The Deep Work of 2015: Part 1

It was a deep work, friends.

The work He has done in me over the last year, it is so deep that the weightiness of it just hit me the other evening like a ton of bricks.

I feel like a new believer. Seriously, the only other time I have felt like I do at this moment is a year or 2 after I gave my life to Jesus, having experienced the heart and life renovation that followed, I found myself standing face-to-face with freedom I had never known. The depth of that identity shifting work matches what I feel right now. 

It’s a deep work; the purifying and establishing of identity in the face of deep and lengthy patterns of belief and circumstance. Identity travels through the heart and soul and mind of a person; it defines them, it is foundational, it is the determining factor of mindset and belief, it flows through every cell of the body and permeates every single thought and step. 

Do you know who you are?

Because I am still discovering who I am in Christ; the Lord is faithfully purifying my understanding of my identity. And it’s a deep work.

2015 was a hard year. I describe it as excruciatingly painful and overwhelmingly glorious. While that may seem like an odd combination, I think it is to be expected when traveling into the depth of the pit hand-in-hand with Jesus. Psalms speaks of deep crying out to deep, and I have found in my life that in the deepest places when I have cried out to the Lord, He has shown me greater things than I have ever seen or known in the heights. 

So I went there with Him. We traveled into some of the deepest pain I have experienced; unraveling web after web of lies. We disassembled thick walls I had built up around some of the most vulnerable places inside of me to protect myself; heavy stone after heavy stone until my back ached and my hands bled. We shook off the shackles of fear; chain after chain grating across my heart and mind until they were so raw I wondered if I would make it out in one piece. And we did it all as my physical body crumbled around me, fighting my every move.

But then, I felt the pleasure of watching the webs burn and the stones pulverize and the chains disintegrate. And I find myself once again standing face-to-face with freedom I have never known.

It was a deep work, friends.

But it was worth it, because as I write this, I know who I am:

I am no longer “sick,”

I am “loved.”