Power and Might

When my husband left me at the airport to do what he had to do for us and our future, my heart stopped. I felt immediately torn in half, raw and sick. My head swam as if all air had been transformed to H2O. I prayed that the Lord would make it all stop. He was BIG, He was Powerful! He made the Universe and all it contains, why hadn’t He moved to stop this insanity - 2.5 years apart from my soul! So to say that there were times I felt weak, overwhelmed and crushed would be perhaps the understatement of this century. I remember a conversation I had with a friend. I was saying,
“I know that God says in my weakness He is strong and I know that He says we have access to all this power but golly, sometimes I feel so weak I’m sure I am not going to take the next breath.” She said one word,
“Pray.” That had been the theme for several months but I didn’t get it. Sure I prayed, all the time. . .
“Lord fix this, Lord fix that, Lord save me from this, Lord I want Mark!!” I would pray and pray, pray without ceasing was my theme. God went right from Superheros with me to His Power, and it all started where the last blog ended, Romans 8:11,
“But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” So I got to thinking about the Holy Spirit, the power of the Lord dwelling in me. I started wondering about how to rest in His power. . . .
An important point to make here is when Jesus said,
“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” He meant it. Humans make walking with the Lord harder than it ought to be because we manipulate and strive. We try to control the world around us or “earn” our salvation through our works. Now James points out it is a combination of both, meaning having works WITH faith is what you want, not without it. Nor did he say that if you have tons of faith you can skip the works or if you have no faith go ahead and work yourself into the kingdom. I never understood the balance until this last week.
When I was a teenager I longed for the world to revolve around me and I know I’m not alone in this plight. We want the world to move around us and us to just be able to walk on. I listened to a lovely sermon this past week by Pastor Bryan Broderson.He said that if you line your will up with the Lord’s then He will move things around you, He will open doors and close them, you just have to walk with Him. It made me think of sheep, which I have always said is an apt description of humanity. If you keep closing gates and walking with the sheep they will keep walking through what is open. That is me, the sheep, all I have to do is keep walking, He’ll make sure I get where I am supposed to go. So when I give my will and life to Him the universe will revolve around me because He will move it! (which is exactly what I wanted as a teenager!) The rest I found in that truth was more than I could put into words. Just like sheep can’t mess up the walk along the farm because I’m buzzing about closing and opening all the proper gates; I can’t mess up His movement as long as I do the bit of walking with Him. This made me look back over the past 1 year and 2 months and 27 days that I have been chasing after the Lord and wanting to learn more about Him every day. I realized that at the points I was the most tired, worn out and otherwise an exhausted heap, I was trying to do things my way, on my schedule and not wait on Him to open the doors. In other words, I was trying to fight the door open, beat on it and scream against it. Naturally, I would be tired. So I reverted to my teenage years, I would walk with Him and pray for His will and let the world revolve around me, He would guide me through the doors.
The second teenage desire we all had was to be understood. Don’t we all? At some point we have this desire so deep that we feel we will be swallowed in the masses because no one understands! God, in His power and omnipotence knows all things about us. Not only that, He can even speak words when we cannot!
“Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” Romans 8:26 Wow, so even when I cannot express myself totally He understands!! How about those times I don’t even know what my heart is feeling, I just know it hurts and I am powerless to stop it!! I rest in His power!
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.” Psalm 139:23 God knows my heart even better than me, He knows my thoughts better than I and why they are anxious. He sees and knows all about my inner being. Nothing about me surprises Him, there is nothing dark enough or ugly enough! God loves me to my depths while simultaneously KNOWING my depths. What a beautiful thought! I remember hiding my heart from people during my teen years and well into my adult years knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that once someone saw those depths they would run away. Even as late as being married to the most wonderful man on the planet. I would pray every night,
“Lord, please don’t let this man you gave me to see the beast that lives within!” Amazingly, Mark saw a glimpse of it and stayed! God has always seen it even at its unveiled ugliness, He saw it for real and not behind my attempt to hide it and He always stayed!! God used our separation to kill that hate filled, angry, ugly beastie and I am so thankful! Every teenager is well met with the beast and if adults were truly honest they would admit their own cohabitation! God is powerful enough to set us free and He knows us to our depths!
So now we come to the chill part, what teenager doesn’t want to just chill out and relax. I don’t know of any and God wants that for us too!! I already shared the verse about His burden being light. In my own life I was struggling, searching for God’s will in my life. It would be easy to stay here but I feel He is calling me somewhere else. Well, what about here? What if it isn’t the right time? That was when it dawned on me, God’s timing is perfect and like Brian Brodersen said if I am giving Him my life and will, I can rest in the fact that He will direct my steps. I remember watching a toddler learn to walk. Daddy would let the baby grip his hands like a vice grip and if the baby was going to walk some where he wasn’t supposed to, like a wall, through a door or into a pit, the Daddy would gently turn the wee body so the next step would be going in the right direction. Amazing! God wants me to grip Him like a vice grip and He will do the rest. Sure the baby has to put some effort into it, the gripping, then there is the stepping but he isn’t driving and it must be the same with Him and our walk! So I can chill out in the Lord, I don’t have to orchestrate my life, I don’t have to chase rainbows or force open doors of opportunities because the Lord is going to throw them open wide for me!!!
So what am I going to do? I’m going to regress! I’m going to become a teenager in the Lord! I’m going to let the world revolve around me, I’m going to rejoice in being understood and known better than I know myself and I am going to chill, cause He already knows where and when and He will let me know when I need to know.