holy discontent
Have you ever felt it? You want something, but you don’t know what it is. It’s right under the surface and it won’t go away, so you do other things to cover it, or you push it aside.
It’s holy discontent. You might feel stuck spiritually. It may have been a very long since you felt God.
Oh, Suzie, don’t give me that emotional stuff. You don’t have to feel God to follow Him.
I do. I have learned to trust Him in the times that I don’t feel Him. I have learned to dig deep into the experiences of the past that remind me of God’s faithfulness. I have learned to lean on Scripture and the promises within.
But I need to feel God, His presence, His strength.
I want to feel Him, and there have been times (many) that I’ve had to stop and find the source of that holy discontent.
That’s exactly what happened the day I stood in the ballroom of the hotel at the She Speaks conference as my friend and Proverbs 31 Ministries founder, Lysa TerKeurst spoke.
(To see the original devo that started this crossroads discussion, click here.)
I was discontented. I had been for a while. Like King David in Psalms 51:12 I was praying, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me”. I needed Him. I had allowed some really meaningless things to take the place of intimacy with God. I still talked to Him. I still loved Him. But I knew there was more because I had experienced more. I had misplaced something very valuable and I needed it back.
I remember standing there in a room of 700 and it was as if I was alone with God. I held back, waiting for the final amen so I could escape to the prayer room. I didn’t care who was in there. I didn’t care if people saw that I was part of the team. All I knew is that I needed to get alone with God.
It was a course correction of sorts.
Holy discontent is a beautiful gift. It’s the Holy Spirit, the One who knows you and the heart of the Father drawing you closer, stopping you in your tracks and reminding you that there’s more to being a child of God than church, more than committees, more than writing books, more than teaching, more than being just being moral or good.
Maybe you are connected. Maybe you are right in the heart of His plan, and you still feel holy discontent. This is a prayer today for you and for me.
I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will give you mighty inner strength through his Holy Spirit. And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts as you trust in him.
May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love really is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it. Then you will be filled with the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
Now glory be to God! By his mighty power at work within us, he is able to accomplish infinitely more than we would ever dare to ask or hope. May he be given glory in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever through endless ages. Amen.
Ephesians 3:16-21 (New Living Translation)
Posted by Suzie @
6:23 am |
crossroads: discipline
Melissa and I stood toe to toe. She eyeballed me, looking me up and down. “No!” she said, and then she tossed the dishtowel to the side.
I sighed. A four-year-old was getting the best of me.
It all started with a spilled glass of milk. No big deal at all. She was four. It was an accident. Lucky us, a little corner of the floor would be cleaner than the rest after we were through. I grabbed a dishtowel when I saw the glass knock over and milk splash on the floor.
“Let’s clean this up, baby,” I said.
I had this wild theory as a mom — that if we tackled stuff together it taught the children stuff like “let’s clean up our messes”, and yet they always knew that mom was there to help them. And it would be fun at the same time, right?
It worked with my other children. They bought into the idea that scrambling to pick up as many toys as you could in three minutes was fun, especially if mom made odd noises or played music, or you tried to dunk the toy in to the toybox with deadly aim.
But Melissa saw through my plan. (more…)
Posted by Suzie @
7:00 am |
going in circles
It was one of our first big fights. I held the map (disaster!) as Richard navigated Loop 12 in Dallas.
“Hon, you don’t move the map when I turn. North is still north. South is still south. Just tell me what to do!”
I crumpled up the map and tossed it in the floorboard, and crossed my arms over my chest. It was hopeless! We were trapped on Loop 12. We had exited, we thought, only to find ourselves back on the same highway going the same direction. We exited again, only to find ourselves back on the same road, headed in the wrong direction.
We couldn’t get off Loop 12 though we could see the road we needed to take in the distance.
Have you ever felt that way? That you’re going in circles, and that your dream or goal is just beyond you?
How do you get out of the crossroads when you’re going in circles?
