"...and whatever he did the Lord made it succeed." Genesis 39:23

Have you ever had a season in your life when it seemed like no matter how hard you worked you never seemed to get anywhere? You pour yourself out all day every day and somehow none of it makes any bit of difference?

The last three or four years have been like that for me. I have had big hopes and dreams and desires but none of them have been successful or fulfilling, in fact all of them have been frustratingly impossible. I feel like a race horse that keeps slamming its body up against a gate that just won't open.

I have been praying for insight and wisdom about this for a while now and none of it has made any sense to me until this weekend. My family and I were at our church retreat and our pastor was praying over our entire congregation for healing, inner spiritual and outer physical healing. While he was praying the Lord gave me a vision of my hands tightly gripping and desperately holding on to something. I knew immediately that I was supposed to open up my hands not only fully extended but over extended so that everything in my hands would spill out on to the floor. My dream house in the Hamptons that we're now selling, my art studios that I never have the time to work in, my novel that I've been writing for years, my gardens that either don't get any sun or the deer eat them or my nyc neighbors dig them up and take them, my dream of living outside of the city somewhere in nature with trees and water and birds and gardens and all of the things that heal my soul, my career as an artist, my difficult and struggling marriage, my motherhood, my emotions, my entire life. I was supposed to let go of all of it, and let it spill out onto the floor and onto the feet of Jesus.

The next morning God gave me so much insight into why life has become so difficult. Lately I have been telling people that it felt like God gave me everything I have ever wanted, all at once, and it had ruined me. He gave me the house, the miracle baby, the husband, the career as an artist, gardens both at the house and in the city, so much goodness all at once and yet it was like an atomic bomb was dropped on my life and bits and pieces of it went everywhere. It was chaotic, it was unmanageable. I was exhausted all the time and nothing made sense. Until this weekend...

During Matt Scogin's sermon at the retreat, He made us aware of a concept I had never heard before and that is that it is possible to enter the promised land without the presence of God. He said that Moses faced this possibility in Exodus 33 but that he refused to go without the Lord. "If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?" Ex 33:15-16

If you've been reading my blog lately then you know that I have been reading through the entire bible in the order that it is written in an effort to become bible literate. I am still currently in Genesis and already it is abundantly clear that those who have found favor in the sight of God are those whom He blesses. It has already become very clear that with God's presence and favor there is great success but without Him nothing succeeds.

How did I forget this? With God all things are possible. Without him you can do nothing. 

I used to know it well but somewhere along the way I got tired of waiting. I wanted my milk and honey more than I wanted God's presence and so God allowed me to get ahead of Him, and go out on my own. The problem with this is that without God's presence and blessing, the promised land is nothing but a miserable, crumbling, facade. 

It's time to allow the city we built without God to be leveled. It's time to repair and restructure it's foundation and to rebuild slowly, only as the Lord leads. This time I want God's presence all over it! Instead of tall trees I want full sun! Instead of abundance I want simplicity! Instead of many I want few. Instead of success I want rest. Instead of luxury I want joy. Instead of perfect I want peace.

Stay tuned...this race horse is leaving the race and heading out to pasture to run wild and free for a while. 

KSW