“And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone.” Mt. 14:23
“Maybe you need to come apart,” a friend essentially said on the phone. “I don’t know, Lara. When God wants me to do something, it’s very clear to me. If you’re not hearing clearly, maybe you have to come apart.”
I had been sharing with him by telephone my exceeding yearning to be in God’s will, specifically in serving Him. What did He want me to do next? Though my plate was full, I had a sense there was something more, maybe different, maybe new, maybe more of the same, but something. My friend’s counsel? Come apart? Though my friend was referring to Jesus Christ coming apart – or away – from the crowds of people to be alone with our Father in heaven at times, in my heart for some reason I heard something else. Did the Holy Spirit have a message in this for me? Undoubtedly yes. Not only was God reminding me through my friend the vital importance of spending time alone with the Lord in His Word, seeking His face, praying, and listening for His voice which always lines up with His Word, but the Lord wanted me to see something else also.
“Come apart? Like I need to come apart? Be in pieces? Not whole? Broken?” I essentially said.
“I was referring to when Jesus came apart from the people. When He separated Himself from the crowds to be with God the Father,” he so much as said. “But maybe what you’re saying is true also. Maybe you need to come apart from the people, and come apart.”
It seemed my friend had been sent to deliver a two-fold message. I spend time daily alone with the Lord, often throughout the day and sometimes in the middle of the night in fact, but God had something in addition to show me.
Come apart. First, to spend time alone with God to seek, hear, and obey Him. Second, to be humble, broken, in pieces, undone, malleable, formable, moldable, shapeable, unglued, quiet, meek, yielding, clay in His hands for Him to form on His almighty potter’s wheel as He shapes us into the form He desires, speaks to our hearts about what He desires to do in and through us, and uses us to love, honor, adore, and glorify His name!
What I realized was I come apart to spend time with God, but sometimes have been prideful, arrogant, convinced I know what is best, my ears filled with wax, my heart sure of what I want to hear, my body and mind hard with self-righteousness, already formed in my own mind and in pursuit of what I desire. Instead, I, and we, need to come apart regularly with God, humble in His almighty hands. Are you? Come apart!