Do you ever find that your Christian walk is frustrating? Are you trying so hard to be a Christian, yet finding yourself instead so confused and flip-flopping from feeling you are on top of it, only to find yourself failing over an over and want to crawl away in guilt or lash out in anger at the seeming futility of trying to make it work or ‘feel real’? You may even be feeling so sick of yourself and feeling a failure and don’t see the point of going on.
Perhaps you wish you could have more with the Lord? Are you even aware that there is in fact more than you have at this point in your life – far more? Have you sought advice from other Christians who are really just in the same boat as you are and they have no answers either – perhaps you have even sought answers from a pastor who listens, and then told you to pray about it – that it is a normal part of the walk, yet you leave him too with nothing real or concrete to hold onto, to give you a glimmer of hope of ever getting it right.
Perhaps people have suggested scriptures for you or books to read. The list is endless of advice you may receive.
Does Christianity really even work?
The problem is, that often those we seek advice from, do not know the answer themselves as they are going through what we are…or it does not bother them enough to find out the Truth and they are quite happy in their complacency and don’t want to get too serious – as someone recently shared with me, -”As long as I am just saved, that’s enough”.
All I share, both above and below this, is my own life-story and in no way do I stand over here and point at you. I know this difficulty, I know this disillusionment of walking in a frustrated ‘funk’, I know this suffering of the Lord where He allows us to reach beyond our grasp for Him where we feel so desperate that we would rather not have been born if “this is all Christianity is”.
In the flesh, it is a very frightening, but necessary place to be as you feel have no place to turn and you are getting no answers that can satisfy this gnawing, churning inside you, until you realise that the Lord Jesus is all and more sufficient to answer our cry. In the spirit, it is a place of utter rejoicing as nothing comes to us unless through Revelation.
Psalm 81:10
I am the LORD your God,Who brought you out of the land of Egypt; Openyour mouth wide, and I will fill it.
The one thing above all that is needful to bring about any real life-changing as a Christian, is that you understand fully that as long as you are doing the fixing and changing and ‘making it real’, it’s not going to happen no matter what you try. You are going to fail over and over and over and God will allow it to take place until you get to the very end of yourself and you see or realise that you simply cannot bring it about.
This is His wonderful Revelation.
The Revelation comes first, then the working out of it in our lives. It does not stay in our heads only, but is worked out in the reality of the actuality of our lives. The day -to-day grind. The mundane, the boring, the ordinary. And it is tough. We are to lean on Him and look to Him for it all.
The Lord may allow you too, to get to a state of desperation where you feel you will break in two if He does not give you this reality with Him i.e. Him for Himself and not for anything He gives you or blesses you with. Everything else pails in the light of this where nothing and no-one else matters but Him. It is a road of unimaginable agony to walk, but if this is Who you really want, you will more than likely be taken down this road.
God will do it and does do it. Praise Him!!
This is the very life-changing that is required. The crucified life, the surrendered life, the relinquished life. Seeing life through a Christ consciousness, not a ‘self’ consciousness.
Open your mouth wide and ask the Lord to fill it. Have no preconceived ideas or notions of what He is going to do with you. Allow Him full reign and become a leaf in the wind of the Holy Spirit and allow Him to do with you as He will and blow you where He will. There is such freedom within this. Such security and such safety. As a child of the only True Living God, you are His treasure and He knows exactly what is needful for you to become the man or woman HE wants you to become. Trust Him to know best, regardless of the circumstances you might find yourself in and understand that all that is going on is part of what is needful for you to get where He needs you to be. Romans 8:28. It is all for His glory and our good.
I really trust that this may have reached a deep place in some struggling hearts who are yearning for more of Him and less of themselves. May the Lord bless you and show you what it is that is required of you, His way, and may you also know unequivocally, that He will equip you with all that you need.
All Glory to Our Lord!
Steph 
THE RELINQUISHED LIFE
“I am crucified with Christ.” Galatians 2:20
No one is ever united with Jesus Christ until he is willing to relinquish not sin only, but his whole way of looking at things. To be born from above of the Spirit of God means that we must let go before we lay hold, and in the first stages it is the relinquishing of all pretence. What Our Lord wants us to present to Him is not goodness, nor honesty, nor endeavour, but real solid sin; that is all He can take from us. And what does He give in exchange for our sin? Real solid righteousness. But we must relinquish all pretence of being any thing, all claim of being worthy of God’s consideration.
Then the Spirit of God will show us what further there is to relinquish. There will have to be the relinquishing of my claim to my right to myself in every phase. Am I willing to relinquish my hold on all I possess, my hold on my affections, and on everything, and to be identified with the death of Jesus Christ?
There is always a sharp painful disillusionment to go through before we do relinquish. When a man really sees himself as the Lord sees him, it is not the abominable sins of the flesh that shock him, but the awful nature of the pride of his own heart against Jesus Christ. When he sees himself in the light of the Lord, the shame and the horror and the desperate conviction come home.
