Resilience, Rescue and Time

So many things have happened since I last wrote here. All hard.

I'm realizing each day I walk with Jesus that so much of this walk is characterized by this:

growing in resilience. 

Resilience - the art of bouncing back. the ability to be stretched, but not destroyed. the willingness to be refined, pruned, disciplined and stripped away without resulting in bitterness or anger. The courage to believe that this too shall end in praise.

Resilience is willing to die to our own needs, agenda or expectation and in the midst of this, continue to be a true worshiper. Continue to praise even in prison.

Resilience means I choose God above all else -- emotions, circumstances, rights, what I think I deserve, what I thought I heard.

Choose God. This has become our theme in this season.

Also this:

the battle belongs to the Lord.

He is the one who fights, rescues, protects, redeems and vindicates. We only do this: Take our position, stand firm and see. (2 Chronicles 20: 15-17)

I experienced this firsthand on 8/21. Our street team was walking in Skid Row and a shooting happened steps away from where we were. If not for another patient in distress that we began to follow, we would have been in that park, caught up in the first mass shooting in Skid Row's history.

See we thought we were only helping out another patient, but God was actually rescuing us, protecting us, shielding us.

Rescue.

I wonder how often we are rescued in this way and we don't know it. We don't thank God for it. He's always battling for us. Always fighting on our behalf.

The other thing I'm realizing in this season is this: my sense of time is not and will never be God's sense of time. Ultimately I won't ever know the exact timing of things or when promises will come to pass. All I need to know is this:

stay near to Jesus. Always. 

Wherever He is, go to Him. When I'm trouble, draw near to Him.

Nearness to Jesus is life in this season.

When we are near to Jesus, we may not know the exact timeline for fruition of promises, but we can know the way of the season we are in. We can know what this season is about, its theme, its focus, its timbre.

Know your season. 

This season for me and Ash is best summed up in Psalm 66:

Bless our God, O peoples;
    let the sound of his praise be heard,
9 who has kept our soul among the living
    and has not let our feet slip.
10 For you, O God, have tested us;
    you have tried us as silver is tried.
11 You brought us into the net;
    you laid a crushing burden on our backs;
12 you let men ride over our heads;
    we went through fire and through water;
yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance.


The end of the story is this: abundance. But it's so important to know our season. To know this is a season of being refined, of being tried, of being led through and in front of trouble. Of being brought face-to-face with giants, not because of punishment, but because God's infinite love compels Him to drain out every particle in our bodies that is bent toward unbelief, bent toward destruction, bent toward mistrusting His goodness. 

In every season, God's ultimate desire isn't to just fulfill His promises to us. That's a byproduct of something greater:

relationship. 

God's desire always is to give us Jesus. Fully, wholly and unconditionally. 

N., may you know this each day as you grow. May you seek Jesus above what He can give or promise. May you seek Jesus for Jesus. May you choose Him above all else, in every decision, in every thought, in every action, in every season. May you develop in your spirit a deep resilience, a bouncing back that enables you to withstand refining and testing so that you can take up your position, stand firm and see that the end of every story is always this:

the abundant presence of Christ Jesus.