No Matter The Cost

It is a miraculous Wind that carries the vapor of our breath to the ear of the Almighty God. When that precious plea in a whisper reaches His ear saying “come”, what happens next?

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Breathed out from our deepest longing in one sincere word, will there be tied to it the attachments of our own ideas of how He should respond? Will we begin to eagerly paint on the canvas of our expectation with the only shapes and strokes we have yet known in the colors we find appealing?

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The matter of Sovereignty manifests itself in this way: in any instance when the hand of the Almighty touches the life of which He formed, He is in control. His authority is unwavering. The pride of man will always contend against superiority, and it may reveal itself in such a way that, when we ask Him to come, we do so under the condition that we maintain a comfortable amount of control over how He does it. If we want Him, but only in the form of our choosing, we demonstrate the very nature of satan in that we desire to rule over God. Only one who perceives themselves to be in higher authority dictates the order of another. When He desires to come in a way that we do not prefer, will we still welcome Him?

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“Breathe on me, oh Breath of God...” 

 

How will we respond when His answer is a strong exhale, sending the mighty rushing wind from the four corners of creation to stir up the heavens and the earth into a whirlwind of His own design, His breath compelling and sustaining its uncontainable movement? And when the form of His breath, in response to our own invitation, arrives at the edge of the beautiful garden we have made for Him, will we see Him in the wind and say “Come closer.” When His nearness threatens to disrupt the very place we have made to enjoy His gentle inhale and exhale, the place that is perfectly prepared to meet Him in the way we expected Him to come, will our longing crumble under the weight of the cost? 

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Will we only invite Him to come if He will tread lightly among the roses we have planted to please Him? What if He doesn’t desire roses, but instead He desires fruit; not the fruit of our own planting, but rather the fruit He is hungry for; a fruit that will only grow in raw, freshly tilled earth, fruit grown from precious Holy seed that will not compete with the well established roots of performance roses, or the thriving manicured vines of present understanding. Will our lives be the place that can produce what he longs for? Will He find in the echo of our plea the fortitude for the cost, or will we only welcome His gentle, undisturbing breath? 

 

 

“Cleanse and purify my heart, oh God..”

 

We submit this request in sincerity, and then wait with expectation for Him to come mop up messes, tighten the loose hinges, and make general improvements upon us; to make us shine “for His glory” but as long as it looks like my glory, too. How will our hearts respond when His cleansing comes as a raging fire that burns hotter and more wildly than we can control?

 

When His cleansing flame in our midst scorches the branch while burning up the choke vine that entangles it, will we still say, “Come and set me free?” If purity is what He requires, and His fire is how He will accomplish it, will we allow Him to burn through us even if it consumes the good with the ugly? Or will we extinguish His flame to preserve the boundaries we have marked out by our own standards of justice? And when only the ashes remain, will we mourn what was lost, or cherish the small but vibrant new life that sprouts forth from what remains, knowing there is no branch we could ever bear that is more fruitful than the wound that comes from His hand. 

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“Search me, Oh Lord, reveal any hidden thing within me...” 

 

Where have we set our limitations for His searching? We might hope He will courteously come and point at obvious sin hanging on the edges of our lives, things that take no amount of divine perception to identify, but how will we respond when He desires to instead expose the deeper things that lie hidden from our own eyes beneath the leaf and flower of His very blessing? 

 

Will we stipulate His working to remove only the dead things in us, then, offering as if some sort of sacrifice, the things that have no worth to us or to God? Will we cherish His Mercy when it begins to strip away the good and beautiful to reveal before our own eyes hidden pests that have been thriving at our core; these parasitic tendencies that slowly and discreetly sap the precious flow of life that is meant for nourishment and fruitfulness? Will we allow Him to cut us back to the humble point that allows light to shine upon the unlovely things we have unknowingly harbored in the shade of our own goodness? Will we yield to His pruning until these pests have no place to hide, even if it leaves us in a vulnerable, less lovely state? Or will we pull back in the discomfort of exposure, satisfied with the lesser that can be produced while they feast unseen? ​

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“Reveal yourself in me, Jesus...” 

 

What if the part of Himself that He wants to show the world is His wounded side and His nail pierced hands? What revelation will we make of Him when betrayal strikes our cheek and injustice gouges our back? Will we place His name on our lips as our answer, to take the blows without rising to our own defense? Will we allow ourselves to be crushed to pour out from our suffering just one drop from the bottomless pool of Mercy that washed us? Will we be too concerned with making ourselves beautiful for Him, guarding my own radiant dignity, that I am unwilling to carry scars like His? ​

 

Will we still clothe ourselves in His garments if He offers us the ones that were torn? Will we wear humility and lowliness through the streets of the highly esteemed, or will we prefer to dress ourselves in garments of our own design, in the more lovely, more presentable threads of earthly glory. 

 

When we welcome the one who holds the Universe, His response is always perfectly ordered, and vastly superior to any framework of expectation we can build to contain Him. Our invitations are mere whispers on the winds of the hurricane of His intentions.

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To effectively surrender our life into His sovereign hand is to vow it all to His possession. We lay it before Him as soil that has been added to the Kingdom of His domain; His territory to rule a reign, and to come as He pleases. Do we believe Him to govern rightly this soil that is now His; in the glory and in the pain, in the building and the breaking? 

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His ways are higher. One day in the devastating wind of His glory is better than thousands dancing in rose gardens full of vacant gentle breezes. May we allow the knowledge of His surpassing wisdom to penetrate and obliterate our limited expectations of how He should be toward us, and may the truth of His Sovereign nature nourish and sustain us always.