Sheer Beauty - Blessed are the Meek

So it has been a while since my last post and a lot has happened. The first thing I want to blog about however is Sheer Beauty. It seems a life time ago now but I attended Sheer Beauty just last weekend and I want to share with you a snippet of how it impacted me.

I am going to try to be brutally honest here. I headed off to the weekend with an expectant heart ready and willing to receive what God was going to share with me, but unguarded and therefore unprepared for the way in which the Devil was going to try to ruin this weekend by assaulting me lies.

Over time I have found that one of the devil's favourite games to play with me is the "Compare Yourself" game. This does not take much participation on my part just observation. The game works like this. 1. Find Chelsea amongst a company of fantastic women. 2. Convince her that she has NOTHING to contribute compared to these women and that on this planet she is NO-ONE compared to these women.

I know most of you probably play this game with the devil yourself, but I think this is one of his favourite games to play with me because there are so many areas of my life that he has brought it out and we've played together. We've played in the presence of my family, school friends, uni friends and church community, and slowly but surely in each situation I have marked myself as the inferior sister, daughter, wife, friend, student, worshipper etc...the one everyone puts up with and allows to take up a space even though they have nothing to contribute. The quiet one. The one with nothing to offer.

Well this weekend was no different, apart from the fact that it was all these scenarios rolled into one with so many different relationships represented in the company of women that I shared the weekend with. By the end of the weekend I had convinced myself that I was invisible, that I was unseen, that I would never be chosen for a significant role, and that others' opinions of me mattered over that of my Lord God. Wow, how easily he (the devil) wins the game sometimes.

In most games, once someone gets a significant lead on you, you've lost your chance of gaining any dignity back - you've simply been beaten. Praise the Lord for He holds the "wild cards" of life, the ones that can simply turn everything on it's head in the blink of an eye! After a weekend of battling it out with the devil (and I mean secret battling, I didn't even realise how I was being defeated), the Lord exposed the game with one simple wild card - The Rose Ceremony that concluded the weekend. For those of you who weren't there, this was a time of receiving God breathed words through the anointing of oil by His faithful servants Leigh and Misty. This ceremony was unexpected, but what was more unexpected was how thirsty for His touch I felt after a weekend of soaking in His presence and His word. I jumped out of my seat to get in line, I didn't want to wait an hour, I wanted His words now! (I realize in hindsight this had a lot to do with how exhausted I was from playing these devilish games.)

I came expectant and the Lord spoke to me and said "You are not invisible, you are just meek." I broke down. I did not know I needed these words, I was oblivious to the games I had been playing. Eight simple words. Eight simple words that stood almost completely alone to the rest of the words spoken to me at the time, yet hit me so powerfully. Not invisible, not invisible, not invisible I repeated to myself. Restoration, revelation, all in those first few words. I ignored the fact that I did not really know what God calling me meek meant and took the promise that I was visible to him all the way home with me to Sydney.

It was only today that I sat down to unpack Him describing me as meek. My first point of reference was to check the online dictionary meaning by doing a google search:

Meek - Humble; gentle; long-suffering; patient; not likely to complain, argue or react strongly; submissive; easily imposed upon.

Nothing. Not a word of encouragement or love here, not a word that stands beside my revelation of being Visible.

I exited the page rebuking this definition and sought through my search results for something else and saw a page entitled "Blessed are the Meek" containing a break down of a Biblical understanding of Meek and the answers I was looking for:

1. Meek from the Greek word "praus" used to describe a soothing medicine, a sailor's gentle breeze or a broken colt. (The author highlighting that all these situations describe great POWER and STRENGTH, under control.)
2. Biblical examples of Meekness - Abraham, David, JESUS, Moses (I would not call these men "easily imposed upon!")
3. A.W.Tozer's description - The meek man is NOT a human mouse afflicted with a sense of his own inferiority. Rather he may be in his moral life as BOLD as a lion and as STRONG as Samson; but he has stopped being fooled about himself. He has accepted God's estimate of his own life. He knows he is as weak and helpless as God declared him to be, but paradoxically, he knows at the same time that he is in the sight of God of more IMPORTANT than angels. In himself, nothing; in God, EVERYTHING. That is his motto.

Need I say more? There is nothing for me but LIFE, STRENGTH and DIGNITY in these words. I WILL no longer believe the devils lies about my Meekness. I WILL not be ashamed or disappointed by my Meekness. I WILL hold God's words close to my heart. I WILL hold my head high as this is a God given name. I WILL pull out this Wild Card and refuse to believe that my Meekness played out at times in my submissiveness and humility is less than POWERFUL, BOLD and STRONG, and that I am not anything but IMPORTANT in the story and EVERYTHING to my Father.

~ I hope that made sense ~