Waking Life

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you;

I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." Ezekiel 36:26

A chance to start new. Fresh. To have a clean slate. This is what makes New Years such a joyous occasion. It provides a fresh start and the hope of newness for the upcoming year. Spring offers the same hope as bulbs bloom and life awakens again.

The beautiful thing though is that we don't have to wait until New Years to have a fresh start. Christ offers to give us a new heart and replace our heart of stone on any occasion. Lamentations 3:23 says "Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness."

The forgiveness, compassion, grace, love and mercy of our God never runs dry. We can trust that at any time we sense a hardening of our hearts, a staleness in our relationship with Christ.... my goodness, even a complete deadness in our relationship with Him, that He is more than willing to take what is dead and bring life. That is what He is in the business of... Bringing life to that which was dead.

That is in essence the reason for this website: Waking Eve. The name of the first woman, Eve, means "LIFE". I am partial to thinking this is because when God created woman, LIFE exploded. We brought some color to the table. We brought some bounce to Adam's step. Amazing isn't it that after all the earth was created, all the beauty of nature, all the wonder that God sculpted with His very hands, all of the unique and magnificent animals that were created, and even the wonder of the first man that God formed and breathed His very life into.... After all of this when God took Adam's rib, formed woman and breathed into her, He decided her name would be "life". Life awakened. Adam took a second glance. (And a third I'm sure!)

But then after perfect intimacy and relationship with one another & with God in the garden, sin entered the scene. I believe that the first lie that man & woman bought into, is the same lie we are being ensnared by today. It is in essence that they need not depend on God for life. As Jeff VanVonderen says in his book Families Where Grace Is In Place, the lie was that "Control was better than dependence". The sad thing is that even as believers in Christ, as children who have walked with God most of our lives, we are believing this lie. And it is sucking the life out of us. It is rendering us ineffective in ministry. It is making us no different than the rest of the world.... because we are still trying to run the program. We are attempting to do it on our own. We are stopping to be refueled at the table of the world, instead of going to the VERY SOURCE of life, the very source of peace, the source of wisdom and love and all blessings.

C.S. Lewis in his brilliant book Mere Christianity wrote on this very thing:

"That was the very fall of Satan: and that was the sin he taught the human race. What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could 'be like gods'. That they could set up on their own as if they had created themselves, be their own masters- invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history. Money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slaves- the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.

The reason why it can never succeed is this. God made us: Invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Him. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about Him. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing."

Oh Lord we desire to be awakened. We desire to experience the fullness of life, joy, peace, blessing, love, purpose... that we were designed for. We settle for so much less. Awaken our hearts and refresh our spirits. Where we are turning to other things for life, for purpose, for hope- let your Holy Spirit shed light on that. Give us the wisdom to see where/when we attempt to run on our own fuel. And in the powerful name of Jesus, we ask you help us break this self-reliance... the very lie and curse that began in the garden. Be our source of life. Refuel our empty tanks. Refresh our weary spirits. You are fullness of Life & fullness of Joy. You are the very thing our hungry hearts are longing for. Awaken our hearts to more of you.