By Shauna Bremenkamp
There are things about myself I wish were not true.
I wish that ice cream wasn’t such a vice in my life — maybe I’d be able to lose the spare tire around my stomach.
I wish I could be better at regulating my wide range of emotions that get so triggered at times because of trauma bonds and the scars they left behind that frequently get opened back up.
I wish I didn’t struggle with God’s sovereignty. But there are moments when I wish my life could have played out differently. And there are all too frequent moments where I find myself worrying about the outcomes of something and thinking I could alter things in my favor by sheer willpower and proactiveness.
I wish that there weren’t some days where instead of wisely and joyfully stewarding God’s blessings unto His honor I place these good but temporal things on an altar that only Jesus belongs; then get caught up in doing everything in my own power, for my own glory, and my satisfaction (if I’m being honest). And because I’m moving forward with my eyes on the horizontal rather than the vertical, it is not sustainable. Eventually, I inevitably fall flat on my face at some point overstimulated, burned out, lacking self-control.
Years of ministry and study under the guidance of solid teachers and mentors had trained me well. From a doctrinal standpoint, I have all the answers I need to believe in the power, presence, and promises of God. But it was my baby daughter and a butterfly that shattered all of that intellectualism and opened the eyes of my heart back to The Lord and the simple message of The Gospel that sustains me and makes me whole.
As I took my daughter on our usual morning stroller walk around the neighborhood, I heard my daughter squealing and giggling with sheer delight. She pointed to a huge butterfly sipping on a flower’s nectar. I put the brakes on the stroller and knelt down beside the flower to take a closer look. The butterfly gracefully yet purposefully flew up and onto my hand as if saying hello to a familiar friend. In that moment, my heart was overcome with a quiet yet palpable gratitude for God. In that moment, truths I’ve known about Jesus having walked with Him for 25 years thus far moved from my head to my heart — an experience I have not had in quite some time due to my allowing the very blessings God gifted me with in this life to distract my thoughts and priorities away from Him. I kissed my almost-two-year-old on the head to thank her for her beautiful way of getting me to pause just by being her. And then I thanked God for His goodness in that tiny fraction of a speck of time for flooding my heart with His majesty by using His wonderful creations — my daughter and the butterfly. It also made me lament on why it took me such a long time to stop and make small moments about Jesus and the stunning reality of who He is instead of making them about me — my agenda, my preferences, even my stresses. It was as if I had the audacity to think my life and everything in it belonged to me to control without remembering God’s sovereignty; to enjoy without remembering He was always with me delighting in me; to cry and ruminate over the pains of the “hard stuff” of life without remembering His promises. I lamented of these things then I repented for creating idols in my heart that I placed above Him. I sang worship songs on our walk back home, my daughter flicking her little legs and clapping along.
No matter how theologically knowledgeable my brain is, my heart is still prone to forget. That is just the reality of being a sojourner in this broken, sinful world. Even Christians wrestle with ourselves because this is not our final destination and there is a remaining sin nature in us as well as the power of The Holy Spirit indwelling us, refining us as we continue to run this race of earthly life.
So today, I am fighting for my peace and joy and confidence in The Lord and not looking for it in myself, other people, or ideal circumstances. Today, I remind myself of the truths of the Bible, not because I don’t know enough intellectually, but because of the sin nature I wrestle with and all the pressures and influences of this sinful world, my fallible heart needs to be intentionally ushered back into the throne room of grace.
The Bible tells me that God is sovereign and that the circumstances that I experience in this life has purpose and is under His mighty control. The Bible tells me that everything I’ll ever need will be supplied by God, in just the right quantity at just the right time, especially when it comes to my spiritual growth and the continued improvement of my character and habits, because Jesus fulfilled every standard God has to be favored by Him that I could never satisfy. The Bible tells me that God’s delight and care and leading in all of the details of my life is always available to me because of Christ’s finished work on the cross for me… because of Jesus, I am loved grandly, fiercely, eternally by God… because of Jesus, I am precious in God’s sight because it is not my righteousness and goodness and merits that He sees when The Father looks upon me but it is Jesus’s perfection that assures me that I’ll never be condemned, abandoned, or overlooked by Him.
So whatever you’re doing right now, stop and pray with me for the grace to remember that today. Your Savior never gets weary of your supplications. He loves to hear you and receive your burdens at any point in time and deliver answers and provision in due time.
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