All That You Have Not Yet Been

Thank God for being able to see all that you have not yet been. You have had the vision, but you are not yet to the reality of it by any means. It is when we are in the valley, where we prove whether we will be the choice ones, that most of us turn back. We are not quite prepared for the bumps and bruises that must come if we are going to be turned into the shape of the vision. We have seen what we are not, and what God wants us to be, but are we willing to be battered into the shape of the vision to be used by God?
The beatings will always come in the most common, everyday ways and through common, everyday people.

There are times when we do know what God’s purpose is; whether we will let the vision be turned into actual character depends on us, not on God. If we prefer to relax on the mountaintop and live in the memory of the vision, then we will be of no real use in the ordinary things of which human life is made. We have to learn to live in reliance upon what we saw in the vision, not simply live in ecstatic delight and conscious reflection upon God. This means living the realities of our lives in the light of the vision until the truth of the vision is actually realized in us. Every bit of our training is in that direction. Learn to thank God for making His demands known.

Our little “I am” always sulks and pouts when God says do. Let your little “I am” be shriveled up in God’s wrath and indignation–”I AM WHO I AM . . . has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14). He must dominate. Isn’t it piercing to realize that God not only knows where we live, but also knows the gutters into which we crawl! He will hunt us down as fast as a flash of lightning. No human being knows human beings as God does.

- Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest 

I feel like today's excerpt from My Utmost essentially summarizes the condition of my inner life for the last five years... five years that have left me feeling old but not very wise, five years in the valley, five years of the battering, the commonplace with the common people, five years of triumphs and failures and struggles with demands that have pummeled my will and forced me to choose: surrender or turn back.

Anyone who knows me well (particularly my husband and parents) will be the first to say that my strong will is one of the most intrinsic pieces of who I am. It is both a blessing and a curse, although at this stage of my life it often feels more like the latter. As a little girl it got me a lot of spankings, and in more recent years, a lot of lessons learned the hard way. I would like to think I've grown in the area of surrendering and submitting. Any wife out there know that being married takes this to a whole new level, but I have to say it's in my relationship with God that I find the struggle most fierce. 

There is my will, and then there is the will of my Father. Sometimes these two coincide and often they clash somewhere deep down inside where I choose to turn back in preservation of my plan and my will or to move forward in blind faith and obedience. I feel like recently I have grown better at sucking it up, taking the demand and keeping my mouth shut. But is this really surrender? 

That statement, "Learn to thank God for His demands" kind of stopped me in my tracks. Thank Him for His demands? Thank Him for the battering? 

Is it possible that my little will could be absorbed into His great vision, my little "I am" shriveled up into His great "I AM", until surrender becomes second nature, a habit, a practice learned by surrender after surrender, step after step, trust upon trust? Is it possible to be happily dominated by His will? To find peace and joy in the valley? To be grateful for the way He consistently hunts me down and pulls me out of every hiding place and brings me out into the open, into the harsh light of self-awareness? To find Him and see what He is doing in the commonplace, the common frustrations, the everyday people and places? 

This is life, this is where the vision gets worked out in each of us, this is where the character comes. And "thank God for being able to see all that we have not yet been."