Getting Out of Bed to Serve the Living God

As I was going through the flagged passages in the library's copy of The Great Work of the Gospel so I could highlight them in my new copy, I came across the following passage:

We began as guilty sinners, living empty lives, and through the sanctifying power of his Spirit and belief in the truth, God washes, heals, molds, and spurs us on to a place where we wake up every day of our lives with the highest of all purposes for getting out of bed. We serve the living God!

A shorter time ago than I care to admit, I struggled to get out of bed every day. I got up just in time to get my children to school without being tardy, and I drove them there in my bathrobe. I often would come home and go back to bed because I was so tired and depressed.

The past several years have been a very difficult season in my life. I have had a number of health problems that contributed to depression and the enemy took full advantage of it. I was searching for and seeking God's will for my life with an understanding that God had a calling for me, but I wasn't sure what it was, and I didn't understand why He was taking so long to reveal it to me. (I'm already 40 for goodness sake!) At the same time, I knew there was a disconnect between my knowledge of the Word and my ability to live out what I knew, and I didn't like it one bit.

Last fall, during a Bible study my husband and I were doing, God spoke to my heart as I was reading the following passage:

And if you give yourself to the hungry
And satisfy the desire of the afflicted,
Then your light will rise in darkness
And your gloom will become like midday.
And the LORD will continually guide you,
And satisfy your desire in scorched places,
And give strength to your bones;
And you will be like a watered garden,
And like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.
—Isaiah 58:10-11

At this point in my life, I was praying about going to work with Rachel's House, and it was becoming pretty clear that it was God's will for me to do it. I was struggling with it because God really took me by surprise. I had been aware of the establishment of Rachel's House from its inception, and I never considered myself for the position of director. I had other visions for what God was calling me to do. I was just leaving the timing and specifics up to Him.

So as I was reading Isaiah 58, I felt God communicate to me that working at Rachel's House would be giving myself to the spiritually hungry and afflicted or troubled. And as a result, He would restore my strength and lighten my darkness or depression. I was encouraged, but not convinced. It was some weeks before I completely surrendered to God's calling on my life. As I told my fellow choir members last week, the result has been personal revival.

What was key to this revival? Two very simple, but very difficult things:
(1) I came to the end of myself. Instead of praying for God to increase my faith, I prayed "Lord, I believe, help my unbelief." Instead of asking God to help me with a struggle, I told Him I was utterly incapable of doing anything about it, and I asked Him to effect change in me. Instead of focusing on my sin, I focused on the One who paid the penalty for it.
(2) I stepped out in obedience and trusted that God knew better for me than I knew for myself. Up to this point, it was something that I knew intellectually, but now I've experienced it. God choose for me very differently than I had chosen for myself, and He was absolutely right, of course.

I have been so blessed! I look forward to sharing more with you about His faithfulness.