For a good nineteen years of my life I have perpetually heard the phrase, "God grabbed hold of my life"…in some form or another. I guess time and time again those words began to chip away at me, to a point where I would hear it and immediately brush it off. In all honestly I had no idea what it meant. I've grown up in the ministry and am very familiar with the things you say in order to make people believe you are super spiritual, and in turn became immune to those lines that were actually sincere, and meant something.
I had no idea what God grabbing hold of my life would look like. It was just a weird visual for me. I see everything in my mind and for God to be reaching down to me and taking my life and doing something with it on his OWN terms just did not calculate. I suppose I always figured that it was a wonderful thing. Something wonderful that seemed, to me, unattainable.
But I was wrong. I had no idea or could ever define what it's like. Not in exact terms, anyway.
See…God grabbing hold of my life had been pretty bloody. A messy, ugly thing. If you are a visual person, let me offer you this – My chest had been torn open, and everything has been exposed. This huge interrogation light is now shining into my core. And everyone can see why I suck at life….how sinful I am. Especially – especially
me! I have no place to hide.
Looking back (not very far back, but in retrospect nonetheless), I don't see how I thought I could get away with doing things my own way. However, this all stems from the fact that I never really got God "grabbing hold" of something – much less, me. I underestimated his ability to pull the carpet from underneath my feet. Once that happened, I began to grieve. I grieved for my life, for my desires, for all of the things I had wanted and planned for my life. But as days went by, I began to grieve in a different way. I grieved for time wasted, relationships withering away, for my purity.
Paul writes in Romans 7:13, "Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful."
The good that I should have been doing isn't what hurts, it's sin exposed by the good…that's what kills me. As the Holy Spirit draws nearer, it reveals more and more how dirty I am.
I don't know what happens next. I don't know what God has for me. As of now my plans and ideas for my life are slowing being thrown into the fire, and it feels like the worst thing ever. I feel like I'm starting over. All the things I thought I knew, I'm learning how to do them again. But it's all part of this thing called God grabbing a hold on my life, I guess.
