I was reading over some of my journal entries from this summer and found one that I really want to share with all of you. It really spoke to my heart right now, as I hope it does yours. It's funny how easily we forget the lessons that we learn, how easily we throw aside the pearls that God gives us, the trials that He puts us through, and cling instead to the ugly shells of who we once were.
God, clean me out, tear me down, and pour into me instead the fullness of who you are.
June 24, 2011:
"I've had the song by Addison Road stuck in my head lately, What Do I Know Of Holy? The line in the song that says, 'Where have I even stood, but the shore along your ocean?' always gets in my head when I look out over the vast expanse of ocean here at Ocean City. It's so huge- and scary and unknown. I can never see, feel, or understand the whole ocean and that's how big God is- but even more so.
I will never comprehend His love, His power, His glory. I will spend my whole life trying, but I will never measure up. I will never be an ocean. I won't even be a puddle or a drop in the sea. I will only ever be one tiny grain of sand. A speck of dust that falls between the fingers of a vast eternity. I am nothing except what God makes me. It's humbling. It makes me want to fall on my knees and weep.
How easy it is for us to magnify our sand castles, to think we are making something great out of ourselves, something worth God's mighty attention. We forget, until one of His waves comes crashing down around us and the tide erases whatever brief forged royalty we claimed to have, humbling us before the one True King. I built my house on sand and God washed it away.
What would my faith look like, how much more glory would I direct to the King of Kings if I lived with a remembrance of this daily? What if I daily, physically bowed myself before the Lord? What if I tore down my cheap sandy altars and threw away my pride and reputation to the tide of His waves of mercy? What is faith that I could call myself an heir to the King? I am wretched. I am unworthy. I am a spec of dust. I can only pray daily that His love washes over me and kills my castles in the sand. I want to be a part of something greater than me, greater than my mind, greater than anything I could comprehend or imagine. I want to dive into His very self. I love the ocean."
Psalm 139:17-18
"How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand..."
Micah 7:19
"He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea."
The part that always gets me is this; everything you just said is absolutely true, none of us on our own is anything more than a grain of sand in the grand scheme of things, dust in the wind you might say. And yet.... He has numbered the hairs on your head. He loves us more than any of his other creations, to the point that he gave his own Son over to death as the perfect sacrifice. That thought gets me every time. Not to mention that fact that with Him, with a little faith, that grain of sand can move mountains.....
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