From Normal to Necessary

We all want normal. Familiar. Our worry isn’t challenged in that place and control is seemingly at our fingertips. We understand what we are doing and we know where we are going. 

But what happens when we have to leave normal to travel into the necessary?

My life had been a picture of normal- at least my normal. 

But then, God called me into my necessary. 

And I wanted to go…until I began walking it out.

It is a strange and unfamiliar place. 

Those of us who have always liked our normal, often don’t respond so well to our necessary.

It reminds me of Mary with her jar of expensive perfume, making her way to Jesus amidst all the men reclined around the table with Him. 

She wasn’t in her normal place. And they did not like it. 

She broke her jar of perfume and poured out her all before her Lord. 

The fragrance of her normal was overpowered- it was filled with the fragrance of her necessary.

She untied her hair from its normal and used it as necessary to wash Jesus’ feet.

She stepped out of her normal and into her necessary because that is what brought glory to her Savior. 

When she chose to step out of the distance her normal, she stepped into the intimacy of necessary- found at the feet of Jesus. 

A year and a half ago, God called me out of my normal. And step after step I have walked in my necessary. 

Can I be honest? I haven’t loved every moment of my necessary. 

It is hard. It is lonely. It is overwhelming. 

But time and time again, I find myself more at the feet of Jesus than ever before. 

I find my life filled with the fragrance of the sacrifice that my necessary demands, and I breathe deep the strength, I grip tight to the trust that I had only heard about in my normal. 

And when my Father saw I was willing to live in the necessary, He has kept calling me away from any semblance of normal that I begin to sit down in. 

The necessary for His Kingdom has become my new normal. 

Because the moment I begin to trust anything in myself is the moment I choose to stop trusting everything He is. 

Change and I? We aren’t BFF’s.

But these changes have given me new perspectives.

I see how truly powerless I am.

I see how truly powerful He is.

I believe in miracles because I know the Miracle worker…I have sat at his feet. 

I have seen Him in my necessary in ways my normal never allowed. 

Don’t be so afraid to leave your normal that you miss the blessing of your necessary. 

Breaking your jar of what you have been holding tight to, and allowing that fragrance of that sacrifice to spill out? It changes the aroma of the atmosphere. It charges it with trust, power, faith like never before. 

What normal will you step out of- even with fear and trembling- to step into the necessary God has called you to?

No normal is greater than the necessary of knowing Jesus more intimately. 

It will not be easy, but it will be worth it.

“Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.””

Luke 7:44-47 NIV

#SimpleTruth