God tore down the castle I built for myself so that He could give me the kingdom He created for me.

It has been awhile since I have written or blogged anything. God has been doing a thing for me. Something that I hadn’t envisioned for myself. In fact, something so far out of the box of what I thought His answer would look like that it has sort of blown my mind.

Seven years ago, I began a quest to understand what God’s love looked like, felt like. I wanted to KNOW it so I could give it away. Receiving it wasn’t really on my radar. I read MANY books. Read the Bible. Studied the meaning of the words and the context. I even switched churches after God laid it on my heart to sit under a certain man as my pastor. Within 3 years, I felt like I was beginning to have a firm grasp on what love truly was and what it looked like. I was pouring it into others, and I felt good. I felt loved and accepted for myself.

Then the bottom began to drop out… family conflicts, business struggles, personal strife, church muck. As quickly as I felt loved, I felt alone, and I couldn’t understand how I went from such a crazy, amazing high to such a horrific low. I kept trying to pinpoint where I’d gone wrong. There had to be a reason for my distress, right? It wasn’t one area…it was EVERY area. Watching my community crumble before my very eyes was as hurtful as watching my marriage crumble. I wasn’t just butt hurt; I was heart hurt.

I lost relationships during this time period, I thought were impossible to lose. I kept receiving answers, or so I thought, only to have them ripped seemingly right from under me and when I thought it was at its worst, something even more tragic would happen. I became comfortable with grief. Disappointment and I got super friendly. I was convinced that this set of circumstances was just going to be my life. I did not let it keep me from my faith, but I lost the part of myself that believed in something better. I was guilty of forgetting God promised me more.

I mentioned in an earlier blog that most of my church read a book at the beginning of the year called, One Word That Will Change Your Life by Jon Gordon, Dan Britton and Jimmy Page. God reached down into the very depths of my soul and chose a word to direct my year that stunned me: LOVED. When He gave me that word, I cringed. In that moment and the moments leading up to it…in fact, in the months leading up to it, the very last thing I left was loved. Mostly, I left alone and abandoned. I remember laying in my bed and laughing out loud, asking God: how are You going to accomplish that? Almost makes me giggle that I am asking the Most High God, my Creator, my Savior, my Healer, the God of the Universe and my heart: HOW? But, if you know me and He does, I ask Him a lot of stupid questions.

He has plans greater for you than you can imagine: For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future (Jerimiah 29:11). The thing is that if we don’t believe we deserve His plans for us, how can we ever receive them? God taught me how to love but I wasn’t allowing myself to be loved.  So, He positioned me. It sucked.

Like the Children of Israel, I had to walk through the desert alone and without so that I could become utterly reliant on Him. OH BUT! Grace found me there! I gave up my will. I removed my lens. I accepted begrudgingly His words about me (beautiful, loved). As I let what I thought should be, go and recognized His truth what I discovered were people who became Jesus to me. People who truly loved me not because I was giving them anything in return but because they saw me with His eyes. Tired to the bone of the struggles of life, I finally allowed these people to invest in me, fight for me, pray for me. What I found for the first time in a long time, was rest.

The economy of the Kingdom of God is usually quite opposite of the world. He calls us to die to ourselves and lose what we think is precious in order to gain our freedom and inheritance: Philippians 3:8 | Luke 9:23-24 | Romans 6:6-7.

John 3:30 says that He must increase; I must decrease. Further on in chapter 12, verse 24 says that unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it will remain alone but if it dies, it will bear much fruit. The process of dying to one’s self is egregious at best. I am often confounded as to why I so readily believe the author of lies over my Creator and Savior and yet, I do. We all do. He tore down the castle I built for myself so that He could give me the kingdom He created for me.

I lost a community I thought would protect me, but I gained four couples that became a fortress around my heart and mind (Proverbs 4:23). I lost a job that I thought I needed to survive financially but gained a business opportunity that my mind could not have fathomed even six months ago (Jeremiah 29:11). I lost relationships but I gained friends that stick closer than a brother (Proverbs 18:24). I lost incorrect ideas about what God had been building in my life but gained a new, proper prospective (1 Corinthians 1:27).

Seven months into my year, I am feeling LOVED. I never saw it coming but I now have a clearer understanding that I must allow others to give to me as I give, as HE GIVES, so that He can get me where He wants me to go…forward.

Charles Ham pointed out to me that I had become resigned with my circumstances in order to survive them but that the time for merely surviving was over and it was now time to thrive. I had to expect God’s best for me so that I could receive God’s best for me. I was the seed God planted. I had to die so that I did not remain alone but instead bear much fruit. It is harvest time! FINALLY time for God to reap from me what He planted within me.

So my friend my word for you is this: don’t get lost in the process God must put you through to till your ground, plant your seed, water you so that you might grow, keep you from reaching the ultimate reward He wants to reap from you … the perfected you He created you to be (James 1:4).