About five weeks ago I responded in church to a call to get out of the boat and walk on the water. I had no idea what this meant except that there would surely be waves and I would need to learn to focus on Jesus more than ever. Jim also felt God was calling him and preparing us both for trials to follow. In the next few days I braced myself expecting to be really strong and single minded and was shocked as wave after wave began to crush and break my heart. I have never experienced such weakness, need and deep longing. My first instinct was to fight and pull myself up by the boot straps. Knowing that God called me to rejoice, I would grit my teeth, deny my broken heart, and by an act of determined will praise Him. But God spoke to my heart that I was to rest in Him and let the waves carry me to the shore. I wondered, "How do you rest and see Jesus when waves of evil obviously meant to destroy come like a flood?". Let me share a very special thing God has been revealing to me. It came through a verse, Psalm 41:3 (Amplified): "The Lord will sustain, refresh and strengthen me on my bed of languishing. All my bed, You oh Lord, will turn, change and transform in my illness." I felt led to do a word study, looking up in an ordinary dictionary what this really meant. Here is what I found: When I become weak and feeble, pining away with longing under unfavorable conditions, God will hold me up from below, bearing my burdens and keeping my mind and spirits from giving way under trial. He will re invigorate, revive and cheer my mind and spirit and give me the capacity to endure and resist with courage while making me strong in body and powerful and vigorous in mind. While I am in the midst of my illness, He will take all of my condition and will reverse the course of it, diverting it so as to alter the nature of it. He will make it distinctly different than it was by removing and replacing it with something new and change the characteristics of it so as to completely change its form and even its purpose. How's that for a promise?! The crucial thing I learned from this is that all these wonderful provisions from God have a condition. I have to be languishing! I began to see that the waves, though sent by an enemy hand to destroy, were carrying me to a place designed by God to bless. I began to praise Him from my heart for bringing me to this place of profound weakness realizing that He didn't expect or ask for strength. It was such a release to cease from struggling and allow my broken heart to be exposed, acknowledging and embracing my sorrow and weakness. I could come to God as sorrowful yet rejoicing because I saw Jesus in a much bigger way and knew I was being swept right into His arms and provisions by my own need. If I am given over to weakness it is so that His strength may be made perfect. If I am given over to death, it is so that His resurrection life may be manifest in my body. God is a God of transformation. His plans are for good and not for evil, to give us a future and a hope. May He minister this truth to you in your needs. We cherish your prayers because we are in pain in so many ways and we need God's continual grace so that we can see Jesus grow larger and larger as we continue to walk toward Him.
|
|
|---|---|