REVIVED

One evening as I was preparing supper in the kitchen, my daughter joined me and began washing the dishes. After just a bit, she stood there and began to shake her leg. Puzzled, I looked at her and wondered what was going on. In her efforts to reach and clean and spray all the dishes from a stool, her leg had fallen asleep. As she danced around trying to return the blood flow to her limb she exclaimed, “Now that it’s coming back to life again it hurts!"

Holy Spirit swirled around me in that moment.

Sometimes when things start to come back to life, it's painful.

Oftentimes, we have this assumption that when things are revived or renewed it happens all at once, much like Cinderella donning her gown gifted from her fairy godmother in a sparkly instant, beauty from ashes in but a moment.

But for many of us it is a process, a season, even consecutive seasons. Sometimes we feel parched like our supply has been cut off. Sometimes, we feel numb, like we are hobbling around about to fall flat on our face. Still at other times, like we are being electrocuted as we find ourselves deep within a storm. None of these moments feel like blissful, shimmering swirls of beauty.

There are also times God will lovingly cut us off from the world, from things, from people, from places that He never said were for us...so that He can lead us to a new place.

"Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the right and to the left; your descendants will dispossess nations and settle in their desolate cities" (Isaiah 54:2-3).

Honestly, it's in these seasons, these places where questions circle, where confusion and doubt ring loudly. It's where we begin to perceive numbness, where stretching and discomfort disquiet us. It's where circumstances tell us we've made no progress at all and the violent storms or dry, dead places have us crying out to be removed from them. It's where sitting in the old no longer works but stumbling in the new is terrifying.

But hear the Lord saying,

"Behold, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs forth: do you not perceive and know it and will you not give heed to it? I will even make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the dessert" (Isaiah 43:19, AMP).

As we step into these new places with Him, into the process of waking up to His truths, it takes time (more than we care for if we're being honest). And as we begin to move and flex, or even dance around, often there’s pain. Sometimes, it's just a small tingle or a frustrating numbness, like when our limbs first begin to wake. At other times discomfort as we are forced to let go and reconcile the past. Yet at others it's an excruciating bolt as we come face to face with a reality we had once successfully buried deep within our hearts.

But just as the pain eventually resides and the blood flow is restored to our sleepy limbs as we begin to move, strength too is returned to us as we continue to walk with Him. In each step however, it is no longer our own strength that carries us forward but His strength in us.

"[Not in your own strength] for it is God Who is all the while effectually at work in you [energizing and creating in you the power and desire], both to will and to work for His good pleasure and satisfaction and delight" (Philippians 2:13, AMP).

"...for My strength and power are made perfect (fulfilled and completed) and show themselves most effective in [your] weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:19a, AMP).

*All quotes are taken from NIV unless otherwise noted.

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