Diary of a Tired Christian

I've been meditating a lot lately on my identity, not my sexual identity or my race, but the identity that God has given me. Who does God see when He looks at me? Who did God create me to be within His kingdom. I need to know these things so that I can walk fully in my authority as a child of God, because as of late I have been "faking it until I make it" and I have developed a serious case of imposter's syndrome. My confidence has taken hits because I have taken on so much of what the world says I should be as my identity. The world says I should be independent, I should be quick to cut others off, I should get up from the tables where I am not being served. But the more time I spend in God's presence, I realize that no one is sitting at the wrong table, God places us exactly where we are supposed to be.

Over the last few months God has called to my mind the passages concerning the bride of Christ. The church is the bride, we are the church and we are waiting to be wed...we are at a spiritual reception. If we were invited to a wedding and the place card we received sat us next to someone we didn't like, would we get up and leave? Would we demand to sit at another table? If we are seated at our table and the catering team skips our table to feed another, would we get up and leave? I know I wouldn't, not just because I wouldn't want to make a scene, but because it would be rude to those who invited me. So if I can humble myself there, why shouldn't I put my pride aside for the figurative reception that God has me at now?

Psalms 119 has been my favorite scripture for as long as I can remember, it is a song of someone who is clinging to and seeking God while they go through suffering. In this Psalm it is written " it was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees". This is a long Psalm and the psalmist expresses that sentiment several times, in today's society they would be considered a simp. It is a wild idea that one would be thankful for affliction, but at the tables that God has seated us, sometimes the foods placed before us are bitter to the taste. In sitting with and Journeying with God, I have realized that these are palate cleansers. Palate cleansers are defined as "a serving of food or drink that removes food or residue from the tongue, allowing one to more accurately access a new flavor". Palate cleansers are a good thing, a benefit to us, a kind thing. "Taste and see that the Lord is good", is what the bible says. So, I have to stay seated at my table and have faith that whatever is going to be served next will be a new flavor that is good and nourishing to me. Something that will make me grateful for all of the bitterness that preceded it.

In that same faith I have to believe that other's seated at my table were also placed there by God. Whether they have been seated there for the appetizer, the main course, or a full 4 course meal, they have been assigned there. If the spiritual version of "Drunk uncle Larry" comes and sits at my table, I am tasked with treating him with the same grace I have given everyone else. If he spills wine on me, I can have faith that God will do what is needed to remove him from that table(and possibly the venue), but that is not for me to do, because I am just a guest. Contrarily, the world has placed this independent thought process into my identity, it has tried to tell me that I should be the one to do this and that in my life. I should be the one to take charge, because "I am her" and I shouldn't let anyone treat me as anything otherwise. But that is not true, I am not "her", I am His, the latter is more powerful. The latter comes with full "princess treatment", true soft life ("peace beyond understanding") and the freedom to know that I can rest in God and He will handle it all.

But in order for me to stay seated at the table, I have to sit fully in confidence that I belong in the presence of God. I have to take authority in my place at the table. I am still working on this. I am thankful to God that He continues to show me who I am not and more of who He sees me to be. Where I am in the great "I am". I am thankful that when I see memes now that push an independent, isolated or entitled spirit, they no longer resonate with me. That is not my identity. I pray that soon I will be able to sit at God's table with ease and assurance, I'm sure that when I do, I will come back to read these passages and smile at the thought of how nourishing and sweet the meal has been.