I AM...AND THAT IS ALL I WANT TO BE

I have been on a journey these past few months; one that has taken me back to the beginnings of my Spiritual Journey over forty plus years ago.  I reconnected with folks who knew me at a time I felt I was at my best.  Folks who knew me before many events that proved harmful to me and sent me out into a wilderness alone, a wilderness that I feel I have finally walked out of and have met up with the me that I remember when I really was who I am;  the me I liked and enjoyed being around.

My wilderness experience had some similarities to the original one led by Moses.  In my Egypt I wasn’t enslaved building a city for the Pharos.  In my Egypt I was invited to help build the Church of God.  Eventually I discovered that I had really been ensnared to help build the church of man, actually several men.  After a time of disillusionment, deceit, discouragement and spiritual abuse, I left.  The first leaving was actually being excommunicated and shunned by my church family of seven years.  The two times that followed (2 different groups of church builders) I left on my own accord with the leading and encouragement of God.  I found myself on a journey into and through the wilderness with God as my only companion.  It was a time of disorientation, of grumbling, of anger, of wanting vengeance, of sadness, of distrust, and confusion.  But looking back today I wouldn’t have wanted it any different.

Coming out on the other side I saw how God had loved me and provided for me in spite of all my cantankerousness.  I was fed by Him, given water to quench my thirst, and loved even when I was unlovable.  He truly knew my heart, overlooked my faults and poured out love on my need.  When I wandered away in the wrong direction he let me go but was never far away when I was ready to return.  The time of scorching heat slowly burned away the anger and my desire for vengeance.  With everything stripped away my orientation toward God’s Way, Truth, and Life became certain and clear.  The grace and mercy, the provision and protection that God freely gave me eventually ceased my grumbling and turned my sadness into joy.  He walked every step in the wilderness with me and His Presence became my Promise Land.  I am eternally grateful.

The Egypt I left to go into the wilderness hasn’t changed much.  Some of the issues are still there, being worked out now by others.  But I have changed.  I have changed and remember when I really was who I am.  I am God’s child, “born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor the will of man, but of God.  I am a sinner that Jesus died on a cross for so I could be reconciled to God, and then resurrected from the dead to give me new life forever.  I am indwelt by the Holy Spirit who shows me daily, step by step the way to go as I follow Jesus and walk with God.

No thing, no one, no power or principality can ever take my life in God away.

I am…made in the likeness of my heavenly Father and that is all I ever want to be.