Wrecked: When God Slams Into My Brokenness

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Meet Holy Spirit Barbie

I hung up the phone with her and tried to quell the panic attack beginning in my mind. 

I had just invited someone I had very little in common with to be my mentor. If I had not felt God tell me to do this, I would wonder if I had gone mad. 

She is like Holy Spirit Barbie. So beautiful and Christ-like you want to play with her, but God is already busy moving her around and blessing her with a "Dream". Or so she sometimes seems to me. 

I know this is not the case...not really, but my skewed opinions of myself projects onto her more value than I give myself and I know this is just one of the things God wants to change through this relationship. 

At this invitation I now will enter the realm of accountability and change. On the surface this sounds honorable and noble and completely benign. In my head my "self" begins to scream one long "Noooooooo!" 

The problem is this new mentoring relationship will begin to peel back the layers of all the things I have held onto most of my life. "My" identity will be exposed and I will have to truly choose to either hold on to the old version of me or welcome the changes that will come. 

Let's Examine This

Unpacking the fear I have, I turn it over and examine it. 

I have been asking God to change me into His image for over a year now. He has been faithful and done so much. Why then, when He prompts me to foster a new relationship that will allow someone I admire speak into my life on a regular basis, do I suddenly want to run as fast as I can in the opposite direction? 

I do not fear the result. I want to look more like Jesus. 

I do not fear the time it will take, I have plenty of it.  

I fear the pain. The pain of letting go of the lies I have chosen to believe about myself for years. 

I fear the ugly. The ugly of mid-metamorphosis.... no change from one thing into another is pretty. With this relationship there will be someone there, up close, seeing all those ugly bits of me I have tried to keep hidden. 

Exposed

On my recent trip to Guatemala, God spoke some powerful things, and one of the things He said was this: 

"How long will I have to convince you that you are chosen? Stop it! Stop with the defensive comments and let down the wall you hide behind. Stop it!" 

With those words, spoken through someone I now consider a friend, I wept. I actually bawled....ugly cried...in public.

Immediately after that word, someone else said this: "I feel like God is saying 'Tell her she is my favorite and she can't say anything snarky about it'"  

"Snarky" is how I describe myself. So I knew this was God and when God exposes your mask, it begins to get real....fast! 

I was wrecked by God's love slamming into me and challenging me to let Him have my brokenness.

Obedience is Better than Sacrifice

That night I just soaked it in, or tried to. Some things God lets marinate before He holds you to walking through the Refiner's fire. I thought I was doing better. I thought I had pruned out the snide and snarky comments about myself. 

After I hung up from the conversation with my new mentor, my best friend - who was with me - turned to me and said "This is a good thing. I am glad you are doing this, because while you have been "better" about not putting yourself down as much, you have still done it and that is disobedience." 

Slapped in the face by the Holy Spirit. That stung. 

The truth is this is more than just "changing a bad habit". This is open heart surgery. I could go through the motions and learn to have more decorum, or speak less harshly about myself, but as long as I still think the same way, it would all be just another mask I put on. My heart would be the same. 

God is faithful to finish what He began in Guatemala...of this I am certain. The Word says in Philippians 1:6 (AMP) "And I am convinced and sure of this very thing, that He Who began a good work in you will continue until the day of Jesus Christ [right up to the time of His return], developing [that good work] and perfecting and bringing it to full completion in you."

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