Silence rose steadily with the sun as I sat, knees and face pressed to the floor in prayer.
All the while, birds whispered their peacefulness into nature, and God spoke into my situation.
Murmurs climaxed from my mouth and pierced the still air. I pleaded with God to amend the path He had resolved for me – but His voice was clear.
He told me the wilderness season I had been walking in for the past year was going to persist.
Confounded, the first word liberated itself from my mouth:
“No.”
Followed by another,
“No.”
Each expression gave the next permission to march forth with a crescendoing cadence: “No, no, no! NO!“
Breaking like a wave on rocks, cognition lit up my mind. The thought of wandering, like so many Israelites in the desert, not inheriting the promises of God, felt impossible to overcome.
For months, I’ve held myself together with the hope of eventually reaching some manner of breakthrough; some sort of better-ness, enough-ism.
But on that morning of prayer, the other shoe fell.
A feeling of insufficiency sank its teeth deep into my skin, and my internal reservoir of positive self-talk seemed particularly dry and meaningless.
During the eight months of Adventures in Missions’ discipleship program, I was stripped of everything I could possibly take pride in. It wasn’t until I was naked, feeling the vulnerability of soft skin on hard exterior circumstances, that I realized I was losing the ability to cover myself up.
Since I can remember, I’ve tried to keep people at a distance using the proverbial “stiff arm” approach to life. If you grasped any amount of my true identity, it was most likely from observation – not from my own mouth.
When asked how he fooled so many people for so long, Tiger Woods’ used these words to explain his sex scandal:
“I fooled myself.”
In a similar vein, I’m beginning to realize the stiff arm I used against so many others was also extended to myself.
The many years of layering on more and more distractions, achievements, and elements of finesse has caused an uncomfortable squirm to work its way through my body with each new unveiling of the “true me” – the one Jesus wants to know, love, and marry, apparently.
Laying down faux identities, costumes, and styles has forced me to come to terms with the fact that, perhaps, I’m not particularly truthful, in spite of my honesty.
If you would like to continue reading, the rest of the article can be found here:
http://www.tobetruth.com/single-post/2017/07/26/Naked-and-Fully-Ashamed
