When I began this blog, I was excited to share the amazing testimonies about how God woke me up inside. I had been writing the process down for years while the journey was unfolding, but when I started to share them thru my lens of today, I have been struggling with a disconnect. I realized that my heart was so elated when I wrote them down – because I was right there in the midst of His Goodness and overwhelmed by all that He was doing – and yet that is not really the season that I am in right now.

And it is so much easier for me to tell the story of what He did, rather than what He is doing.

I can’t deny the testimony’s existence – I am living inside of that redeemed soul and standing tall on the ground that I fought for.  Yet I am confronted with a new season in life where I need him to show up and do it again. I am believing for new cycles to be broken, fresh places of pain to be healed, and I am audaciously hoping for things to be restored in my life today.

I love to tell the stories, but I am struggling with authentically writing them in Real time.

There is a phrase that I often remind myself of these days to help me keep my heart open and awake.

“Religion will honor what God did in the past, yet resists what He is doing in the present moment.”

I can’t tell you how many times this concept has challenged me to let God come even in the midst of my hesitations and fears. Unraveling religion is not found in a formula from the past – it is found in the constant courage to face my present circumstance and discover what I actually believe.

Oftentimes the “knowledge” of what I think He should be doing (or did the last time) can bring the most resistance in me, and I end up trying to keep Him in a box that I can control. I am unable to grasp the change of plans or let go or trust that He might be doing something new. It keeps me in a place of striving – and honoring him for what He has done in the past –  yet unwilling to trust Him with new pain and fears and uncertainties.

I remember being in the middle of our most incredible breakthrough a couple of years ago – and I literally felt like he “broke through” from out of nowhere…from a path that I never even knew existed. I called it the back door…he just slipped in thru the back door. It wasn’t what I asked for or even had the capacity to hope for– but it was better than I’d ever imagined. I let him come and do something that was beyond my understanding and beyond anything I could have ever achieved on my own. That is the realm of faith.

Leaning into what he is doing in the present moment activates our faith, while honoring what he has already done doesn’t really take much faith when I can already see what he did. And I think that is where I am all over again – he is activating my faith eyes to believe for the impossible…again. I am holding onto what I know that He has done in my life with gratitude, and yet I am longing for more of Him. I am trusting for todays miracle – a fresh encounter.

I want to let him come. I want to lay down my rights, and my knowledge of the way that I think he should come. I want to let him in again, to do a new thing, and I have hope because of the stories that he’s done in my past. They are fuel to my flame to remember not only how he does it – but THAT he does it. That he is faithful to my story and that he is still coming.