Luminous

Chapter 1: Inside Out
Ezekiel 36:26: I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

Raise your hand if you felt personally victimized by the year 2020? If your hand didn’t go up, then you are a better Christian than me. Even if you didn’t feel this way, I am guessing that at some point in the year 2020 you stopped, looked around, maybe even got on your face before the Lord, and asked “why?” I don’t have the answers to the why’s that you have asked and may even still be asking. What I do know, is that God is the author and finisher of our faith and He wants to do a good work in you. A very personal good work that is specific to your life, your character, and your heart. This is internal work that is not for the faint of heart. Ezekiel 36:26 talks about how God will put a new spirit in you. When we repent and accept Jesus as our savior we receive the free gift of the Holy Spirit. The same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives in you and desires to fill you, guide you, advocate for you and refine you. He will change your way of thinking and He will renew your mind. He will change your heart from stone to a heart that is mailable, open, and able to receive Him and all He has for you. From this place, all of the fruits of the spirit flow out. He is willing and ready to change you from the inside out.
It sounds good, doesn’t it? We all want the fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness and self-control. We want holiness, goodness, and loveliness in our lives. We want peace and wisdom. We want hope and a future. Sure, these are the things that we want but how do we get them? How do we get to a place in our lives where this is the absolute truth when everything around us is crashing? How do we come from a place of rest and peace? The Bible says that His yolk is easy and His burden is light (Matthew 11:28-30). I don’t know about you, but for so much of my life, I didn’t feel this. The burden was heavy and the word peace felt like a joke. It’s not a joke. God wants this for all of His children, but the way that we get there will look different for us all. There is a season in life that many refer to as a “desert” or “wilderness”. I thought that 2020 was this for me, but when I look back over my life these last few years I see that this season started years ago. 2020 just happened to be the year that kicked off “peak wilderness season”.
I’ll never forget the moment that this got called out in front of me. I honestly had no idea what I was going through but I knew it was uncharted territory. I was beginning to feel at a loss of how to continue to navigate the space that I was in. I was sitting in my counselor’s office spouting off about all the seemingly random things that were happening in my life and she all of a sudden stopped me. She looked at me and said, “You are in the wilderness”. At the time I thought, ok, sure, if that means I feel lost, alone, and afraid, can’t hear or see God anywhere around me, then yes I suppose I am. She was right, I was. I may still be coming out of it as I’m writing. I can begin to write about it because I’m starting to see the other side. There are visible glimpses of the Promised Land that He has for me. The funny thing is that going into this season, I thought I was doing great. I thought I had it together. I thought I was following Jesus and the plans He has for me. I was wrong. We are blind to our impurities until God exposes them and we have nowhere to hide.
Several weeks ago I was picking my kids up from school and as I strapped my daughter in I saw a new bracelet on her wrist. I said, “When did you get this bracelet?” She said, “oh this (pointing to it), grandma bought it for me yesterday.” It had tiny beads spelling out a word woven together with other colorful beads around it. I asked her what the word was and she shrugged her shoulders and said “it’s a big word, can you help me read it? I read it. The word was luminous. I said it out loud and made a big deal, emphasizing all of the sounds of the word, using a silly voice as I said it. She laughed and so did my son who was sitting next to her. As I went back to my seat on the driver's side and strapped myself in I kept repeating the word luminous. I just kept thinking what a random word that was to be on my 5 year olds wrist.