There are times in my life when almost everywhere I turn I get the same message. I’ll hear a song on the radio, a friend will tell me a story or forward me a very timely email, and I’ll see a difficult but necessary theme in any reading or studying I might be doing. Sometimes it’s insight into things going on around me, and other times it is pointing to something inside of me that I need to address. The frustrating thing is that it tends to happen in cycles. I’m being shown things now that I was shown five years ago, and I suppose part of me thought that it was something I’d “figured out.”Of the many purposes that God has for repeatedly asking me to learn these lessons, I’ve noticed that one of the most common is for me to lay down a particular idol. My heart, just like all human hearts, has some very deep desires. I’ve spent quite a bit of time and effort trying to fulfill them. I’ve ignored what I knew God’s best was, I’ve cheapened my relationship with Him, and I’ve compromised in countless ways, just in an attempt to satisfy an ache that HE PLACED WITHIN ME. I know He put it there because He is the only one that is able to fill it with comfort and understanding when I have once again turned away from Him.This is the life experience of anyone who has chosen to be a Kingdom follower. As I slowly mature, I’m realizing what a beautiful gift this really is. But it’s not always easy. It brings incredible peace, but at the sometimes painful cost of allowing God to remove something I think I can’t live without.
“Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.” — Matthew 10:39