What do you do when your world goes dark? When you lose your way, your voice, your song? Do you fall in a heap or scramble to busy? Or is it a little bit of both?
To tell you the truth, I don’t always handle it well when a shadow passes over and the ground beneath my feet gives way. It takes me a bit to adjust because what was my normal is no longer my normal. I have to adjust to a new normal which at times seems to be an insurmountable mountain to climb.
But it’s in the storms that I most see God’s mightiness. There’s something about the light seeming to be brighter in the darkness. The tiniest candle gives off the greatest pool of light in the deepest gloom. It draws me like a moth to a flame, only instead of getting burned, I’m comforted.
It’s in the storms that my faith stretches and grows. As the circumstances around me humble me, I bow lower and lower to the ground and find myself reaching deeper and deeper into God’s stores of goodness and grace for me. And then I find something unusual, that as I go deeper, I really am reaching higher. Higher into God’s mountain. Over the jagged boulders and the slippery shale I climb, desperate and hungry for more and more of God.
In “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” John Bunyan paired Timorous with Mistrust because one is not absent from the other. Timidity is a lack of courage and mistrust is skepticism. The depth of my courage is bound to my belief in what God says about himself and about me. And my trust in who God is relates to the level of my courage.
Will I believe that he is my strength and my song? Will I believe that he is able to save?
“Surely God is my salvation, I will trust and not be afraid. The Lord is my strength and song; he has become my salvation.” Isaiah 12:2
This verse becomes an anthem to the distressed. We read that God is our salvation. He saves. So we don’t have to be afraid. For those who believe in God’s plan of salvation for all mankind, their place in eternity is secured. Our circumstances cannot take that from us.
Then we trust and do not give way to fear. The secret to trusting and not giving way to fear is recognizing that you are afraid and anxious, and then speaking God’s truth to your heart. Our faith develops perseverance and endurance in times of trouble.
The Lord is your strength when you are strong and when you are weak. He enables you to trust him, to believe him, if you only ask. You cry, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.”He carries you when you cannot take another step. He holds you close when your sorrow renders you powerless. He whispers encouragement to your heart.
And then he is your song. He enables you to praise him. In Psalm 69, the psalmist states that he is afflicted and in pain, but God’s salvation sets him on high. And because of this the psalmist praises the name of God with a song. When we sing to God in the midst of our pain, it gives our hearts a place to bleed and to heal. The Lord becomes the melody we hear. The melody that he sings over us is his song of deliverance and rejoicing.
We trust him and listen for his song and rest in his strength because he saves us. He makes a way through our circumstances either by changing it or changing us. The next time you can’t find your song, listen for God’s melody and then sing.
Application
1.Consider the love God has for you. While you were a sinner, Christ died for you. If you haven’t made Christ your savior, confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord and you will be saved.
2. Admit your weaknesses and rely on God’s strength to carry you through.
3. Listen to these songs by Mosaic and Bethel. Let the truth of the lyrics be the song that God sings over you.
With this week comes the busiest five weeks of the year. We have a beautiful celebration of thanks this week, and it becomes the opening score to a beautiful opus of celebrating the Author of Life coming to this world in human form. But as the weeks proceed we will experience a range of emotions.
For some it will be mostly sad with happiness sprinkled in. Bleeding hearts lurk behind smiles. Sadness roars to life when you least expect it. For other’s it will be mostly happy, with a few undertones of sadness throughout the melody. I’ve experienced both kinds of holidays, but I’m learning to give voice to each set of emotions. My happiness is richer when I feel the sadness, and my sadness feels less dark when I acknowledge my happiness.
For many of us, though, the holidays are riddled with anxiety. Are we doing enough? Did we buy the right gifts? How will we handle the probing questions of Great, great Aunt Matilda?
And then we get anxious because we’re not enjoying the holidays and we wonder where the happiness went. Or we’re sad so we grow anxious about that and wonder if the dark clouds will lift. Our darkness seems even darker in this season of light. Anxiety. It can take over and run rampant in our hearts and mind.
You see, sometimes we think we’re not trusting God when we feel anxious.An absence of anxiety is not the same as trusting God. Trusting God is recognizing the anxiety and then turning to him for hope, consolation, comfort and direction. Anxiety should turn us towards him because it provides us with an opportunity to experience God as our refuge, to pour out our hearts to him, and to practice trusting him.
I found a slip of paper on my nightstand the other day. On it were these words: “Don’t ignore your anxieties, entrust them to God.”
When we entrust our anxieties to the Lord, we then experience our anxiety within the framework of God’s love and security. Trusting God implies absolute confidence and certainty. Things, people, and expectations disappoint, which causes anxiety, but God doesn’t disappoint. When anxiety is great within me, God brings consolation to my soul.
