Once upon a time in college, I spent a great deal of time wrestling with the Breaking Free study by Beth Moore. I literally carried the workbook around for over year and to multiple countries. I got sand from the beach of the Baltic Sea in it. I spilled coffee on it at my apartment. I tore pages out of it in Guatemala. I literally soaked it in water after a bottle broke in my backpack at Dayspring and then hung it out to dry until the pages were curled and yellow. It’s a pathetic, well-loved little workbook now. I look back on the study of Isaiah 61 with some blended sense of humility, accomplishment, and gushy-ness. Gushy-ness = I love it so much I’d grab it and run if our house was on fire. In seriousness the process of studying Isaiah 61 hurled me into a world of studying the scripture in a way I’d never experienced before. I felt compelled by it. It was the first time that I really dealt with the concept of freedom in Christ. And by dealt, I mean wrestled, spilled, carried, tore, and soaked (see above). I walked away from that study changed forever. I realize that is a drastic thing to say, but its true. I’ve never looked at my faith the same way I did before I read "He sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives."

Right now, I’m smack in the middle of a study about the life of David. I’ll be honest and say that I’ve been moving rather slowly through this study. Some of that is due to laziness and some of it due to not wanting it to end. A strange combination, I know. So far in the study, David has gone from a poor shepherd boy, to an army leader, to a man desperately on the run for his life, to the King of Israel with a promise that his kingdom will endure forever.

And it’s only half over.

Why I’m writing about this, I really don’t know. I finished a lesson tonight and sat reveling in the parallels of this time in my life to the time in my life a few years ago when I was drudging through Breaking Free. It was a time typified by me being desperate before God for clarity about where my life was headed and God slowly, painstakingly showing me how good He is. In that particular season of my life, the goodness was most obvious in how He brought me to Dustin. Now I’m finding myself in a similar place, but it’s different because I can never go back to not knowing the goodness of God. Sure, I can always stand to learn more about it, but what I mean is I can walk through the journey of uncertainty with hopefully a tad more grace than before because I know the other side of this is better than what I could ever imagine for myself. I know that God’s gifts put my best dreams to shame. I also know that this season, while slow-moving or unexpected at times, will be marked in my mind the way my Breaking Free season is. I’ll never be able to go back to the way I was before and that’s okay. Beth talks a lot about how David was unwilling to turn from God, even when he felt negative emotions. She notes he used these to seek more insight into the heart of God. I want to be like that. I want to be like that so much.

"We often want to be called of God, then ushered painlessly into a position of service and honor, miraculously possessing the character our callings require. God doesn’t work that way. Our appointments are not about glamour. They’re about glory. God’s glory…Sometimes we stand to learn the most about God from the situations we understand the least." - Beth Moore