Since the start of this year I have felt the incessant need to shed belongings. Aside from knowing my life situation was in flux, this was more of an inner thirst, a prompting of the Holy Spirit, and a need I couldn’t ignore. I would shed one layer of belongings and then feel the need to go deeper. This continued layer after layer until finally, now in November, all my belongings can be moved in one car load. I still don’t have the full picture, I just knew I had to do it.
Every day I seem to have a conversation with a friend who is undergoing a process where their frameworks of thinking are being dismantled. Not just that, but being brutally smashed. It’s like all of a sudden, the ways they’ve been thinking are no longer fit for purpose, and God is at the helm causing all sorts of ruckus to shift them into the place He has in mind for them, be it emotionally, mentally or situationally.
Four of these friends (and counting) in the last two months have told me God is leading them to get rid of belongings, on a mass scale! And with each of them, He’s not directly told them why. The items in questions are things like clothes and books (who ever heard of having too many books?!). I find this fascinating because it’s a recurring theme in my life and with so many people right now. What is God up to?
My best guesses of what’s going on is that God could be doing deep identity shifts. He’s causing us to make room for Him, using practical physical changes to represent a deeper reality shift He wants to bring us into. To get us used to yielding to His ways of leading.
Physical belongings create a tangible shift, and that can help us recognize when He puts His hand on things less tangible, like our identity, how we think about things. It’s a shift of prioritizing Him in the place of things, of bringing Him into every part of our world and orientation of thinking. When He asks us to be or think in a way that’s unfamiliar, we’re going to recognize His voice and we have a history of making room for Him.
The shifting and downsizing may not always seem to be for a reason. He is giving opportunities for obedience and listening. Perhaps preparing us for things we cannot see, shaping our hearts to think, feel and expect in new and as yet unfamiliar ways. It could be any number of these. I know for certain God is committed to making us more compatible to walking with His Spirit, and He loves to draw us so much deeper into Himself. His desire is to be one with us.
How much stuff, or routines or WAYS OF THINKING do we have that are in the way, innocently, but in the way none the less. Keeping us from the deeper places of being in the arms of God?
Some ways of thinking are so baked in that we need to have all our foundations rattled so that we allow these ways of thinking to ‘unbake’, to unset. What are the ways that our foundations can get ‘unbaked’? For me, this downsizing process has helped me have an open hand toward God, but the true rattling and shaking has been in the waiting and unknown life season. I am so grateful for the time of having given up some physical belongings, because it’s brought me to a place where in the midst of unknowing I can deeply experience the knowledge that I am in His care. In all things.
In the process of letting go of physical belongings I have simultaneously said ‘God I’m listening, have your way in every part of me. Nothing in my life is off limits. Even if it hurts’. One shift begets another. Yielding in relationship with God begets an open-handed heart response to all the things He asks for. It’s like a grace-filled snowball effect: when your heart yields one time, it wants to yield again and again!
We cannot continue to hang on to how we have been. God builds with the long-term in mind. He’s not panicked about time or for us to look successful. He is interested in doing an excellent work that will last into eternity. He is interested in His kids getting to know Him in their most deep and vulnerable parts. I don’t know about you, but when there’s something deep and vulnerable in me, I don’t want someone poking around there. Well, God loves when we are unhindered in our trust of Him. I pray you let Him near those places. The places that hurt. I pray you experience His beautiful healing work, and fall deeper into trust with Him. It’s a lifelong journey, so if you’ve felt resistant to the process, can I encourage you to let it begin.
If I were to leave you with a few words of encouragement it’s these:
Yield. Weep. Enjoy.
You will come out victorious.
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”
CS Lewis, Mere Christianity.
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Love this Rachel! This speaks to me a lot in this season of life as well! Great job for saying yes to the lord in this season!