#23 The Tug of a Million Horses

There is this struggle inside of me... One where there is frustration... One where I feel like I am floundering, with life and purpose.  There is confusion as well. “Am I where I’m supposed to be? Am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing?”  Time is ticking... 

 

There is a pull... a tugging at my heart towards Him.  It is more powerful than a tug, it is like a hook that reaches down to the deepest part of me and painfully pulls with the strength of a million horses at the center of my being. It is a longing. This longing describes the desire, but it doesn’t describe the confusion in how to satisfy it. What do I do? How do I satisfy this fire inside of me that burns to be with Him? To be in His presence, to commune with Him, speak with Him, hear His voice, live in the fullness of all He is. Anything else will simply not do, yet making the move towards that almost seems impossible. Is this what Paul felt like, when he penned this, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”  Romans 7:15. It seems I do the things that would take me further away from that longing instead of closer to it.  Really it is simple to satisfy this longing, but it is also telling of where my heart, or our hearts are. Here is the simplicity it’s found in Jeremiah 29:13 “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.”

 

Here is a picture of where I’m at. Imagine a day in August in the Southeast United States, It’s hot and the humidity is near 100%. You’ve been working out in the sun and now you find yourself standing next to a pool. The water sparkles, it’s crisp, it’s clean and you know it is cool and it is going to feel amazing to jump in. Yet the first few seconds of that immersion are going to be painful as your body adapts to the abrupt and sudden vast change of temperature.  It is going to be shocking. As you stand there for several moments, making the move to jump in but just before you do you pull up, the change is going to be too much.  You question yourself... Is it worth it? 

 

Now let’s bring this back to something much greater, much more powerful, much more shocking to our spirits. Every one of us has this longing, it is an innate desire to be fully immersed in Him. But here is this drawback, it’s going to be so shocking to everything we are: spirit, soul, and body.  Here is what I need to satisfy this longing, the place where the tug of the horses is pulling me.  It’s where John found himself standing on that day in Revelation 1:10, I imagine he was searching for Him with all of his heart when Jesus showed up in Revelation 1:17.  And when Jesus showed up John fell at His feet as dead. 

 

There is this place that I know I’m headed and I have to be honest it scares me. For me there is so much unknown about it, yet all of it seems perfectly familiar. I find myself pulling back, about to jump yet holding up. But the tug... It’s too powerful... It’s almost as if it is dragging me in. It’s His love for me, it won’t let me be denied Him, but as much as I want to be with Him, it is infinitely more precious to Him to be with me.  Gently He pulls but it doesn’t feel that way. I look behind me, I can see the ruts that my heels have made in the soil as I’ve tried to dig in and hold my ground.  I long for what’s ahead, I long for all that is there, why can’t I simply give in and dive head-first into all of Him?  

 

At first, what happened to John doesn’t sound pleasant. There is no greater image of what it means to be undone than He describes. Dead. All of the things I hold to are folly, compared to being with Him. Yet I dig in. It’s not even that I don’t want to give them up because I don’t want any separation.  

 

This place where I’m headed... it seems crazy that I or anyone else who has this longing would fight against it. For we are fighting for petty things, exchanging them for the perfect things our hearts long for.  That moment is going to be sin-killing shocking, when finally the tug has pulled me so close that I have no choice but to give in and fall into His presence, fully dying to this world.  Yes there will be that painful moment of death, but then there is the rest of the scripture in Revelation 1:17.  “I fell at His feet as dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying to me, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last.” 

 

Now alive our purposes are renewed, forever we have been going to the pool with buckets that have no bottoms, dipping them into the pool and drawing them out empty, and then trying to minister to those who need Him with empty, bottomless buckets. But God’s intention is that we not use buckets, because we are the buckets. I believe it is His intention to use us, living in Him, in this place of the perfectness that all He is, and minister from that place. Maybe he allows us to be one of the horses pulling on the ropes that are hooked to the deepest parts of others to tug them just a little closer to Him, until finally they choose to fall in.