankful that He allows me to go through just enough arctic times, to make me see and feel the greatness of the SON!
And Praise God that once again He has shown me the work that I need to do to shovel out the bitterness that has created an arctic relationship with my parents. Don't get me wrong, I'm not bitter for specific things exactly...well, maybe a few...but mostly I think it is a sense of loss for the life I wish I'd had with my family had Christ been our center. That is where the spirit of adoption comes in for me...because of my position in Christ, I am adopted as a child of God. And as His child, I have a new family made up of believers that I will spend eternity with and whom I love in a way I don't have with my biological family. And that I wish I did. See what I mean about needing a God sized shovel. That only comes with prayer...for I battle not against flesh and blood...
Jesus, give me a new beginning. Wipe away my sins with your blood once more and cleanse me from the bitterness in my heart toward my family. I know it's there...right where I've left it all these years. I know the victory is Yours as You have heard my prayer. Amen.
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