Birth. Death. Resurrection.

It has been a very meditative week of more devoted prayer and intermittent fasting (or intermittent eating because I fasted more than I ate). A lot has been shoved down my plate lately, and this week started off with another shaking and breaking.

And there are many, many, many lessons and happenings in the span of a week. Additional work load to my ever increasing pile of school duties. Same old issues resurfacing. The old burden and zeal to invest in the lives of other people--and not seeing pleasant results. Same old, but brand new stories of I-don't-like-you's. Of feeling like the girl in between two worlds--never quite in one, never quite part of the other. Many things. I am still trying to process each of these very much tangled, very much interconnected ball of thoughts and feelings. Maybe one day, I get to write about each one ever more clearly.

But one of the things that I had (have, still not over) to deal with, is my still very much unsettled feeling and resolve on this desire to be of use in the kingdom. We are going through a series in church  on Christian Service recently, and it has, since day 1, without fail, always struck me and pierced me and wrenched my heart and tore it into a thousand pieces every single time. Every Sunday, I thought I couldn't be more broken. Every Sunday, I'm proven wrong.

This week, as part of my intended meditation, I decided to listen to more sermons over at Sermon Audio, aside from meditating on the messages our church has preached prior. I came across Paul Washer's "Be More Like Jesus Christ," which I didn't initially see as a message having explicit say on service, honestly. I was looking for sermons on becoming Christlike in one's obedience at that time. But Washer here puts this line as one of his applications:

With many men of God, we will see what we call the birth, the death, and the resurrection of a vision.

                                                                 (Washer, 2009)

And he goes on to tell the story of Moses, how even in the beginning, somehow, Moses was aware that he needed to deliver the people of God from Egyptians. But he was relying on his own strength, and when he saw an Israelite being beaten, he killed the Egyptian. With his own judgment, and with his own strength--without God's guidance. He had a vision born.

But this vision died very soon after, for he was forced to escape to the wilderness, and for forty years he was talking to no one but the sheep of his pasture. These were forty, long, seemingly endless years of silence. Of waiting. Of uncertainties and doubts and probably nightly wrestles with God and with his own thoughts. Of being humbled. Of being brought very, very low, his glory laying finally in the dust. And through those long years of silence in Moses' life, he learned obedience, humility, and total reliance and submission upon God. He had a vision die.

And one day, on God's appointed day, He lifted Moses up once again, this time to truly deliver His people, to truly serve Him for His own glory. This time, Moses was found trembling before God and clinging to Him for His guidance, for the strength of His right arm. And Moses, day by day, moment by moment, walked with God, sought His face, basked in the light of His grace, all throughout those yet another forty years of leading the Jews to the Promise Land. He had a vision resurrected.

I don't think I could ever do justice to this story by posting my thoughts about it. I don't even have comprehensive thoughts on this subject yet--until now. But the thought on Moses' life and how it clearly shows how God is really more concerned about one's obedience than one's messianic ideas--it has rebuked and comforted me all at once and in so many levels.

Because right now, I am in my vision's death. Right now, I die daily. And every day I am being brought even lower and lower. And lower. I think my life's glory lies dead in the dust right now, as I write. I believe it will even be brought lower and lower into the dust tomorrow. Next week. Next month.

I have written recently in my devotions journal all the major themes of my life lessons these days. And I realize, when I sat down to really reflect upon it over tears and prayers, that God is breaking me and humbling me in the areas I thought I was strong and okay and triumphing in, because He is proving to me and those around me that I am not strong, but weak, and vile, and helpless. As He breaks me, He is proving to me that I have ultimately no strength of my own, and He will keep going at it until I realize on a moment-by-moment basis that even the things I think I do naturally and best, I would not be able to do without His enabling strength and grace. He has placed me in situations where I would just dread everything, even my daily tasks, and thus I would be driven on my knees, begging for grace and strength.

This dread for failure and dread to offend God or offer another strange fire to Him, dread of how I easily can get it all wrong despite all these years of theology, pushed me to a deeper, more intense digging into His word. And His word reveals to me His law, His precepts, and how precious it really is. And He is teaching my to love His law. He is teaching my heart the unconditional disposition that should have been there ever since I got saved--the compelling desire to pursue, obey, God's law; even at the cost of my heart's deepest desires.

And as the Lord teaches me to love His law ever more so dearly, He is revealing to me what true service to Him really means--obedience to His word. Faithfully. In every aspect. In every season. In every appointed station. And the more I seek to obey His word, the more His word reveals to me how I should live to please Him--in active, resolute, consistent, committed service to the Lord through the service to His church. To love them more. To exhort them more. To delight in His saints more.

This last call, to love the saints, has never been a conditional call. God has told me to love His people despite all their idiosyncrasies. And somehow, in some ways, I learn more and more about what this love-service truly means because of what's happening around and to me.

I hope to write about these lessons and revelations more. Maybe, one day, when the dawn shall rise, then I shall see more clearly. But for now, as I lie in dust life's glory dead, I trust the Love that will not let me go. Today, the fog is very thick, and I strain for the signs of the morning song. And until then, I'm waiting for the day in the shadows of the dawn.

Until then, I wait in silence.