What are you, O great mountain?

Then he said to me, "This is the word of the Lord to Zarubbabel saying, 'Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,' says the Lord of hosts. 'What are you, O great mountain? Before Zarubbabel you will become a plain; and he will bring forth the top stone with shouts of "Grace, grace to it!"'"--Zechariah 4:6-7

I highly endorse working hard, seeking and accepting opportunities, or going somewhere new even though it's intimidating. Proactivity has gotten me a lot of places in my life.

However, there's the flip side to that coin. I was thinking about all the times I've tried to make things happen on my own--accepting opportunities that are not quite right, or less than what I wanted. Sometimes this comes from plain, inexcusable impatience; but other times, there is a deeper reason. I think the deeper reason I have done this--have tried my best to settle for less--is because I did not believe I was worth God blessing me in that particular area. I did not think I deserved a God-given door, so I tried to find my way through a broken window.

People like to say, "When God closes a door, He always opens a window." I'm of the opinion that God never closes doors; He closes windows. He closes doggie doors and fire escapes, cracks in the wall and holes in the floor: all the ways of exit we think we must take because He won't offer us a door. We expect Him to disappoint us. 

We are all just waiting for the other shoe to drop, for God to let us down, for us to have to make it on our own. I mean, that's what people have always done to us. They have left us alone and lonely. We've had to struggle by ourselves because other people have abandoned us, let us down, or outright rejected us. We have ALL experienced this.

But that's not who the Father of Lights is. He is not a man, that He should lie (Numbers 23:19). The amazing, drop-the-mic revelation of Christianity is that it really will all be ok. He really IS in control. It's not a cliche. It's biblical truth.

You can trust Him.

The greatest miracles in my life are not the healings I've seen or the dramatic provisions I've experienced--all the physical impossibilities that became possible in Jesus--although there are enough of those to fill a book. Instead, the greatest miracles are the hundreds of ways He's revealed to me that I need to trust Him in each little tiny bit of my life. It seemed impossible for those internal insecurities to change; they seemed an immovable mountain. But when my own fears have appeared as a concrete wall before me, He's given me the grace to trust Him anyway. And, in those moments, Jesus takes great pleasure in walking through your walls and kicking out a door.

The peace of truly trusting Him with the secret things that are dearest to me, and believing that He will not let me down: THAT'S the peace that surpasses understanding.

Like the rest of us, I've got a long way to go in this, but I can say that, in moments when I have surrendered to this trust, I have felt the truest, purest sense of purpose a human can experience.

NO ONE and NOTHING can offer you the security that a relationship with Jesus Christ can. It's why He was born in a stable 2,016 years ago. It's why God became a baby, so that He could open a door for you that will never be closed. So that you will not have to be abandoned, rejected, alone, or afraid any longer.

"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!"--Matthew 7:7-11

There's no catch. He really can make it all better. And He really will. He loves you so much.

You don't have to scrape by. You are not a pauper. You are not an unwanted squatter in the house of God. You don't have to skulk around near discreet exits, waiting for the moment you have to run. You aren't homeless, moving through window after window and accepting any warm place to sleep every night.

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household (Ephesians 2:19).

The door is wide open. And in Him, you will find yourself saying to an impossibility, "What are you, O great mountain?"