How can I Morning after morning Wrap myself in All this glory And not open my Mouth to praise?
by Alesha Sinks
So often I find myself overwhelmed by the beauty of nature. And yet, so often I fail to step forward into the intended result of awe and wonder…worship.
Isn’t that the purpose of creation?
”The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” Psalm 19:1 (NIV)
“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” Romans 1:20 (NIV)
In the Psalms, there are examples upon examples of the writer praising God, inspired by and in awe of the glory of God’s creation.
“How many are your works, LORD! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.” Psalm 104:24
“For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;” Psalm 95:3-6
Yet so many mornings I hurry, feet pounding across weather pavement, stechting out to reach the sunrise. And when I get there, when I reach the oceans edge with the early light rippling across the waves, when I stand still and breathless at the beauty in front of me, I forget to do the very thing for which my soul was made.
I forget to do the very thing for which my soul was made.
I forget to take my awe of creation and let it lead me into awe of the Creator.
And that’s true of a little million moments throughout my days. watching pure joy radiate from my son’s face when that one shaft of light slips through the living room blinds the first glorious sip of coffee a peaceful moment, book in hand a friend reaching out in love and encouragement that one song playing right, exactly when I needed to hear it a cool breeze stirring through the hot evening air, summoning us to rest
How often do these moements slip through my grasp, our grasp, awakening joy and peace and hope and beauty, but failing to turn our hearts in gratitude toward their Giver.
I’m practicing. Practicing awareness in the moment. Practicing giving a practical, out-loud or a quiet, whispered-in-my-heart “thank you God” when I am surprised by joy. Praciticing reflection on blessings at the end of the day or the week or the month and practicing offering my thanks to God then. Practicing to make a seamless turn from “Wow, how beautiful” into “God, You are so beautiful”.
I’m practicing to make a seamless turn from “Wow, how beautiful” into “God, You are so beautiful”.
Will you practice with me? Will you join me in allowing the beauty around us to not just catch our eyes or our hearts, but to turn our hearts toward God?
My prayer for us today is…
Let the beauty we encounter daily lead us to worship.
So we’re three Monday’s into the New Year and maybe we’re just starting to realize that a New Year and a few resolutions jotted into a fresh planner doesn’t automatically result in a new you. A new me.
Maybe you started this year full of hopes and dreams and prayers that this year would be different. Prayers that a change in the calendar would bring that change into your life you’ve been waiting for. That a shift in the date would bring a shift in the winds of life, a shift in the temperature of your soul.
How many of us have started this new year wanting nothing more than to make a clean break with 2018 and step into 2019 fresh and full and vibrant and new?
But maybe, as the weeks of this year have begun ticking past and a steadily increasing pace, you’re finding the fresh and full and vibrant and new of a new year escaping you. You want a fresh start and a clean break, but you can’t seem to get there.
You want to leave 2018 in the dust, but it is the dust and the dust is in your hair and your clothes and probably your mouth too, because dust tends to just get everywhere and hang on.
I feel you. And it’s okay.
Because we can’t always walk into fresh and free as easily as turning a page on our calendar. The past clings to us and all the new and different we can muster can't completely shake off the dust of past mistakes, past hurts, past regrets, past pain, past loss, past heartache, past decisions, past moments that hang on as memories, whether we invite them or not.
Maybe today already, just three short weeks into this fresh start, you’re feeling the pain of the past clouding your fresh start.
This year, like most every new year, I’m tempted to think that this is the year. New year, new season, new me.
But I also know the truth. There is no new me without a dying of me.
Let me say that again. Differently.
There is no new me in the new year without me dying to myself in the new year.
Dying to old habits. Dying to old thought patterns. Dying to old fears and insecurities. Dying to my selfishness and self-absorbed tendencies. Dying to a purpose of living for me so that I can come alive to my God-given purpose.
And Ann Voskamp says it best…
“There is no growth without change, no change without surrender, no surrender without wound—no abundance without breaking. Wounds are what break open the soul to plant the seeds of a deeper growth.” The Broken Way: A Daring Path into the Abundant Life
And a new you in the new year might not sound so wonderful when you stop to take a hard look at what it takes to make you new.
It took a Savior, leaving heaven’s perfection to wrap himself in earth’s fragility.
