Balloons, Mountains, and where God does His Best Work...

   I don’t know where God most often speaks to you, but for me it’s usually in the shower (maybe it has to do with the complete vulnerability... In every way…that I have in there).  Anyway, this morning I was getting ready and thus was in the shower and God began to speak to me.  Now to be honest, I’ve never heard the audible voice of God, and this morning was no different, but I still know it was Him.

  Standing there with the water crashing over me and my soul laid bare before God, this picture popped into my head of this balloon being blown up almost to the point of exploding, and then being deflated….over and over and over again.  It was like with each “blow up” the balloon was being stretched just a little further than the time before, and the capacity for air inside of it kept growing and growing.  It sounds weird, but I immediately felt like this was just a visual description of what God’s been doing in my life lately.

  The Past few weeks and months have been stressful and stretching…and a part of me has felt like I’ve been pushed to my limits time and time again, with a few days of rest and calm in the midst.  In fact a week or so ago... after a time of overwhelming guilt, sadness and shame over my sin,...I was enjoying a very precious time of calm in my life, when I felt like God was telling me to savor it because we still had further down the mountain to go and things weren’t going to get easier just yet.

   It’s funny….I hate this place I am in…. this place of uncomfortableness and vulnerability and feeling like I am walking down the mountain into the valley.  BUT that’s just it…. in the valley is where God does His best work and things do their  best growing!  Basically...in the valley...God’s there!  And I honestly, truly believe that God is leading me there and whatever He is doing in the midst of that leading is EXACTLY what I need!

  So down the mountain I go again, allowing the balloon of my life to be inflated to its limits once again, so that God can do His work IN me, in order that He might have the space to do His work THROUGH me.  Amen