A Bit of Humility

Well, God has been moving, and I have been so blessed!!

Last night I heard a message at a women's summer Bible study at my church that hit me right where I needed it. Debbie, the teacher, essentially said "Are you so focused on the kingdom that you've completely forgotten the King?" BINGO!! (I wanted to stand up and scream that at the top of my lungs, but I really wasn't sure how that would go over.) I have been so focused on the kingdom, and what I'm doing, what God is doing for me, me, me, that I have completely forgotten to just focus on God. Enjoy God. Be with Him, for no other reason than just to hang out. The simplest, most basic thing, and I had turned away from it. Forgotten it. I wish I could say it was the first time,but alas, that would be a lie. I can, however, pray it is the last (God willing).

So today I have been thinking about my attitudes toward God this summer, and my thoughts about myself. I have really felt . . . almost self-destructive, self-depricating - and that is not a healthy place to be. I can also recognize in my life an arrogance that I believe goes back to my theater training, and trying to act like I was the best so as to get the best part. I just hate it! I hate pride!! I hate arrogance!! Especially when I can recognize them in my own life.

Then it happened. God started to move, and we began to converse. I'm sure, if you have been following my blog at all, that you have noticed a down-heartedness about me, of late. I have been in a really dark place. Again, self-destructive at its core. (By the way, I believe that even self-destructive and self-depricating attitudes are another form of pride . . . essentially, I believe that anything that is "self" focused, as opposed to God focused is pride. It's all about the focus.)

Anyway, like I was saying, I just started pouring my heart out to God. Telling Him how I hated the pride in my life. I just told Him that I needed humility - however it came, however painful it needed to be - I want nothing to do with pride. I am DONE with it! I want NO MORE of it!! To which God said, "What do you think I've been doing all summer?" And BAM!!! it all fell into focus. wow. . . .

God has been giving me some time with myself this summer. (And I really haven't enjoyed it that much . . . again, I wonder, how does He put up with me??) I basically felt like He shut me in a dark room with no one but myself. (I didn't even feel like He was there, though I KNOW He was.) By forcing me to spend some time in introspection, He was reminding me that there is NO GOOD THING in me. Anything good in my life - ANYTHING (even those things that don't generally get labelled "spiritual") is all of Him, and Him alone. I am nothing without Him. I truly am no one important, a part of nothing bigger than myself, having no adventure, no fun, no joy, no peace . . . . . I feel like God was reminding me of what life apart from Him is like. An apathetic drugery.

I am simply a pen. A useless instrument, in-an-of myself. A pen trying to submit myself to the perfect, passionate, capable hands of the One who is willing to use me, allowing His love to flow through me as ink on the blank parchment of life.