In our case, we needed a better map holder.
Who’s holding the map in your life? Are you praying about it? Are you working as one with your loved ones, as well as your Heavenly Father? (more…)
Posted by Suzie @
9:58 am |
P31 devo: The desires of His heart
As I mentioned, I’m way under the weather today but when I opened my daily Proverbs 31 devo, I smiled. God is gracious. I may not have anything to share today, but this devotional is a perfect fit for our Crossroads conversation.
What if you are in the crossroads because you are seeking the desires of your heart, and yet it’s not what God sees as your destiny?
I hope you’ll sign up for the free great devo. It pops into your inbox every day with wisdom, insight, and faith.
18 Jan 2010
Jennifer Erin Valent, She Reads Featured Author
“Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 37:4 (NIV)
When I was young, my girlfriends and I used to play a game where we would choose different ideals we had for our lives, from whom we wanted to marry, to what car we wanted to drive. Life seemed so simple then! In just one short game, I could plan my life out from start to finish. Funny thing is, I never did marry Johnny Depp, I don’t live in a mansion, and I don’t drive a Porsche.
Well, I was young, and it’s certainly a blessing that I didn’t end up having to live out the life I planned for myself then. But what about now? As an adult, I’ve had plenty of dreams for my life. I think I’m pretty intuitive about myself, and I’ve got a good idea how I think things should go. And since Scripture says the Lord will give us the desires of our hearts, shouldn’t these things be coming to pass?
Maybe not. The Lord knows a whole lot more than we give Him credit for, and maybe what He has planned for our lives doesn’t match up with what we have planned. (more…)
Posted by Suzie @
10:33 am |
The Narrow Gate
It’s a joke we share in our family, borne out of a collision between a city girl and a country guy. We were newly dating and Richard had given me directions to a country town.
“Make a right at the Y in the road,” the next direction read. I held the paper in my hand and searched up and down the country dirt roads. Nope. No Y anywhere. So I headed back to the nearest city and made a phone call. “I can’t find it.”
“Didn’t you see the Y in the road?” Richard asked.
“I looked and looked,” I replied. “But I never saw a YMCA.”
He burst into laughter. His Y was a fork in the road. For the city girl, a Y was a place you swam and exercised.
Maybe you feel as if you are in the crossroads and the directions aren’t clear. It’s as if you and God are on two different pages. A crossroads is a place where critical decisions are made. One road takes you one way. The other takes you in the opposite direction. They don’t merge or wind back into one another.
Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life and only a few find it. Matthew 7: 13-14
Maybe you are hesitating because the broad road seems like the most likely. It’s easier. There are benefits on that road. Could be stability (nothing like a paycheck every Friday, is there!) or a snug comfort zone or the path of least resistance.
But what if the narrow gate is marked with your destiny? Throughout scripture we often find destiny right in the heart of the dis-comfort zone.
(more…)
Posted by Suzie @
10:40 am |
maybe it’s a hard place
January 13, 2010 | faith
It’s 3:30 a.m. and many of you are on my heart. As I read through the comments yesterday, it appeared that while some of you are at a crossroads, many of you are in a hard place. First, I want to honestly say I’m sorry that you are in pain. I’ve been in that hard place before and it’s—for lack of a better word—hard.
Some people say that Christians should never have bad times, but I don’t believe that. We all encounter hard places. In Scripture, you see it over and over.
I see Peter walking away after rejecting Jesus. He is ashamed of himself, embarrassed, broken. What a hard place to be for a man who loved Jesus so much. (Luke 22:62)
I see Paul and Barnabas in prison, beaten, bruised, in stocks with seemingly no way out. A hard place, especially when they were doing all the right things. (Acts 16)
I see Mary standing at the foot of the cross, every promise she ever believed appeared to be crushed because she couldn’t see beyond the broken body of her son. (John 19:25)
But there was an after for each of these. (more…)
Posted by Suzie @
7:13 am |
