By Adrienne Woodland
This year’s fast has been particularly challenging, especially when it comes to my thoughts and expectations. I was excited to begin these two weeks of consecration and rededication. But my expectation on how Day 1 would go was completely shattered due to an unforeseen mishap. I did not expect to fall on ice, injuring my arm and spending part of the day in the emergency room in excruciating pain.
Now, in Week 2, I’m wondering if I am striving for perfection to say, ‘Ha, I did it!’ Or am I striving to go deeper in my relationship with God? In the pursuit of perfection, we can end up checking all the boxes and still find ourselves just skating on the surface in our relationship with God.
Maybe the problem isn’t striving to be perfect, but rather fear. Fear of failure, fear of falling short, fear of losing things you hold dear. Fear that if you don’t get it right, God won’t love you.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” Ephesians 2:8-9 (ESV).
“For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” 2 Timothy 1:7 (ESV).
Fear has held me in my house for the past week. Fear of falling and hurting myself again. But I’ve also been afraid of going deeper in my prayer life. So, staying safely in my home and away from house-to-house prayer has kept me comfortably at the surface.
But God can find you right where you are. He brought house-to-house prayer to me via Zoom. And I was reminded of the love of God I feel every time I fellowship with my Detroit Church family.
After that Zoom prayer, I realized I have been down on myself because I haven’t been ‘perfect.’ I’ve been down because challenges have come, altering the plans I had in my head. I finally had to realize I need to extend myself grace. And I also realized that fasting and consecration is a daily walk. Each day we will face hurdles, but we can only overcome them with God. If we count on doing it by ourselves, we will fail every single time.
Now, I was finally ready to face my fear and go deeper in the Lord. To those depths where you’re weeping and fully exposed. To the place where you can no longer hide behind protocol and checklists. It is the place of true surrender. This is the place where you realize you are nothing and can do nothing without God.
This is also the place where you feel His love like a warm embrace. He encapsulates you with the comfort that only He can give. This is where He tells you how He fearfully and wonderfully made you and how much He loves you. This is the place where you get a chance to see yourself through His eyes. Oh what joy! Oh what peace! To be in the secret place of the Lord!
“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.’ For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you” Psalm 91:1-7 (ESV).