Community Is a Must!

I am so thankful for community...especially in seasons of my walk with God like I am in now.  Over the past couple of days, as I have questioned, been angry, been anxious, etc. I have received so many different forms of encouragement from my husband and friends.  I've been reminded of God's character, His promises, His Word.  I've been reminded of who the Enemy is and how dead set he is on making sure I feel like an orphan who has been abandoned by God.  I've been gently pointed toward my self-righteousness, ingratitude, and unbelief.  I've been reminded of the Gospel....the Good News.

I still have a lot of questions, and I still hesitate to trust God because I still fear His will for my life.  I fear suffering.  I fear grief.  And as I was reminded last night by some dear women in my community, when I fear I immediately seek control.  When I fear I lose sight of gifts and blessings God has given me, which I don't even come close to deserving.  And, God is big enough for my fear, my ingratitude, my doubts, and my anger.  Jesus died for all of that, and God can handle it.  Because I am struggling, I can rest in knowing that He is at work.  If I had all of these doubts, fears and feelings of anger but didn't care to come to some resolution with God...then clearly I would not be in relationship with him.  The doubt and questioning is evidence that He is pursuing me....and I don't want to run....even though I'm scared.

Here's a couple of snippets from a book I am reading with some friends....the book is called One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp.  It's about choosing gratitude.  I read a little bit this morning, and it stirred my heart.  I'm not going to say I had some divine conclusion to all my messiness...but it definitely stirred my heart.

"Why am I a habitual reductionist?  Why do I reduce God in this moment to mere annoying frustration?  Why do I reduce The Greatest to the lesser instead of seeing the lesser, this mess, as reflecting The Greatest?  I have to learn how to see, to look through to the Largeness behind all the smallness.  Isn't He here?"(pg. 128)

"In this wilderness, I keep circling back to this:  I'm blind to joy's well every time I really don't want it.  The well is always there.  And I choose not to see it.  Don't I really want joy?  Don't I really want the fullest life?  For all my yearning for joy, longing for joy, begging for joy--is the bald truth that I prefer the empty dark?  Prefer drama?  Why do I lunge for control instead of joy?  Is it somehow more perversely satisfying to flex control's muscle?  Ah--power--like Satan....If the startling truth is that I don't really want joy, there's a far worse truth.  If I am rejecting the joy that is hidden somewhere deep in this moment--am I not ultimately rejecting God?  Whenever I am blind to joy's well, isn't it because I don't believe in God's care?  That God cares enough about me to always offer me joy's water, wherever I am , regardless of circumstance.  But if I don't believe God cares, if I don't want or seek the joy He definitely offers somewhere in this moment--I don't want God." (pg. 130)