Ask Me

Before this week even started I was struggling.  Sunday night, sitting in darkness on my closet floor, I had reached the point where I couldn't continue down the road I was.  I called a friend of whom I demanded too much, I had talked with someone who I expected to fix me and couldn't, and so as I sat against my wall (I tend to sit in my closet a lot to think...judge me if you must ;) ) and I saw two paths ahead of me.  I had to decide which one I was going to choose.  Both required sacrifice, one was immediate, one long term.

A friend once told me that whenever life was difficult, he noticed it was during those times he hadn't been reading his bible.  When he'd open up the book again, even though much of it wasn't directly applicable to his life,  life would progressively become better.  That thought always stuck with me, and I have found so much truth in that statement.  It's not that reading the bible will magically make life "easy" or that not reading it will make life hard, but there's something about taking time to connect with our Creator that begins to shift our hearts.

Monday morning I got out my bible and read.  I read and read.  Every morning this week I read a couple verses before leaving for school, and I found myself reciting them throughout my day when things got difficult, when insecurities filtered in, when fears started to seep into my blood, when the stress tried to squeeze my lungs.  I can't even begin to tell you the difference it had.  This week was one of the most intensive this semester in terms of exams, homework assignments, etc. but it was different than before.  It didn't seem unbearable because I didn't have to do it alone. 

I went to church tonight, and the message was one I had been needing to hear.  Have you ever started drinking something and only then realized just how parched you are?  You guzzle down the liquid and don't ever feel like you could get enough?  Maybe you drink soda, but you end up even more thirsty.  You drink lemonade, but it's too sweet.  You drink coffee, but it gives you a headache.  You drink and drink and drink but nothing fully satisfies you.

And then you drink ice. cold. water. and you feel the flood of satisfaction fill your mouth, you feel the liquid meander down your esophagus, quenching your whole body--it even seems to reach the tips of your fingers and the tips of your toes.  

After not being in church for a very long time, that first worship song was the satisfaction of water quenching my thirst...a thirst I didn't realize how deep it ran.  

The pastor tonight focused on Matthew 9:37-38 where Jesus is talking about how the harvest is plenty but the laborers are sparse.  I can't capture the essence of what he wrote, but it reminded me of something a friend had told me this week--to always keep our eyes on Jesus.  I had been thinking about that pretty intensely this week, and this message connected so well with that. 

I can't do the sermon justice, so the notes I scribbled down on my bulletin will have to do.  Much of the thoughts below are credited to the pastor who spoke tonights sermon.

If you imagine how big the galaxy is, how many galaxies there are, you feel so incredibly small.  If you think of all the people in this world, the billions of lives you will never be able to help, you will never be able to reach, you can't fully love, you will feel helpless.  This thought has overwhelmed me so many times, I have gotten so frustrated because I can't do all that I want to do, can't help everyone I want to help, can't be there or be the person that every one needs to be happy.  It sounds silly, but it's a hard concept for me to accept because I just want people to know love.  

So when this massive realization that you will never be enough hits, it's hard to take as a person who has a perfectionistic tendency to here.  It may, you might say, have her ending up sitting in the dark of her closet floor utterly broken.  It may have the vines of fear, stress, self defeat, seeping up around her, wrapping their scaly branches around her, trying to bring her down. This is where the two paths are realized, a choice must be made.  Either let the vines over take her as she struggles to be free, or surrender to the One who can set her free.  But she has to admit she can't do it alone.  She has to admit she needs help.

Sometimes we forget how BIG our God is.  Spiritual amnesia.  We once knew, but we forgot.  Like the galaxies, the billions of people on earth, problems can seem unbearable.  Unfathomable to fix.  But God says, don't fear the problem is to big, don't say 'woe is me', don't say I have to do it on my own but the problem is too much for me, no!  Child, ASK ME!  

Ask the Lord of the harvest for laborers to the harvest.  We need only ask.

His ability, our availability.

I have always had a difficult time in relationships because I was afraid of going all in because the other person might not go all in.  I wanted the assurance that I could trust them, and for some reason, I struggle believing that someone would willingly go all in for me.  That I could go all in for them and know they would be all in for me.  I may believe that they like me, or that they'll be kind, or that maybe they have a gut feeling it might work out, but was that enough?  I don't like putting my trust in a feeling.  Feelings come and go, how could I trust that?  But as the pastor reminded us tonight,

Jesus didn't just say he'd save us.  Jesus didn't just say he loves us.  You don't just see it in a feeling that he had, you see it by the crown of thorns on his head, the nails in his hands, the nails in his feet, the spear in his side.  He is ALL IN.

I can't fathom that love, I don't fully understand it, I can't comprehend the massiveness of our God, but isn't that part of the beauty?  We don't have to carry the whole world on our shoulders.  We don't have to fix ourselves or expect others to fix us.  We need only keep our eyes on Him.  Like a father watching his child struggle to open a jar of honey, he waits for us to ask Him for help.  He delights in us, He desires to show us His strength, He waits and waits, all the while saying,

Ask me!