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Monday, May 28, 2012

What Clarity Really is

I had a really important realization this past weekend.
I was looking over the Beth Moore study 'Believing God' and I'm thinking about all the things I need direction on in my life and all the things I'd like to know. Answers are what I seek. I crave clarity.

And then I had a startling thought, one that brought peace and redefined clarity in an unexpected, beautiful way.

Do I believe God is who He says He is?
The God of the Scriptures - is that the God I believe in?
Do I trust that God?
If so, well then Isn't THAT clarity?

This word, this idea clarity, that provides an easy escape in prayer - there's nothing wrong in wanting to know which way is up and wanting to know where you're headed. But I can't stop thinking that maybe I've been going about this the wrong way. That maybe my prayers for clarity have clouded the only true clarity I need - the promises of God. And when I fully trust in those, fully completely wholly, the peace it brings washes away fear like a river. Sitting in a Starbucks in a little town in Ohio, I think this is so clear. And I don't hold any new, real, earthly answers at all.

And then I got home from vacation and found this snippet of an email from a dear friend sitting in my inbox. I love how that works.

When the brilliant ethicist John Kavanaugh went to work for 3 months at “the house of the dying” in Calcutta, he was seeking a clear answer as to how best to spend the rest of his life. On the first morning there he met Mother Teresa. She asked, “And what can I do for you?” Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him. "What do you want me to pray for?” she asked. He voiced the request that he had borne thousands of miles from the United States. “Pray that I have clarity.” She said firmly, “No, I will not do that.” When he asked her why, she said, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of." When Kavanaugh commented that she always seemed to have the clarity he longed for, she laughed and said, “I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you will trust God."

In the midst of processing and transitioning this from mind to paper, I don't want it to lose its significance. Clarity is trust in Jesus. Every day, every moment faith. Faith. Believing God for who He says He is. When answers are more internal than external and I'm seeking them more than I seek the Father, a real, true clarity {a real true clarity} that eases the mind and brings great peace and joy is believing and trusting in Jesus Christ.

And the tyranny of the urgent is no longer God answer my prayers. The cry of my heart isn't what am I to do? It cries of heal my unbelief, make me a woman of great faith, help me to believe You are who You say You are. And when I say I trust and I believe, that melts the anxiety of not knowing.

Because I know.
Clarity is Jesus.

And He will answer and He will save and He will sustain and He will create and He will love.
That's the truth and that's oh so clear.

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