BREAKTHROUGH!!!!!!!!!
This has been a weekend of revelation. Of the seeds planted last year finally growing roots of revelation into my heart. The orphan spirit left on the floor behind me and I choose to run fully abandoned into the arms of my father, not just as His daughter, but liking the one He has chosen to adopt and call daughter and lavish His love upon. He has so radically and persistently showered me with love that I can do nothing but realize that what I have been told and read about is true. He is my Father. I am His daughter. I am loved, adopted, beautiful and allowed to be me. Where did this all come from? Two realisations…
I don't have to prove myself.
It is more than ok to fail.

Those were the floodgates through which all of this followed…

I don't have to be anyone other than me.
I am not a misfit, just a very unique individual.
I do not have to know what I am called to do just who I am called to be; a fire starter, a commissioner and equipper, one who cares for and loves the brokenhearted, the outcast and the desperate.
I am God's daughter. I have total confidence that He hears everything I ask Him and that He cares enough to even answer the littlest things. He clothes me, provides for me, feeds me, surrounds me with family and friends, loves me, speaks to me, equips me, forgives me, disciplines me and cheers me on as I run.
It is ok to fail.
Even if I fall flat on my face, He cares more about my heart than my actions. I desire to be obedient and give Him everything because I love Him. It is all about love.
I know I am loved and therefore I trust Him because He has proven Himself fully trustworthy.
I know I am forgiven so I choose to let go of shame and guilt and to walk in short accounts, trusting in His faithfulness and mercy and grace if I trip up.
I know that He has plans bigger than I will ever be able to begin to imagine...so I don't need to exhaust myself trying to figure them out! I am beginning to know how to be content in all circumstances; there is a great privilege in simplicity. I am honored to have nothing and have the privilege of being utterly desperate and dependent on His goodness. I look at the bible at Gideon's army and at the disciples and I know that He knows me better than I do and that He will equip and grow me as I go, ensuring that things are so much bigger than I could ever manage alone that He may be glorified fully and His kingdom brought to earth.
I know I am adopted and what is His is mine.
I know I have a new name and can walk with head held high.
I know that we walk and talk together as friends and that although His ways are higher than mine, He chose to humble Himself that I may know Him intimately and have the great honor of working together and being needed and wanted by Him.
I know my home is in heaven and not here but I can visit it anytime I like.
I know that I know that He is my Father and He calls me by name and will never fail me.
I know that He is the personification of perfect love
...and perfect loves never fails.


And the revelation that started it all?
It may be that it looks to the world like I am the most ill-equipped and painfully wrong choice for something God is asking me to do.

However, the revelation that struck me clean between the eyes and has changed everything is simply;
Surely it is exactly that fact qualifies me for the role He is asking me to walk in?

He doesn't chose the strongest and the most adept, most experienced or gifted as I've always believed. But He chooses out weaknesses and areas of growth and dependence and causes us to move in these that HE might be glorified. It is Gideon's great army, whittled down to a few hundred men. From ability to inability. It is the disciples, fishermen with no people skills and a poor track record, not given time to even clean up let alone prepare and get sorted.

I therefore choose to no longer be bound by standards and expectations not only of others but of myself. I choose to look my Lord in the face and at what He has asked me to do and not spend days, weeks and months to prove my ability to do it or how equipped i am and and to prepare myself so I would be perfect for the job after all.

But instead, I choose to lay down on my face and say "God I have no idea how you will do this through me, it terrifies me, I have no ability within myself, I have no idea how to last a second, but all is possible through you, I am you servant, your daughter and your beloved. So I lay down and give you this little vessel, to do with you what you will, and I will gladly do it for you that you may be fully glorified through my weaknesses, and my inabilities."

I have come to the conclusion that there is something about the "go" of God that more often of not is is about an "as we go" equipping. Sometimes, it is the principle of it being far easier to steer a moving vessel than to launch one that is stuck in the sand and being covered with more and more layers of waterproofing.