Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually!
-1 Chronicles 16:11

Among other varied curiosities, the last three weeks have tested me utterly, and even beckoned areas of my personality I forgot existed. Pressure, it seems, doesn't always produce diamonds. Sometimes, it just crushes things.

I found myself descending familiar tiers of desperation; all too familiar. It is like going into a rural gas station bathroom and seeing the initials you scribbled on the wall twenty years prior...the reality of their existence telling you that this place is exactly where you have always belonged; that you never really left at all; that everything in-between was just a specter...a dream.

During these extreme times, our spiritual immune system can become compromised. It is exactly at these moments when both God and the enemy do their best work. Broken down, weakened and tired. These states of being are perfect for us to receive God's mercy and refreshment. It is also when we are most susceptible to the enemy's condemnation.

Your adversary will work an angle. Whatever it is, he will find it and put it to the test. He is not the sort to be idle, apathetic or casual concerning what he perceives to be his expressed ownership of your future and, indeed, your very existence. He is invested and intensely interested in each one of us. Opportunity is his companion. He has a deadline to manage. If he could just get us alone for a moment. If he could just lead us far enough away from the pasture to work his angle, well, you get the idea.

In our own strength, we fail...again and again. Yet, from the time we are children, we are raised in a world that teaches the value of self reliance and potency; hoping to develop a force of will that perseveres through adversity. To tough it out; to be strong enough. This is exactly where our enemy wants us. He can work with pride. It's kind of his thing.

This is where I found myself when I finally came to my senses. With each area of my life that appeared to crumble, I became less and less willing to allow God to handle it. It was like being at a carnival shooting gallery watching the enemy shoot the targets, each one a vital part of my life. The urge to take control was nearly insurmountable. Then, at the last possible moment, I realized that the game, itself, belongs to God and that he makes the rules.

God is strong enough. He is strong enough to powerfully and simultaneously work in the lives of almost seven billion of his children. When his presence is sought, his strength flows through our circumstances. As soon as I figured this out, for the millionth time, things began to unfold in a way I could not have seen before then.

Things are rapidly improving. We are moving into a new house tomorrow; a house that is beyond anything I could have hoped for; a house that will see the start of our church plant and a house that would not have been possible had we not been forced to leave the other one. It is finally beginning...eight long months after arriving, it is finally beginning.

The peculiar thing, is that it all had to happen exactly the way it did. There was no other way around it. The only thing that would have made these past several weeks less painful would have been if I had made the genuine, continual choice to seek God's presence through it all...to be honest with him about what I was feeling. Honesty. God can work with honesty. That's kind of his thing.