It’s happening again… can you feel it?

The heavy, unnamed tension.

Maybe it’s because I’m a parent with young kids. Maybe it’s because the school supplies are back out at Target and seeing the backpacks make me want to cry. My youngest is heading to kindergarten this year. I figured I’d probably be emotional about this milestone in our lives, but I had anticipated it being for a different, more positive reason.

I know, I know. Truly, the tension and the madness has been steamrolling through 2020. It’s not like it’s ever really left. But I’ve experienced it all in waves. Have you? Anxiety, rest, anger, peace, apathy, joy, uncertainty. Up. Down. Over. Up. Down.

What is that we’re even hoping for right now?

A cure? A law? An answer?

Whether on a national or personal level: we’re searching and longing for breakthrough. Breakthrough: a sudden, dramatic, and important discovery or development. Everything else is coming at us with no warning, right? Can’t the answers come that way, too?

We are waiting for an end. A resolution. An answer to at least some of the questions. Forget normal – just some sort of homeostasis or stability. But the truth is this:

There is no breakthrough without tension; no saving without needing to be rescued. You find no happy ending without a messy middle.

The strength you are longing for only comes through weakness. Not the pretty kind, either. The desperate kind of weakness. The most valuable attributes we’re all longing to become only arrive through refining. Burning away. Something that is within you now simply cannot stay.

The greatest breakthrough in all of history revolves around the most painful moment of suffering. An unjust, completely unmerited suffering.

It has never been, and will never be God’s intent for you to suffer. Never. But it is always His intent to burn away what was never intended to be a part of your identity. It was always His intent to redeem what has become broken.

Even while you question and pout and stop believing. As you punch and yell like a toddler unable to verbalize your huge emotions. He endures your lack of trust and your turning away of His perfect love. He endures our abuse and neglect over and over, all the while with open arms.

I am not here to convince you to appreciate the in-between, even though I’m convinced we could learn a little bit there. I’m not here to persuade you to learn how to be present or to find joy through your pain. All of this is absolutely a part of God’s plan for redemption for you – but only He can convince you of that. I am here to persuade you of one role you have right now as sons and daughters of God who feel exhausted and unsure. Continue returning.

Return back to Him after you neglect His love and His guidance.

Return back to Him after you abuse His patience and His mercy.

Return back to Him, even if you feel covered in shame at what you ran to instead.

Daily. Hourly. Maybe every ninety seconds if you have to. We can’t understand His heart for injustice if we don’t first recieve His forgiveness . We can’t trust His heart for healing if we don’t first accept His love.

True breakthrough and healing can only come from the Source. Our choices are to simply survive while we wait; or we can choose the beautiful moments in the the middle, and run to the Father, who has all that we need.

 

“Let my passion for life be restored, tasting joy in every breakthrough you bring to me. Hold me close to you with a willing spirit that obeys whatever you say.”

[Psalm 51:12 TPT]