Unrestrained

It's Saturday afternoon. I have just finished cleaning part of my basement and have decided that the pounding in my head wasn't going away. It is most likely the start of a very bad migraine headache. So I've detoured myself from the tragedy called my basement to nurse my head. This means that I've sat down on the couch, put a cold compress on the back of my neck and have taken caffeine pills to prevent the headache. Caffeine pills are great - except when your headache has subsided and you are left a jittery mess. Woo hoo. Bring it on.

While I'm sitting here, I thought I would write about what God has been speaking to me about for the last couple of days. On Wednesday I met a dear person to chat about some things going on in my life. As we were talking, the subject that has been prevalent in my blogs lately came up - where is God when things are a mess, and is it possible to trust Him completely with everything - not just a few things, but everything. This person is someone I consider to be a wise, Godly woman. She has given me some tremendous godly advice, and I have a deep spiritual respect for her. She is seasoned and has an admirable closeness to God. She, like me, did not have the answers. We did, however, get into an interesting conversation about trust in God and what that means. Does that mean that you trust God completely that you lose all sense of control? I think that we both concluded that this is not what it means to trust God completely.

As I have pondered that conversation over the last several days, I have had a chance to sit quietly and listen to some good music. While listening to my music, one of my favorite gospel singers, Calvin Nowell, was playing on the radio. Calvin wrote a song called "Unrestrained" (which actually is sung by a former American Idol contestant, Mandisa). The melody of the song is so beautiful that I've never really listened to the words. As I was driving in my car, I began to listen closely to the words of the song. "Most holy Lord, you have my attention. You know my thoughts, and all my intentions. I want to honor You in every way. I pour out my love on You. My whole life belongs to You. I worship you completely unashamed. I give you my heart unrestrained". Unrestrained. It's a word I've heard before, but it struck me. Unrestrained. When I looked it up in the dictionary the words "excessive" and "extravagant" were used to define the word. Unrestrained. Excessively. Extravagantly. God wants me to trust Him unrestrained. He wants me to trust Him excessively, extravagantly. In order to trust Him completely, it has to come from me in an excessive and extravagant way - in an unrestrained manner. The question for me to answer, though, is what is it that is keeping me from trusting this way. Why do I trust Him with restraints?

I don't think I'm unique in this. I think Christians struggle with this. I know my close friends struggle with this - because we talk about it. Sometimes it seems that the people I run into at church or in Christian circles don't struggle with this. Perhaps that's the enemy trying to make me feel ashamed of this. Maybe it's just my perception.

The problem with this is that I don't believe that I can have the relationship with my God in the manner that I should without trusting Him in this way - without trusting Him extravagantly, excessively. It's something that is holding me back from being the daughter of the King that I could be. My dear friend gave me some incredible gems of spiritual wisdom on the next steps in moving towards extravagant trust in God. I will take them as they were given. Someday this will not be a struggle for me anymore. Someday, I know, God will show Himself mightily to me, and I will get it.