If you are up against the question of relinquishing, go through the crisis, relinquish all, and God will make you fit for all that He requires of you.
Oswald Chambers – My Utmost for His Highest -March 8
Hi Steph,
Thank you for sharing this. There is so much of what you have said that applies to my own walk. I believe you are much further along the path than me but this is like a signpost you have left at the edge of the path to guide and encourage all those who will follow. And that it certainly does.
God bless,
Andy
Oh Andy! I praise God for His timing in all things and for just being Himself and knowing everything and how He brings about His incredible will for our lives into being. So often it slips in quietly with out a fanfare, without a sound even and when you realise it has taken place the glory all goes to Him
I really had no-one to help me understand this terrible destructive cycle I would go through. The Lord first sent me Oswald….
Then a sister called Jill, as a result of a direct pleading prayer to the Lord, for an older sister to walk the way I wanted to with Him. She ‘arrived’ within 3 weeks and has been all and more I ever asked for. She has helped me make sense of a maze of situations and circumstances, when all I wanted to do was run away from the very things that God wanted to bring about in my life and that I had asked for, but never understood his workings with us.
Our Lord is just so incredibly loving and kind and really does know best for us.
Leonard Ravenhill is known for having said “It is not were you challenged, but were you changed?” I pray the Lord will use this humble ‘signpost’ as you put it, to begin the process of change needed in your life from where it may be or has been, to where it is meant to go.
Hold fast precious Bro!
Bless you
Steph
Hi sis!
I haven’t visited in a while so am catching up on all the lovely things you have written. I love this one especialy. It reminds me of the simplicity of The Lord’s Prayer. Giving Him glory as first place in our lives, praying thy kingdom come thy will be done (not mine), praying daily for our daily needs thus keeping closely connected in Him—being a branch so to speak.
The main thing being to love Him more than life itself and that is an impossibility without Him giving that desire to you by His grace. You cannot do that apart from a gift of His grace. So, we pray for this desire to have Him ever before us, like an unextinguishable fire, a deep love for Him within us that will not be ignored, and pray for a continued awareness of our sin before Him…what is unpleasing to Him…we may know the obvious things but there are things not obvious to us…and trust Him alone. He may bring a world of failure in your life to show you on Whom you must trust. Oh, to want only Him.
Hi Diane
)
I quickly posted your reply when I saw it before I took my son to school, and promptly forgot to come back reply to you! (thanks for the reminder
Thank you blessed sister for your comment and I have to agree with your wholeheartedly. It all begins and ends in Him. I like your analogy to the Lord’s prayer. It is like that. It can be no other way.
Bless you!
Steph,
As you are familiar with some of my ways, you know that this post hits home with me – I continually make this walk with our Father one with a tight yoke and a heavy burden – a complete opposite of what He said He had to offer. Yes, I have tastes of rest, of freedom, but only followed again by heaviness, by brokenness. And make no mistake that I am not wanting to be broken, but only if it is of God and not self-induced, as I feel some of what I anguish over is no doubt self induced. Oh to be rid of self!! I cannot wait. I cannot wait to be fully pleasing to our Father.
Thank you for this post, for it is an encouraging word from our Lord.
Shalom
Beloved sister
Praise God and bless you for your openness.
All I hear in my heart for you is “baby-steps”. It is often a life-long moving – sometimes 1 step forward and 2 steps (or more) back, only to begin all over again, but we know deep inside that our eyes and heart want only Him
Yes, I do believe that we induce many of our own difficulties and combined with the attacks of our enemy, do a good work in our walk to needlessly crush us often- (he likes to keep us there as we are kept so discouraged at times.) It is also I think, knowing from my own life, that we are creatures of habit. We have to realise that we are new creations in Christ, we have renewed minds, and ask the Lord to please help us to take away our old habits that we so often cling to without even realising it as they are so strangely familiar. One example from in my own life – For years I lived in the cycle of bringing my dad to the foot of the cross, laid him before the Lord, then when finished praying, simply and unknowingly picked him up and carried him back as my burden instead of leaving him there for the Lord to take. One day I finally took him to the cross, but this time I actually managed to leave him there, stepped over him and walked on, not looking behind, trusting the Lord to take care of him. That was about 5 years ago now. I cannot tell you the breakthrough in my life because of this taking place. I was free. Free to love him without any prejudices from the past. Free to love him as my dad as dad’s should be loved. All the pain and agonies I had gone through went away over a short few months and it transformed my life like I would never have believed.
I have continued to pray for you as the Lord leads me over the months, and know you will be freed from this in His perfect time.
Have courage, dear sis and cling fast to His hand. He loves you very much and despite what you see – He sees His Son being formed in you! It is about having faith to believe this regardless.
In His love
Steph
xx
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