For the past year, connection has been the name of the game for me. Connection with God, mainly - but also with my family, my friends, and even strangers off the street. However, one main aspect of connection that i’ve been struggling with for the past year has been communication… which is kind of important to have a strong connection with those around you.
This week it seems that God has been shoving in my face (in a loving way, but nevertheless blunt) how difficult it can be to communicate without reminding myself of who is giving me my voice, my hands, my actions, who I’m communicating to... not only that, but also how He wants me to put my perfectionism and selfish intentions aside so He can work through me.
I had a pretty rough evening a few days ago where I was trying to write one of these blogs, but not a single sensical sentence was getting out. I did everything I knew to get something down, but nothing was working. Finally, I gave up the fight and decided to ask God what I was doing wrong, and that I needed help, even though this task of writing a blog seemed so simple. There was no clear answer, and after a few more stubborn attempts at writing, I stopped for the night.
The next day, during class, we had a time where we wrote down what we felt we should give up to God. I felt nudged to give up my ego, my voice, and my hands. There were many other things I wrote down, but those felt like the biggest ones. When I sat back down after talking about what I was giving up, I made the connection to the struggle I was having the night before and what I had just given up. I realized that I was operating out of my own strength, not realizing how God could help me and use me in what I wrote to display His power.
So, yes, that was a rather humbling experience. But I’m glad. After learning all this, I aim to make a habit of asking God for help in every way that I communicate - talking, writing, drawing, so on - so He can work through me. I would never expect communication to be something I’d have to surrender to God, but now here I am typing this out!
A little note: I say ‘given up’ in past tense quite a bit in this blog, but really that phrase should be in present tense. It seems to me we like to cling to what we really should give up, and because of that I think giving up something to God is a process. However, I’m grateful for the process - it offers a discipline of reflection and continuous obedience, even in the smallest things, which leads to us being better reflections of Christ.
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