Day 20

My first 20 days have been really great. I'm learning a ton and am SO enjoying this season of focused time with God. I've had some definite "AHA" moments in terms of how important it is to receive God's love for me and making adjustments to my life vision and how I measure success.

I think that I was hoping that my transformation is now complete and I can just enjoy the rest of internship. But, yesterday I started having some of my old tired feelings and realized that I had fallen back into some of my old perfectionist and performance mentalities. I was feeling frustrated and I started journaling. Here are some of the questions that I asked God:

How do I go hard in my pursuit of God without falling into "striving", or trying to perfect myself through works?

How do I get rid of my perfectionist and performance mentality?

As I am trying to purify my thought life and my heart by exercising self-control, how do I avoid legalism?

What does it look like to walk in freedom before the LORD?

God reminded me that my new life vision is to do my best to love Him wholeheartedly and to obey His word every day. In my enthusiasm for getting rid of compromise, I forgot that my goal is to continue cultivating my relationship with Jesus. When my goal changed to getting rid of compromise, it became really easy to start measuring my success and worth by how much progress I made. Whereas when I am focusing on loving God and letting Him love me, I also want to get rid of the areas in my life where I am compromising, but that is not my main focus.

I also talked with my parents and my dad helped me to see that I was falling into all-or-nothing thinking again. Either I can go hard and strive to "be perfect, as God is perfect" OR I have to stop trying at all. The truth is that God has given me self-control and He wants me to exercise it. But, He also knows that I am unable to change myself and no matter how hard I work, I cannot make myself like Him.

In addition to this, Corey Russell spoke at FCF yesterday and He talked about "eating the scroll" or spending lots of time reading and meditating on the Bible.

Then the voice which I heard from heaven, I heard again speaking with me, and saying, "Go, take the book which is open in the hand of the angel who stands on the sea and on the land." So, I went to the angel, telling him to give me the little book. And he said to me, "Take it and eat it; it will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey." Revelation 10:8-9

Corey talked about how when we "eat the Word", it gives us joy. God wants it to be our chief delight. And, it is bitter to our stomach or our flesh. It brings the "sword that divides soul and spirit" (Hebrews 4:12) to demolish strongholds, breath through addictions, destroy faulty foundations and deliver me from fantasy. Corey gave the example of how in Extreme Home Makeover's, the first thing they do is tear the old house down to the foundation. I think that there is stuff in me that needs to be torn down, but I'm not exactly sure what it is.

So in response to both of these things, I'm resubmitting myself to God's leadership and I'm committing again to meditate deeply on the Scriptures. I want God's word to send down deep roots in my soul. I want to focus on loving God wholeheartedly and trust that the Holy Spirit will reveal and remove those areas of compromise as I love God and feed myself on the Word. Again, I have to remind myself that this is a process and just enjoy God along the way.