Wrestling With God

Deserts of pain, of regret, and loss, often this is where we find ourselves in a wrestling match with God, desperate to understand, afraid to keep walking. This is the place we must decide whether or not to continue living behind a wall or to step out into our calling. We can't remain in our calling and still be barricaded in the comfort of our fortresses so we can't feel the pain when it comes, or endure the storms that will rise. Here is where we must wrestle over the gates, we must hold them fast or throw them wide and step into the place we belong.

Out of our biggest discomfort is where our calling and the world's need will meet. It's scary, it's uncomfortable to leave the familiar and follow God's call. It's risky; It can be painful, it requires us coming face to face with the things we want to hide and letting the world see it and then pointing to God. This place makes us come face to face with the scars and the things that have held us in bondage. It requires us to sacrifice everything that is keeping us from God's call, to lay down anything that drives a wedge between Him and us, everything that keeps us sitting on the bench satisfied with the familiar and sitting them at the foot of the cross. Because you know what? Someone is waiting for you to obey and step into your calling because they need what you have. They need you! But we spend so much time wrestling with God, saying I'm not good enough, I'm scared, I can't do that, He didn't ask if you were qualified, He asked for you.

What is holding you in bondage? Is it words that someone spoke over you? Words that declared you "worthless" or "insignificant"? Is it something you don't like about yourself? The way you look? The way you sound? Have these things become shackles keeping you in your fortress? Or maybe its the fear of messing up. Of looking like a fool, or worse yet making Him look bad. Is it that you don't feel qualified? Maybe you tried, and it didn't go the way you'd hoped, and now you're afraid to try again. And so you find yourself pitching your tent in the wasteland, content to let others — content to live out of this broken place, shackled by fear and regret and wrestling with God.

I'm not good enough. Who I am I to go? What qualifies me? What gives me the right? I don't have the words. I don't know what to say. God, I don't speak well. Why would they listen to me? God, have you seen me lately? I don't even have a slingshot and some stones. I'm nobody. It all kind of boils down to I'm not significant enough for you to use... I'm not good enough. The bible is stuffed full of people who weren't good enough, but He used them anyway.

To follow God, to step into our calling requires we step out of all that is familiar and comfortable. Where He wants to take you, the boat doesn't go. So you have to get out and leave everything that is holding you back. God doesn't call us to be comfortable, He calls us out onto the water, into the wastelands, into the risky, hard places so that we can grow. So that we have no choice but to abandon the boat, abandon others expectations, It's here that we throw away the weight of what others will say, what others will think. It doesn't matter! It doesn't matter because you aren't following them. We've got to walk through the wasteland so that some things we've allowed to grow and take over in our lives will wither beneath the heat.

We can let fear shackle us to the familiar, like a ball and chain keeping us from our purpose. We can stay in a place we've gotten so used to, or we can let Him break those chains and let them fall away. You hold the key, your God is a chain breaker, and He is ready and willing to break those chains. Stop wrestling with God and let Him breakthrough them, you do not have to stay in this dry season. We can choose, to serve comfort, or to serve our King. We can take everything that we've claimed as the truth about us, we can take every reason that we hold up as an explanation of why He can't use us and nail to the cross. Those things are not who you are; those things are keeping you from being who you were made to be. Perhaps this is the most beautiful offering we can give... stripping away the things that we have claimed, the things that have prevented us from flinging ourselves into His waiting arms and nailing them to Calvary.

No name that has been spoken over you has any power because His name is bigger. No issue, no impediment, no fear can overshadow what He is going to do through you.

God, I am not good enough, but you are glorified in my weakness, so I am coming. I am following anyway. I don't want to sit in the boat when you are out on the water. I don't want to serve comfort when you are calling me to the wasteland. I don't want to live behind the walls I've built. I don't want to live in fear anymore, I want you.

God doesn't call the equipped. He doesn't bring in the qualified- He provides for the ones He calls. If we were came equipped for our purpose, then we wouldn't need Him. We could do it in our own power. Your authority doesn't come from you, it comes from the one your with. If God can use a donkey what makes you think He can't use you? (Numbers 22:21-39) Donkeys aren't even supposed to talk. If God can use a rock for Jacob, and bush for Moses what makes you so unusable?

When we first started doing Coffee At Rosevine Cottage, I literally wanted to swallow my tongue. I HATE talking; seriously if you get me to answer the phone, it is a miracle. I don't like being in the spotlight so doing videos is so far outside my comfort zone. The whole month leading up to our first episode I wrestled with God over them, Blogging, that was my comfort zone, I can sit and write behind the safety of my laptop with my coffee and red lipstick but doing a video requires you step into the focal point. Your no longer just a faceless person behind a screen. It's scary. It means coming face to face with things I don't like about myself and facing my insecurities.

But you know what? If even one person is impacted by it, all of the discomforts are worth it, but even if no one sees it still worth it because at the heart of all of it you didn't do it for them, you did it for Him.

Are you ready to abandon comfort and risk it? Ready to take that word, that issue, that reason you can't and nail it to the cross?

He doesn't call you what the world calls you because He's already seen the end of your story, He already knows the impact of your calling. Stop wrestling with God and step out confidently. He didn't call someone else to this place, He called you. Which means He will see you through, He will provide the way. He will be enough. He was enough in every storm, He will be enough now. He brought you through every wasteland, every dry season, every stormy sea, He's poured you out and filled you back up, He's washed away every name that tried to claim you, He's overrun everything that tried to keep you from Him for a reason. Someone somewhere needs what you've learned on this journey, what He's taught you and they are waiting for you.

Want to read some more articles? Check these out!