PUTTING MYSELF DOWN

_(Originally written in April of 2011)

I have to put myself down. You have to understand that myself is trying to stand up too tall. As I face these things that I really don’t like—things that are pressing in and down on me—myself is trying to rise up to take my own way out. Myself is trying to get my relief in my way and my time. Myself is not really caring about anyone else but myself, and not really worrying about anything else but my own. Myself is really very selfish, and myself will destroy me if I let me, because myself wants to rule me, and myself does not know best.

In what I am going through, there is much more at stake than what myself realizes or wants to deal with. I don’t understand everything He is doing, but I know that God is at work, and myself does not want to wait and see what good He is up to. God lets nothing go to waste in the life of His child, and I know that as I am being pressed under these things, these things are under His sovereign hands even as I am in His sovereign hands.

The “experts” tell me to raise myself up in esteeming myself—to experience the freedom of unleashing myself. They do not understand the power myself has to destroy me in taking me away from what my Heavenly Father says is best for me. Oh, I will be raised up, but not by myself. And there is a ceiling restricting how far I will be raised up: it is the floor I allow myself to build, restricting how far I will be brought low. Until I am ready to be humbled to the depths of my pit, I am not ready to be exalted to the heights of my calling. In the wrenching pain, I am strongly tempted to let myself start frantically barricading me against going any further down into what is causing me so much pain. I must realize that myself would be barricading me against the touch and work of the sovereign, loving hands of God, which I can never be taken out of, and which can take me up and out of my pit of suffering in His good time for my timely good.

I must put myself down. I must put myself down on my knees in the lap of my God and Father. You see, I am not alone down here in this pit. He is with me.

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time He may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on Him, because He cares for you. (1 Peter 5:6-7)