ascent continues -7

Before beginning day 13 let me provide a brief recap. I am in the middle of a Bible study by Beth Moore entitled "Stepping Up, a Journey Through the Psalms of Ascent". In the beginning of the study she encouraged us to humbly lay down before God each day...lay all the way down on our faces...nose to rug. I choose to do this every day in my basement (low as I could get:) so that is why you'll see me document my journey as self-abasement days (mixed in with comments on the Psalm studied). The 15 Psalms of Ascent are #120-134. They correspond with the 15 steps at the Nicanor Gate of the Temple. They represent a pilgrimage…an upward journey. They also are thought to be songs of the journey from Babylon back to Jerusalem (just as the Jews were exiles in Babylon…I’m an exile…a captivity of my own right now). If God is inviting me to “GO UP” then He must have allowed me to go way down first. So I am on a journey with God and He is drawing me up the steps closer to Him and His plans and purposes. This is my pilgrimage!

Day13 self-abasement. I again know that I am in the presence of peace and I am to "Trust in the Lord with all my heart". I am feeling somewhat sad that I have nothing to give to God. My verbal praises feel empty compared to the enormity of who He is. I crawled up into a ball and felt like child before God. As I'm writing this I'm reminded that at times we must "die to live". Perhaps I'm being brought toward the core of my humanness and inability to "be" without God.

Days14-15 self-abasement. The experience has been less peace and more agitation. I had a vision of a presence within me...a gray, sloth-man who was something like a faceless, spineless mummenschanz creature. I immediately despised him and felt repulsed. I mentioned in a previous post that, "I’ve become cynical and lost my naïve joie de vive....I want to arrive at a Spirit-filled truth that can sustain me through the loneliness and meaninglessness." Perhaps that faceless creature represents that pit of despair. And due to the length of this season, I'm assuming a stronghold. So when God shows you there's something to get delivered from what do you do? My knee jerk reaction was to never tell a soul how weird and sinful I am but, after striking down the pride, I called my bff and favorite deliverer-er Kristy for a prayer appointment and chose to blog about it. Previous lesson learned: always bring the sin into the light! The enemy only has power in the darkness...hidden within the lies and deceit. I'm not surprised that part of my current pilgrimage will involve some deliverance work and I actually feel encouraged and hopeful that God has a grand leap forward in store. I trust You Lord, I surrender this to You Lord and choose to be transformed.