I am in another stretching season. If you are like me, it is hard to allow God to stretch and grow me, while I continue to stay in a heart posture of surrender. Most people tend to resist the idea of surrender. Honestly, we like to be in control if we are being truthful. So when I found myself at another unexpected opportunity and God started moving in my heart and stretching me, I had to fight the natural response of dreading what was coming. It is pretty natural for us as humans to want to hold on and hold out. So many times, we hold on to certain things because we fear what the alternative will mean and the changes it will bring. At other times we hold out, because it feels safer or more comfortable to remain in a familiar place. Fear has a way of casting doubt on our ability to handle whatever the changes will bring. That is when we can find ourselves digging our heels in against the move of God’s Spirit in our lives. If we listen to fear, we can quickly miss out on the gift that God intends in the stretching. It is easy to miss this divine flow in life when we are focused on the daily details. A lot of the time we are just trying to make it through another day, instead of tuning into the flow of God’s heart through the different seasons of life. In my own life, there have been some “uprooting” seasons that have required surrender in order to make room for the new things God was wanting to plant in my life. Some have been much more intense than others but as I gain distance from these seasons, and reflect back, I can see a pattern of growth that has been because of the trials, and not in spite of them.
One threat that the enemy will use to try to stop our growth, is the loss of relationships. We often find a lot of our security in other people. So when the very people you trust to support and encourage you are no longer standing with you, it can be very disappointing. The enemy can use these disappointments to get you to shut-down the move of God in your life because it’s just too painful. For me, I began to realize that I had become far too dependent on other relationships to determine who I was as a person. As I have continued to pursue my relationship with God, his love has provided the security I have needed to stretch beyond past limitations that I had placed on myself, or that I allowed others to place on me. Control can be deceptively presented as “love”. When others are trying to control your thoughts, feelings or decisions in order to “help” or “protect” you, then there’s a problem with respecting and honoring one another, which is unloving behavior. Rather, when we are each rooted in God’s love, we can trust the growth that He is producing in each of our lives through the stretching and we can cheer each other on.
“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge- that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:16-19, NIV)
Steps in Pursuit
- Identify an area of your life that you believe God is stretching you. Ask God to give you the strength and courage to surrender to the process.
- Take the time to share a word of encouragement with someone in your life that is trying to partner with God in taking some growth steps.
- Ask God to heal the wounds from past disappointments, when others haven’t been supportive of growth and change.
We all have growing to do. If we aren’t being stretched, then we may be stuck. Let’s encourage one another as we pursue all that God has for us.
Continue the Pursuit,
Denise
One Response
I am grateful to have read your blog on stretching!!!
I’m grateful to know you and to be encouraged by you.
For that matter, I am grateful team MITCHELL has you in our lives.
May our Father, keep rooting us all, in his love, that is wide and long, high and deep!
Love you Denise!!!