Moving past the Stuck Zone...

I debated writing this blog....I'm the worst at second guessing myself and actually almost titled this as The Mountain of Me.  To head to a deeper place with God, there is a stripping away of what we used to see as ourselves that happens. Can I just be real for a minute? It hurts....It hurts to have band-aids ripped off, wounds exposed, and to deal with why you feel the way you feel about something. I'm reading a book called Heart Made Whole that has been life changing. It's talking about those places in our heart where we put up walls and what all it keeps out. When you ask God for wholeness and restoration....be willing to cooperate with whatever that means. I still remember the day when God spoke that word whole back last Fall into my Spirit....and this book whew. I'll blog about that later....

So the last couple of weeks has been, well the best word to describe is stuck. There are times we reach a place where we know we can't go backwards to what was(how we used to think, do, feel), but for the life of us, we can't get our feet to move forward either. I know all about feet glued to a floor and those stuck moments have always preceded a shifting. Hear my heart for a minute...you can stay still for so long (knowing you can't go backwards, but also knowing that you can't make your feet move forwards)...that you grow numb. You find yourself on auto-pilot and are so close to going through the motions that for this Jesus girl it's not easy. When you know what it's like to lay on your face in your prayer closet and not get up until He answers....you have that gnawing in your soul that won't let you stay stuck forever. It's that gnawing that pushes you to unstick those feet and stir up on the inside what you know is in there. We can get so focused on trying to make sure everyone else hears our heartbeat, that we forget to stop and listen to our own. We lose sight of our own calling, our own purpose, and our own walk....and get lost in a sea of "busy". If we aren't careful we can grow complacent and with that the "going through the motions" is one step away.  I'm thankful today for friends who even in an Instagram/Facebook post speak the life (and truth in love) that you need. 

"Being in the Stuck Zone" has a purpose if you are willing to let God show it to you. My prayer closet and I haven't had time together over the last couple of weeks...I've had a devotion here a devotion there, a tearful talk with God in the car more than once, and praise song after praise song pushing through to try and get through the crowd to Him. I listened to a word late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning that well let's just say when God takes the scripture He gave you about the upcoming season almost three months ago and then your friend speaks a word using that same one...God gets your attention. 

There are battles to be fought in the spiritual realm and the enemy would love nothing more than to keep us focused on fighting battles in the natural realm. (I could preach a sermon at this point right now that would be multiple blogs, but that's for another day). The hardest thing to do is to stay focused on what God is calling you to do when your flesh has just taken a punch to the gut, but we will never fly with the eagles which is where we find His strength. We will never run the race with endurance as long as keep letting the things that so easily entangle us keep us wrapped up (and stressed out). It's our choice just as the man that lay by the pool of Bethesda when Jesus asked him did he want to? For God to restore something, we have to release it, and for us to release it we have to admit it needs releasing. Wounds can't turn into scars if we keep picking at them (and the enemy will pick as long as you let him....trust me). 

I know this is a different kind of blog, but the last few weeks have been different. I've been in a stuck mode for an area of my life and content to just go on auto-pilot. When I had to make myself get up this morning, I knew something had to give, something had to change before the stuck grew cold. God and I have had simple conversations over the last couple of weeks, but the deeper level has been well non-existent. It's not that I didn't want to go sit in His lap for awhile, but I think part of me didn't really want to hear what He wanted to say. I wanted Him to fix something and He wanted me to rise above it(and just pray). Yes, there are times when the devotions don't happen, when the prayer time loses to sleep, when you have poured your heart out and it feels like it got handed back to you, and when God and you are on a casual basis....but hear my heart reader, He won't leave you in that spot for long if you keep pushing through. Words that have been spoken over your life, into your life....are seeds that are getting ready to bloom. God won't leave you stuck...but once He shows you what to do, the choice is in your hands at that point.