All My Fears Will Tremble
Ask me what it’s like to be twenty-five years old with a track record of a decade’s worth of mishaps and mistakes. Unexplainable suffering and chaos. I would tell you that it was the very worst moments and seasons of my life. And yet, I would also unequivocally tell you that to know God the way I know Him today, what happened the past ten years so entirely worth it, I would likely do it over again… I know God impacts people from a young age, and sometimes, those people immediately begin living holy and righteous lives without a learning the hard way. Maybe they don’t launch right into unspeakable suffering. But that is not the God that I have come to know. I have fallen in love with a God Who saw the worst in me, repeatedly, and still was sovereign and great enough to make Himself glorified through me. I have known a God who rescued me from myself and all of the vices I had grown to worship and adore, and think would offer me relief and pleasure.
When life is falling apart, you are faced with this unique and forced decision. To run to God, or to run away from Him. Lukeworm and comfortable Christianity doesn’t force this fork in the road upon you. Perhaps, this is the gift of suffering. That even in the most unfair and painful of things in this life, we would be beckoned to a decision within ourselves… to admit that God is God, and we are not, or to live in a way that thinks we still have an ounce of control and destiny within our own grasp. Suffering beckons within our human condition a response. To cope and process with the vices of our world, or to bow and surrender to the plans of a Holy King.
What I can confidently testify to is that my fears and questions, my anger and confusion has never trembled and bowed the way they do before the throne of grace. Before the Person of splendor and beautiful interest in me. The past ten years have been the worst feelings and heartache I truly believe I will ever know. And yet, each one has served as a stepping stone upon the glorious life of knowing Jesus.
It almost sounds messed up, doesn’t it?
That we, God’s children would walk onto fire and into darkness, in pursuit of our Savior, and choose to do it all over again because of how wonderful He makes us feel?
And yet, is that not the mystery of our faith…for now.
