It's been a long time...but I'm feeling reflective as I sit in my floor lounge with 5 other girls surrounding me. The big obnoxious over-hanging light is off and replaced with flashing Christmas lights and a table lamp. All is quiet as most of the girls are studying. Occassionally we brake out into laughter about things that probably wouldn't be funny if it wasn't the last day of finals. I love these girls.
It's been a great semester. I've been healthy and not over loaded with work. I've made amazing new friends and worked through a few bumps with Aaron. It's been incredible to see God's sovereignty in all of those things.
I recently started reading a book by John Piper called Future Grace. I'm not super bright and sometimes I have to read a sentence 2 or 3 times to understand it, but it's been quite challening. Yesterday I read a chapter called Four Pillars of a Precious Promise. Piper walked through his exegesis of Romans 8:28-30. He paints a picture of watching skyscrapers being built in Minneapolis. He recalls -
"watching a mammoth mechanized scoop sit in the middle of an empty lot and dig a hole deeper than many of the other buildings were tall. The foundation wall at the edge of the hole must have been 6 or 7 stories underground. The principle is simple: the taller the building is going to be aboveground to serve people, the deeper and stronger the foundation has to be underground to serve the building...
"If you live inside this massive promise [of Romans 8:28-30], your life is more solid and stable than Mount Everest. Nothing can blow you over when you are inside the walls of Romans 8:28. Outside Romans 8:28 all is confusion and anxiety and fear and uncertainty...Once you walk through the door of love into the massive, unshakable structure of Romans 8:28, everything changes. There come into you life stability and depth and freedom. You simply can't be blown over any more...
"The confidence that a sovereign God governs for your good all the pain and all the pleausre that you will ever experience is an incomparable refuge and securty and hope and power in your life."
When I read that it was like I ran into a brick wall. There was so much pain and hurt in the girls' lives on my floor this semester. There was a period of time where I didn't think I would make it.
When life comes crashing in, it's almost like we forget everything we know about God.
Last weekend was our choir concert. Saturday night, the 3rd and last performance of the weekend, I panicked. I didn't play piano very well at all and at one point I remember being so thrown off that I literally forgot everything I knew about music. I couldn't remember what song I was playing, I didn't know what key it was in, what notes to play, and even where to place my hands. Somehow I got back on track and only missed about 2 measures. But those 2 measures were awful.
I think thats what happens when we aren't routed in God's promise of Him working everything out for our good. Something tragic happens, we loose focus in the mundane routine of everyday life, bad news comes, and all of a sudden we panic. We forget that God is sovereign. We forget that God loves us. And as a result we try to live life on our own.
I don't know about you, but when I go through times like that, it's like I'm living in a dream. Nothing seems real. Life's pain seems so severe that even eating a meal takes hard work. I drift through life feeling anxious and depressed, wondering why life is so hard.
And then a miracle happens. Out of nowhere, God gives me faith again. Just as God sovereignly helped me remember the things I needed to in order to finish playing that piece, He sovereignly gives me faith to believe His promises again and come to a point of surrendering my stubborn will.
But Piper's imagery of the deep foundations for those buildings really hit me hard. What's the cause of those times we loose faith? Why do we panic when hard times come? Why do we believe life is spiraling out of control, when in reality those hard things are part of God's plan for our lives? Why do we think our plan is better? Why don't we run to Christ when pain comes instead of trying to take control ourselves?
I think it's because our foundation isn't deep enough. Our roots are weak. When life is easy, we think we don't need God and our focus gets off. When I get too comfortable with a music piece, I loose focus. I begin thinking about the audience or a funny situation that happened before we walked on stage. And because of that, I mess up. Badly. When our focus gets off God because we think "I've got this" we fail. Life comes hard and fast and we fall.
This isn't to say that keeping our focus on Christ and establishing deep roots even when life is good means that life will always be good. In fact, sometimes life seems to get worse when we cling to Jesus. But thats just the point. Whether life is easy or life is hard, we have Someone to cling too. This Someone is more dependable, more reliable, more promise-keeping than anybody you know. This Someone is Jesus.
When a building's foundation is deep, it can be tall. When I focus on playing piano, I can play well. I when depend on Jesus and stay "routed and established in faith," then I can always have hope, whether for myself or to share with others who are hurting.
Thats what I learned this semester. Whether I was hurting personally or holding someone else up under their pain, the importance of continuing in the ways of God is priceless. There is always hope with Jesus. Always. Thats why we must always stay rooted deeply in the promises of God.
Imagine being so grounded in the ways of Jesus that no sickness, no all-nighters doing homework, no annoying dorm mates, no straying family members, no financial inadequacy, no death would shake you. That's how strong Jesus' promise is. That's how high and wide and deep and long is His love.
Oh how I long to have that kind of faith.