To entrust means to charge with a responsibility or to commit something. Let God be responsible for the thing that is causing you the most anxiety this holiday season. Are you anxious about spending the holidays with someone who disdains everything you hold dear? Entrust your anxieties to God because he’s big enough to handle it, and he cares about your heart. Then look for him throughout the day. Maybe you’ll see evidence of him in the sunrise or the way your breath forms shape as you exhale in the wintery day. Maybe you’ll see evidence of him in the smile in your child’s face, or the private joke shared between you and a loved one.
Anxieties don’t indicate that you don’t trust God, they indicate that you feel less than confident or secure about a situation. Run straight to him for help and guidance. He is good and he will carry you. You simply need to entrust your worries to him and let him do his thing. Have confidence, not in yourself, but in God’s ability to work on your behalf by providing you with comfort and peace.
God is the comforter of our souls. So as you step into this week and know that anxiety lurks, entrust it to him and trust him to provide you with peace.
Application
*Write 3 things you are happy for this holiday season.
*Write 3 things that cause you anxiety.
*Entrust those 3 things to God. And when those three things cause your heart to race, remind yourself that they are God’s responsibility. Your’s is to let him do his job.
*Then receive the peace that he gives and smile.
Disclaimer:
The anxieties I refer to are not debilitating anxieties. If you are experiencing anxiety that prevents you from functioning in your daily life, please see a trusted healthcare provider.
You know that battle you’re in? The one where you need a rebel heart? Sometimes it gets ugly and you take a cheap shot and find that you’re bleeding through your tears. You search for the enemy and his location. Only you don’t see an enemy, you see yourself.
You see yourself wielding a weapon that kills your spirit and cuts out the good. Sometimes the good shines too much of a spotlight on your bad. The enemy of your soul tries to tell you it’s better to be bad than a mix of good and bad and you believe it. So you take your weapon and wound yourself. But not only have you cut the good out, but you’ve re-wounded the bad and your heart continues to bleed out. And your mind tells you that you’re worth nothing to nobody.
These types of heart wounds take place when we forget that we live a both/and kind of life.
We are the murderer and the acquitted.
The Guilty and Innocent
Without the saving work of Jesus Christ on the cross and the unfathomable grace God give us, we are nothing more than destructive, sinful people. Our crimes, so to speak, are not limited to only hurting ourselves, but they spread out to those around us. There are times when the wounds in our hearts hurt us so bad that we find psuedo-relief when we hurt someone else.
The Refuge Series in my attempt to remind us that there is a place for our murderous and wounded hearts. “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer.” 1 John 3:15
We don’t have to actually commit murder to murder. Hate in our hearts is murder. Without Christ our hearts stay wounded and broken. We are a mess. A mess that seems impossible to fix.
In the Old Testament, God created cities of refuge for all people who committed a crime of passion. This humanitarian option took vengeance out of the hands of the people. The elders determined innocent or guilty.
The catch? The person that found refuge couldn’t leave the city until the high priest died. In Old Testament times the High Priest bore the sins of the people (can you imagine that burden? It would make me cranky, crabby, and law-making). so this refuge actually became like house arrest. If the person left the city of refuge, he was fair game for his enemies, but safe if he stayed.
So how does this apply to us? I’m not a murderer you might say. And I would agree. But how many times have you used your words to cut off the life God wants to grow in you? How many times have I done it? Too many to count. How many times have we followed God until we grew uncomfortable, and then quit the growing process? This is like cutting off or murdering the life God grows in you.
Our City of Refuge
God is our city of refuge. But he’s also our High Priest. And Jesus has already paid the penalty for our sins. So it’s a both/and kind of life.
We run our guilty hide straight into God’s refuge. He protects us from our enemies, which is often ourselves. And Jesus has already fulfilled the payment for forgiveness of sins. We confess. We get a fresh slate. Wiped clean. Brand new. When we leave the city of refuge, our enemies can’t touch us. Because we’re covered in Jesus’ righteousness.
This is the kind of refuge I need. I need it when my life blows shrapnel into my heart. I need it when the words I speak to myself destroy the good thing God is doing in me. Do you?
Do you need to run to God’s refuge today? Not because of some outward force of enemy, but because you keep sabotaging your Christian walk? Do you feel like you’ve messed up too much and God must be sick of you?
He’s not. He’s waiting with arms open wide to offer you forgiveness and grace and the strength to grow.
Run to Him. He is your city of refuge.
Application
Grab a 3×5 card, a journal, or notebook and write this prayer:
“Lord, search me and know me. See if there is any anxious way within me. Shine the spotlight of your Holy Spirit into the darkened and deadened areas of my heart. Lead me in the way of truth so that I might live fully for you.”
Read and Meditate on Psalm 51
Copy Psalm 51:10-11 in a place where you will see it.
