Last leaf

It is past 3 a.m.. This is bad. I should long ago be asleep. But I can't fold the covers over my head quite yet.

God just dramatically changed my heart about something.

Caleb and I talked about some stuff tonight, and my goodness... praise God for the people in your life that speak truth and life into your heart. Caleb is one of those few people in my life. And you better believe I praise God for this Man.

God speaks to me when I write, and I was kinda reflecting on some things Caleb had said to me, and it's just like God brought it all home. Like Jesus is a freaking awesome cowboy and he just done gone and rounded up them horses, and we can all go home.

It just hit me how much the enemy can wrestle our hearts down until we completely lose sight of what it really true. What is really truth. Sure, we know the enemy lies about who we are in Christ. He lies to us about our worth. He lies to us about what truly belongs to us as Children of God.

There is such darkness in the word shame. I'm so metaphoric with words, and when I think of the word shame, I think of someone putting his head down. Eyes are downcast. Shame.

When we "put our heads down" in life, we can't look to the sun... or more accurately, the Son. We can't look at Jesus. We can't find our security, our balance, our Hope... we can't see it. We physically deny ourselves of that, when shame turned our faces down.

I keep tearing up... because I just realized something I've completely misunderstood for years.

When we make a mistake in life, whatever the heck it is, God's response is always, "I love you. Try again. I'm with you, you are mine, and I could never love you more than I do right now." No matter what failure, or short coming we may have stumbled upon.

Here's the big bang that just grips me... we don't even need to make a mistake for the enemy to convince us "It's over." Think about the hugeness of this concept... We don't even have to commit even the "smallest" sin for him to attack our certainty, our assurance, our Hope.

Then, the times when we do something we wish we didn't do... we might as well just die in the despair that only the enemy can bring upon us. With him, there was no hope to begin with.

But with Christ, every Hope is ours, and fully, completely attainable because of the blood of Christ.

The enemy lives to rob, kill and destroy. The thing that is just so incredibly disgusting... is we can feel robbed, killed... completely destroyed... when we're perfectly wealthy... perfectly alive... and perfectly made. He can cause us to feel a loss where we've in fact, gained. He can convince us the exact opposite of the truth. And we believe it. Sometimes we feel we deserve it. He can make it feel right... we believe it. We act on it. We live with it. But it's not really living at all.

There are areas in my life, where I've felt robbed. Where I've felt dead. Where I've felt destroyed. Things felt heavier to bear than they needed to. And tonight, as I'm watching the clock shift to an even later hour, I feel relieved of so many things I falsely believed to be true.

Rest in the fact that God will fight for us, and that we need only be still (Ex. 14:14).


1 Peter 5:8 says "Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour." What a sobering realization. I don't want to be the one my enemy finds when he looks for someone to devour.

To everything there is a season. I'm ending this one. The last leaf just fell.