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Yearning for what?
"All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy." --Romans 8:22, The Message (MSG)
This deep yearning has impacted most of the decades of my life. Even though I had asked to be a member of God's family when I was twelve, I experienced the painful sense of separation until the last five years of my life. So many of my bad decisions were birthed in my efforts to relieve the pain as I blindly groped for that "something" which would make me feel completed.
When it dawned upon me, intellectually, that I was no longer yearning, my first reaction was, "Why? What has changed?" So, a mental listing of the changes God has made in me during the previous decade tells me a lot has changed. The changes have been slowly occurring during the last ten years since I'd made the commitment to surrender my life to my Creator.
Surrender is a slow process because you instinctively keep trying to regain control--sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously--the tendency to make your own decisions is well-embedded within you. I'm confident we lack the ability to surrender on our own; we must have the assistance of a higher power. Therefore, "the waiting" is a necessary component of this process. We have to understand God is not given to instant gratification--a term which belongs to the modern industrialized society. His way of change is so slow; we have to look back years later in order to clearly see what has been changed in us.
Here again, I want to note, the moment of decision to surrender did not instantly take away the deep yearning. It took years of my struggling to honor the commitment for the yearning to gradually slip away. I understand there are those who don't have to wait so long to complete the process, but there are the rest of us and if you are one of the "rest of us", I want you to be confident you are being "enlarged in the waiting....the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy."
Jane Mullikin
Perhaps you have never experienced the discomfort brought on by a deep yearning, a painful sense of separation from something--of what you are unsure, but if you know what I'm describing, you'll be able to understand what I'm trying to say in this piece.
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