This morning I was listening to a message by Dr. David Jeremiah. He was preaching from the passage about the Rich Young Ruler in Matthew 16:16-22. The young man had a lot of appealing qualities. He was wealthy. He was respectable. He was faithful in his religion. He was referred to as a “ruler,” presumably a religious leader/ruler. And he asked Jesus, “What good thing must I do to be saved?”
Jesus has a thoughtful conversation with this man, and we’re told that Jesus looked on him with love and compassion. Jesus basically said that the bottom line for this young man was that his love of his wealth and the trappings/stature of his possessions were keeping him from loving the Savior preeminently and being able to serve wholeheartedly with an unfettered heart.
The gist of what Dr. Jeremiah asked his audience was this, “Is there something in your life you can point to that is impeding your complete surrender to the will of God? You can’t do enough good things to earn salvation. That’s a gift from God and all about grace. What’s holding you back?”
This question hit me between the eyes! It was like I saw in an instant the lesson that this long “brown season” of my life has been trying to teach me. It’s not been my service and the “good things” I have tried to do that gives me my value. And furthermore, my obsession with being “out of service “ and being so full of angst and anxiety about it has actually had a larger hold on my attention and been a source of more searching and attention than my relationship with God!
My desire to to something great for God has become idolatrous.
In that moment with God, I understood why it’s been mostly brown seasons and white seasons the past few years. I needed the bareness to actually see what my issue/problem is.
One morning as I sat in the parking lot at work with a few minutes to spare, I did something I have often asked God to for me before. I like to turn on my music on my phone and ask God to give me a message for the day.
Out of the music library on my phone, an old memory was called up that I have always heard in a different way. That morning, the song was meant to send me a message. The words of Beth Nielsen Chapman’s song sung by Neil Diamond came spilling out. It was God’s message to me for the day (the life???):
“Good morning. I love you. Now that you’re here where you belong, I want to be the (One) you need. Just tell me you love me because I need to hear it too. Just let Me be the One you carry deep inside of You.”
Jesus loves me. Oh how He loves you and me. Blessed Assurance Jesus is mine.
A couple of hours later as I was working in the garden, I heard a notification. It was an email from a gal who said, “I want to talk with you about a new position that is opening up. It may be something you’re interested in.”
Coincidence? Or confirmation that I needed to be in this bare, brown, stark, hard season long enough to learn the lesson before I can really successfully move on to “the next good thing.”
“Good morning. I love you. Now that you’re here where you belong. I want to be the One you need.”
Thoughts From the Garden 