It took a God-man stepping into our wrong and shame and bearing it all on His perfect shoulders.
It took Jesus, the flawless sacrifice, allowing His body to be broken so that our brokenness might be healed.
And not just healed, but repurposed for glory. His glory.
This new you might sound hard and ugly and painful. But it is worth it.
This brokenness, this dying to self, is nothing to fear. See we don’t become new and whole and healed by ignoring the past, the pain, the struggle. We don’t become new by doing a hard reset on everything we don’t like about our lives with the flip of a calendar page.
We become new by allowing the brokenness to come and taking the brokenness to the Healer.
We become new by dying to ourselves, our rights, our opinions, our privileges, our desires, so that in our dying we can be made new.
If you are plunging forward into this new year just hoping against hope begging God for a fresh start for a new beginning for a chance to leave the pain of the past in the year that’s gone or maybe wondering how to leave the dust and pain of the past behind when it is clinging so tightly to every broken piece of you remember that all you need to bring into this new year is your brokenness.
Be brave enough to bring your brokenness into 2019 and take it to God who is the Great Healer.
There is healing in the brokenness.
There is growth.
There is change and abundance.
There is a new you.
But it is not found by ignoring the past.
It’s found by digging into it with the One who is in the business of redeeming broken pasts. The One Who is in the business of taking death and turning it into life. It’s found by allowing yourself to be more fully broken, so that all the bits of you that need to be left behind can die, and so that God can pull beauty from the ashes, refashioning the broken bits of you and me into beauty and glory and…new.
{If you have more questions for me on this topic or are curious about this God Who restores and redeems brokenness, feel free to email me by clicking the mail icon in my blog header. I’m praying that you can, through your brokenness and God’s help, become the new you that God desires to form you into, in this new year.}
I sat on the park bench watching. Watching my husband chase our three year old up and down the ramps and slides. Watching our one year old climb up and down the slide. Watching older kids run past shouting and laughing. Watching the overcast sky fade from pale grey to dark gray.
The breeze was light, but just cool enough to feel that first hint of fall.
I looked around, feeling that warm-but-not-hot air and the ever-so-slightly-cool breeze winding around me. I had forgotten.
In the long, hot months of Florida summer, I had forgotten that another season would come. And I had forgotten how wonderful it is when it does.
I sat there silently marveling. Marveling that somehow I could forget that summer would be over and the heat would fade and we could go outside in the evening into the most perfect weather. Marveling that I could somehow forget that the heaviness of summer heat and humidity would be replaced by the lightness of a cool sunny day. Marveling that we are there already, at that point in the year where we can feel the season changing.
Heat to cool. Heavy to light. Summer to fall.
And I had forgotten.
But here we are. The first hints of the joy to come already showing up around me.
And I as I sat breathing in the cool, light air around me, I felt a whisper in my heart that I’ve come to learn as His voice.
”Don’t forget what’s coming.”
Don’t forget what’s coming.
This season of life has been so long. It’s felt like the summer, hot and smothering and heavy, and to be honest, I’ve found myself forgetting. Forgetting that the season will change. Forgetting that although God allows us to walk through the valley, He will also lead us beside still waters. He will also restore our souls.
"Don’t forget what’s coming,” He whispered.
And to be honest, I can barely remember what a season of freedom in certain areas of life feels like, because this season has been long. So very long.
But I know Whom I believe. Whether I remember what a change in season feels like or not, I will trust what He says.
This year, as our environmental season shifts around me, I have a whole new reason for hope. Hope that this season of the soul is shifting too.
I sat on the park bench watching. Watching my husband chase our three year old up and down the ramps and slides. Watching our one year old climb up and down the slide. Watching older kids run past shouting and laughing. Watching the overcast sky fade from pale grey to dark gray.
The breeze was light, but just cool enough to feel that first hint of fall.
I looked around, feeling that warm-but-not-hot air and the ever-so-slightly-cool breeze winding around me. I had forgotten.
In the long, hot months of Florida summer, I had forgotten that another season would come. And I had forgotten how wonderful it is when it does.
I sat there silently marveling. Marveling that somehow I could forget that summer would be over and the heat would fade and we could go outside in the evening into the most perfect weather. Marveling that I could somehow forget that the heaviness of summer heat and humidity would be replaced by the lightness of a cool sunny day. Marveling that we are there already, at that point in the year where we can feel the season changing.
