Though I’ve finally gotten a handle on the literal unpacking from our beach trip, there are still spiritual bags to unpack. “Brushes with God change us,” as Sara Hagerty writes in her latest book, The Gift of Limitations: finding beauty in your boundaries. These moments are worth looking back on. I share them in hopes of encouraging you in your own walk with the Lord.
The message of Sara’s book hit so close to home. I, too, have been on a journey of embracing my own limitations, of bumping up against my own boundary lines. Each time this happens, I’m graciously met with the presence of God. His rod and staff, guiding me. In conjunction with reading this book, I was also reading Psalm 139 each morning—prompted by the Lord to do this, a brush with God I didn’t recognize until I was at the beach.
On Tuesday morning when I “sat on the steps of my soul in the deep place where nobody goes,” as Jill Briscoe so beautifully puts it, my mind was drawn to the subtitle of Psalm 139 in my Bible —“God’s Omnipresence and Omniscience.” He is everywhere and knows all things. And quite the opposite is true of me. I sat in one little bedroom in a beach house on the coast of South Carolina. I know so very little.
Verses 4-6 particularly has my attention.
Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O Lord, You know it all. You have enclosed me behind and before and laid Your hand upon me [my words:do you hear the boundaries around you that is God Himself?). Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it.”
I’ve read these words many times before, but more than ever I saw His limitlessness. And I saw my limitedness.
The theme of Sara’s book helped me consider afresh the comfort I can experience when I acknowledge and rest in my limits. Not trying to fight for more or struggle to be more, do more. But instead to take a moment and thank God for the boundaries He has put around my life. As Sarah wrote, “God often gives us limits to grow us.”
Like a seed, limited and confined to its shell, it must surrender in death, buried in the soil, dependent on what only God can do, before there is life and fruit again.
John 12:24 “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”
Praying that we can be grateful for our limitations and be drawn closer to our limitless God. He is all we need. Why would we try to jump our God-given fence or move our God-given boundary lines in our own strength?
“The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup; You support my lot. The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; Indeed my heritage is beautiful to me. I will bless the Lord who has counseled me; Indeed my mind instructs me in the night. I have set the Lord continually before me; Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my glory rejoices; my flesh also will dwell securely. For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol; Nor will You allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.
You will make known to me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever.”
Psalm 16:5–11
