On Christ The Rock I lay my dreams

Come with your Fire Consuming me.

With Christ the Rock I make my plans.

Partner with Your Purposes…

The verse above is a part of a song called “Christ the Rock” that I adore by Kim Walker-Smith.  It’s simply beautiful and there is an entire sermon sitting right there in those few lines.

When I first heard this song I was stunned at how perfectly it captured the circumstance I found myself.

It was a bit like the story, you might know, from Genesis 22… “Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!”  And he said, “Here I am.”  Then He said, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you” (Genesis 22:1-2).

At the time I heard this song, I was in the midst of laying my dreams on the altar and telling the Lord, through tears, that He could take my “Isaac” if He wished. He could take that dream of promise and consume it as a holy sacrifice if He so desired.

Why?

Because He is God and I am not.

Listening to “Christ The Rock” in that season, created in me a heart cry where all I wanted was for God to be made famous through my pain.  My mindset was if I was going to hurt so badly, God had better get a ton of Glory!!!

I needed a Purpose for my Pain.

I had gotten past the “shocked” phase in which the Lord tells you to give up something you love more than words… slipped through the angry, questioning stage without permanent damage, and had now entered the “acceptance” phase.

“So Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife, and the two of them went together” (Genesis 22:6).

I was resigned to doing HIS WILL, not my own…

Now, you might be thinking… “wow, that sure sounds mighty noble of you, but not at all realistic…”

You should know that it took some time before I started to think about making God’s name famous as I wept my heart out to Him each and every night…

What was going on in my life was no laughing matter.  I was sacrificing a symbol of all my future hopes. My Isaac.

We pray this all of the time, don’t we?… “Thy Kingdom Come, Thy will be done…” (Matthew 6).

But how often do we really mean it?  Truthfully, if you are going to tell the God of the Universe that He can do whatever He wants with you… don’t you think you should really really mean it?

If you do not know the end of Abraham’s story… a miracle occurs just as Abraham is about to sacrifice Isaac.  A voice from heaven tells Him in not so many words, that God can trust that He is first in Abraham’s heart (above his hopes and dreams) and Abraham will not have to sacrifice the child he loves.  God provides a ram in the bush as a replacement for Isaac’s life because God still required a sacrifice. (Genesis 22:12-13).

It was in this season of my own life that I felt as if God was saying to me, “Sometimes I ask you for what you love most- your Isaac- to see if you will obey Me… sometimes I give Isaac back to you… and sometimes I do not… do you still believe in MY WILL BEING DONE?”

The answer did not feel like a “yes” at first.  At first I wanted to crawl under a rock and die (I’m being dramatic, but completely serious). My mindset was not noble and full of grandiose ideas of how my great sacrifice to The Lord would bring millions to Christ one day.

It was quite the opposite actually.  My mind was doing all it could to stay sane.  And the most I hoped for was just a little peace as I slept each night.

The truth was I had not yet done the second part of this song.  “With Christ the Rock I make my Plans… Partner with His Purposes.”

I had laid my dreams on the altar and had my sacrifice consumed, but now I had to make a choice to partner with Jesus as He stripped me of something I felt I could not live without.

I made a decision to give it ALL… because that’s what He required.  Not most of me, all of me.

I broke… and it hurt.  A Lot…

But…

The more broken and empty I became, the more room God had to fill me up, not with selfish desires of what I thought my life should look like, but with Himself.

All of a sudden, I was more desperate for Him than my next breath!

The brokenness slowly began to create a strength in me I cannot explain other than to say that I became less and less concerned with what other’s thought and more and more concerned about getting as close to my Father’s caring touch, every waking moment that I could.

My broken heart began to hurt for others more than it ever had before.  My compassion grew from sympathy to empathy.

And I began to “Partner with Christ” as He laid out His plans for my life…

I began to trust Him in a way I never had before and started to see lives change through hearing my story, not of LOSS, but of GRACE.

I have learned that the more broken I become, the more I can be used by God.

I have an ability now to relate to people’s pain and help them through their own and with a sincerity I didn’t have before, tell them God can HEAL and will create STRENGTH where there is weakness, and BOLDNESS where there is fear.

I am a testimony of this.

Please take from this story something beautiful.  Yes, pain came… in life it does.  However, NEVER FORGET that Jesus, out of His sheer compassion, has magnificent plans for us, not to harm us but to give us a Hope and a Future (Jeremiah 29:11).

I challenge you today, that whatever pain you may be in, whatever Isaac you may need to lay on the altar… that you would have the strength to say with me… “On Christ The Rock I lay my dreams.  Come with your Fire Consuming me”…

Catch the Wave,

Victoria