Undo Your Knots
(Originally Posted April 30th, 2019)
Hi dear one, I know because of algorithms and all the things you may or may not read this, but I’ve got to tell you something. It’s been a minute because we have been IN IT. The days leading up to Easter this year had me in knots. Knots that were born out of attempting to lash myself to a lifeboat in stormy soul seas. A battle for my mind and heart, particularly about what I can and cannot control in this broken body, this broken world and what feels like constant invasion of my family’s little city, has been raging. Anxiety is like being stuck on a Groundhog Day Saturday between the cross and the empty tomb, an ever present loop of lies that He is finished, that faith was a liar and every word He ever spoke vanishes under a layer of fear.
Listen to me, dear ones: we were not made for this. We were made for the days that follow Him down the Road to Emmaus as He tells broken and confused hearts every story concerning Himself (Luke 24). And then when our broken hearts begin to burn as we are kindled again by the Light of His words, we find freedom and victory in the breakthrough.
But then another day comes. Another lie. Another that seeks to destroy. Another illness. Another unexpected interruption. Another burden that feels to heavy for anyone to bear. Following Jesus is costly. Scary even. But facing this life without Him and the Hope of the freedom found under bearing His family name is far more expensive. It costs the weight of the world and hopelessness of the soul.
So come close, friends, I need you to hear me. He is not here. He is risen. He is not too far. He is so close He breaths life in you. He is not finished with the work. He is only getting started. The lies, the anxiety, the questions, the sickness, the hard season, the loneliness, the inadequacies, the broken relationships, the confusing kids, the prodigals, the whores, the All seems lost, they are dead. But He is not. And He is making all things new. He will not leave them dead, He will raise them to life with Him. Restored. Whole. Not just once, but over and over and over again until the work He began is completed on the day of redemption. (Phil 1:3)
Undo your knots, love. He is calling you. He will not let you sink, even when you start to. He will call the wind by name, He will speak to the storm, and He will hold you, scar to scar, purging the unbelief, until your knees find the strength to stand on this side of the empty tomb in His Name.
“But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s! So don’t you see that we don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There’s nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God’s Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go! This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are.”