Heat to cool. Heavy to light. Summer to fall.
And I had forgotten.
But here we are. The first hints of the joy to come already showing up around me.
And I as I sat breathing in the cool, light air around me, I felt a whisper in my heart that I’ve come to learn as His voice.
”Don’t forget what’s coming.”
Don’t forget what’s coming.
This season of life has been so long. It’s felt like the summer, hot and smothering and heavy, and to be honest, I’ve found myself forgetting. Forgetting that the season will change. Forgetting that although God allows us to walk through the valley, He will also lead us beside still waters. He will also restore our souls.
"Don’t forget what’s coming,” He whispered.
And to be honest, I can barely remember what a season of freedom in certain areas of life feels like, because this season has been long. So very long.
But I know Whom I believe. Whether I remember what a change in season feels like or not, I will trust what He says.
This year, as our environmental season shifts around me, I have a whole new reason for hope. Hope that this season of the soul is shifting too.
I remember being in high school and constantly hearing adults telling me and other girls my age, “Be yourself.”
At times I got almost paralyzed by the idea. How did I know who I really was? How did I know that I wasn’t just faking myself out? How did I know that I wasn’t being helplessly shaped by my environment?
As an adult, I’ve stayed far away from that question. There have been so many other things to learn and grow in. However, it still plagues me on occasion, especially in my current season of hearing so much talk about “loosing yourself” in motherhood: the warnings about how not to, the encouragment to dive in headfirst, and everything in between.
A few weeks ago, as the first showers of a rainstorm caught me on a morning walk, I pondered again this frustrating question.
How do I simply be myself? How do I know who I really am?
As the rain fell and I scurried through the gathering drops, it hit me that the answer had been in front of me the whole time. The answer was there, just presenting itself as the answer to other questions, to other needs.
There are two different version “my truest self” I could find, and it’s up to me to decide which it will be.
I can give in to my every whim and desire and curiosity and become the fullest manifestation of my own sinful, broken self possible. Or I can spend all my energies and passions pursuing Jesus, growing close to His heart, seeking to know Him, and allowing His perfect knowing of me to reveal in me who He ultimately created me to be.
My truest self isn’t one predefined destiny that I need to search out from some hidden space deep inside me.
My truest self isn’t a destiny written on the stars that will take some epic journey to discover.
My truest self isn’t waiting at the end of a spiritual retreat designed to bring me into better touch with myself or nature or the universe.
My truest self can be found, but it will be found by the very real and practical life choices that I make every single day.
My truest self is who I am and who I choose to become, who I allow myself to become.
My truest self is either the me I become by indulging my every desire or the me I become by laying down my desires to follow Christ as He makes me into the woman He designed me to be.
Will I pursue becoming the truest version of my own sinful nature, or will I pursue becoming the truest version of who God created me to be?
Will I shoulder the responsibility for choosing the path my life takes, or will I allow myself to be batted along by every whim and fantasy I encounter?
Will I lay down myself – my own sinful desires – and instead put on Christ, trusting that His version of me is the very best version of me there could ever be?
Will I choose to follow Jesus even when it feels like loosing myself, knowing that only by loosing myself will I find all I ever needed and wanted in Him?
I hope you’ll hear my heart in this. I hope you’ll hear the words God spoke to my heart that morning a few weeks ago. I hope you’ll ask God to speak these truths into your heart.
I hope you’ll see that who God created you to be for His glory is worth far more than any other version of yourself you might be able find. I hope I will this. And continue to see this.
Because the truth is, sometimes this path will feel like just the opposite.
It will feel like dying to yourself. It will feel like laying aside your natural desires and instincts. It will feel like abandoning yourself. It may even, for seasons, feel like saying goodbye to your deepest passions and dreams.
Jesus even told us this in Matthew 10:39. “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
In the end we will find that abandoning ourselves for His glory will lead us to know Him and then ourselves in a way we could never have found on our own.
In the end laying down our lives will look like gaining the richest, fullest, most real version of ourselves. A version better than we could ever dream or imagine, because this is the version dreamed up by our Creator on the day He first thought of us.
It might just take till heaven for us to fully see it. But I truly believe that what we do see while still here on this earth of who He is creating us to be will take our breath away in all the best ways.
