Leaving the Darkness

To say "I grew comfortable with living in the dark", is an understatment.  I learned to thrive in the dark.  The Lord changed who I was while I was in darkness, and changed my name there.  He met me in the depths of the shadows and gave me visions, answers, love, tenderness, dicipline, and direction.  When I lost all hope and trust, he took me to the desert and woed me.  He stripped me of all I had and asked me to place it all in Him.  He waited and pursued and waited some more.  It became quite the love story and when I was ready, I let Him rescue me and like a bride in her lovers arms, He carried me over the threshold into our new home but I couldn't settle in.  I grew anxious, and like Gomer, I walked away and back into the darkness.  I was scared; scared of being hurt; scared to walk in faith and truth; scared to trust and hope and He would show up again, in the depths of the shawdows, with arms open asking me to come back home.  Our Lord is faithful and patient (thankfully) and back home I came.

Stepping onto the ground of complete healing and total restoration, for me, was like stepping off of a boat that had been at sea for two years and onto dry land.  My sea legs had to adjust and like stepping out of a dark room and into the sun, my eyes had to adjust as well.  I had to trust in all that the Lord had told me while I was away and put my faith into practice here in this new place.  The move has not been as easy as one would think.  I had hoped that I would gladly accept and quickly take comfort in the warmth of the light and that I was more than ready to make my new home here but seeing my new reflection has been strange and yet one of beauty; one that I am ready to accept.  I have tasted the bitterness of betrayal and been washed clean of it's stains by HIS blood.  There is not a day that goes by that I am not humbled by what He has done for me.  He found me worthy of rescuing and the rocks will not have to cry out on my behalf, for I will praise His name forever. 

This season of darkness has ended, and I can honestly say now, that I am ready.  Thank you Jesus, I am ready.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
¹ There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:

² a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
³ a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
⁴ a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
⁵ a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
⁶ a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
⁷ a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
⁸ a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

 

Is God Personally Invested?

There's a YouTube video traveling around the internet that made me stop and think.  It starts out with a middle aged man in a hurry to get to work.  As he backs out of his driveway, he almost runs over his neighbor's kid, stuck in traffic, he annoyingly mumbles accusations towards other drivers, he gets irritated with the people at the coffee shop who are taking their time to get his order...you get the idea. So he sits down at a table to wait on his coffee when a man comes over, hands him a pair of glasses and walks away.  Confused the gentlemen puts on the glasses and can suddenly see all the afflictions and feelings of those around him.  The woman sitting on the couch is moarning the loss of her friend, the man in the corner is struggling with addiction, one of the coffee house employees is stressing about how to feed his family on such little pay and so on.  By the end of the video, the man has realized that he was so focused on himself and staying to himself that the ones around him feel abandoned and alone; and possibly he too feels that way but no one has ever stopped to ask how he was doing nor has he taken the time to do that for another. 

Just recently, while talking with a friend, he spoke words that hit pretty hard.  He said, "I know there is a God, and I believe in Jesus Christ but I just don't think he is personally invested in me.  I don't think he really cares about me personally."  It was heart breaking to hear but it made me question too, "Does God care about me?"  After some prayer, God gave me this answer to give to my friend and also set the record straight with me.  These were the Lord's words to me.  "Those times when your heart breaks over another, those times when you have a longing to reach across the aisle and give a stranger a hug, those times you just have a desire to call a friend and talk...those are my feelings.  Those desires are my desires.  It is me inside of you that is hurting because someone's heart has been broken; it is me that wants to give one of my children a hug; it is me that just wants to talk to the friend you call to check in on.  All of those feelings inside of you have been placed there by me so that my children will know that I am a God that is personally invested."  WOW!!!

There was a saying told to me when I was child that is being brought to my mind now as I write, it goes, "You may be the only Christ some one will ever see or meet."  We are so often stopped by the enemy with fear or insecurites to reach out to others that we just close ourselves off from the world and we end up missing so many opportunities to be Christ to others or even have Christ's love shown to us.  Satan tells us that we are safer in our little boxes, away from getting hurt, or judged but by believing his lies, we are actually just driving the nails in our own coffin unable to feel anything...even love.  God created us to be in relationships, to long for relationships, to long to be in a relationship with Him and sometimes the only way we know He actually loves us is to hear it from someone tangible.  Be that someone.  Show His love so that others may know just how personally invested He actually is, because he really is.  He really does know who you are; nothing you do escapes his sight; he loves you more than you can even fathom; when you are hurting, he is hurting; when you are overjoyed, he too, is overjoyed; and when you long to reach out and love on another, he is longing to do that as well. 

Our God is real.  He is invested and He cares.

It's good to be hated

“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you."  John 15:18-19

When I read these words that Jesus spoke, I tend to think it only pertains to those fellow Christians that have to meet underground for worship and study or the ones who wrote symbols in the sand to identify one another so as to not be found out and possibly brought to death; the ones who live in dangerous countries where there is no freedom of religion and Christianity is illegal.  The "world" they live in surely hates them but I never experienced that in my own life...until I opened my eyes a little wider.

All around me, if I step outside my safety circle of likeminded Christian friends (and I say likeminded because even some Christians I know disagree with some of Christ's teachings if it doesn't suit them) I am being tested in my faith by a world that hates me.  I don't know about you, but I don't like being hated.  And even I, at times, hate doing the very thing I so strongly believe in because I'd rather be angry with my husband who hasn't done _______ (you feel in the blank) and while I am at it, let's throw the kitchen sink into that argument too or curse the man who decided to cut me off at an intersection.  I don't want to act like Christ in those moments, do you?

 I realize that the "world" isn't just those around us who continue to push us so hard that we honestly have to fight to show the characterics of Christ, but it's also our flesh that happens to hate the very thing that Christ is doing to our hearts and the Christ within us hates what our flesh desires and sometimes does.  I believe this is why we so refreshingly recall Paul's words from Romans when he says "For what I want to do, I do not do but what I hate, I do..."  It comforts us to know that we aren't the only ones who struggle with this dark war that rages in hidden places and sometimes, not so hidden.

The world will hate us, because it first hated Christ.  Take heart!  When we are bumped up against by another who challenges our faith and/or the actions that come from our faith or just pecks at us constantly to see if we will eventually stumble, know that Christ himself faced the very same thing.  For example, when Peter told Christ he couldn't let him be crucified, Jesus had the discernment to say to his friend, "Get thee behind me Satan."  He knew what his actions had to be because of his love for the Father even when his friend hated the idea.  And though it is no fun at all being hated, know that it is Satan in the world that hates you and count it all joy because your creator, the one who finds you worthy, loves you more than you can fathom.  Carry His name with pride.  You are His chosen one!  Hate may be a strong word but in this instance...It's good to be hated.