Forgiveness

“Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” Colossians 3:13 (NIV)

Recently I have dealt with the hurt that has come from the wickedness of gossip and lies. People within my church began spreading things about me that were untrue and extremely hurtful. Over these past few weeks, the hurt that I experienced from it turned into anger and soon the unforgiveness crept in allowing bitterness to form. Knowing how easy it can be, when bitter, to fall into sin with an unforgiving attitude, I began to search God’s word for wisdom.

God’s timing is perfect and last Sunday at church, my pastor preached on bitterness and the bitterness that comes from having an unforgiving heart. I have spent this week focusing on these truths.

In Matthew 18:21-35 Jesus tells of a servant forgiven a huge debt by his king. When the same servant has an opportunity to forgive someone a minor debt, he chooses to inflict punishment instead. The king finds out and is outraged:

“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.” (Matthew 18:32-35, NIV)

These words penetrated my heart as I thought of my bitter attitude toward those who have hurt me. As I meditated on these verses, God reminded me of times that I have said or done hurtful things to others. God’s forgiveness has been extended to me in those times and so I can no longer allow myself to withhold forgiveness from those who have wronged me.

Forgiveness is a process and something that God must work within us but we must be willing to let go and to allow Him to work. I have to continue to forgive the ones who hurt me and as I have struggled with this issue, God is showing me biblical steps to take as I forgive those that have caused this hurt.

We must recognize and confess our own sins.

Psalm 41:4, “I said, ‘O LORD, have mercy on me; heal me, for I have sinned against you.'” (NIV)

We must rejoice in God’s forgiveness of our sins.

Ephesians 4:32, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” (NIV)

We must remember that forgiveness is a continual process.

Matthew 18:21-22a, “Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.” (NIV)

When we allow forgiveness to take place and allow the Holy Spirit to heal our hurts, I believe we are then able to experience Psalm 34:8:

“Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.”

Letting go

“Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes”.

 

Psalm 37:7

 

 

You know that you have truly surrendered to God when you rely on God to work things out instead of trying to manipulate others or to force your own agenda in order to control the situation. You let go and let God work and instead of trying harder, you find yourself trusting more.

 

Surrendering your life means that you will follow God’s lead when you are not even sure where He may be sending you. You will wait for His timing, not knowing when it will come. You expect a miracle not knowing how God will provide and you totally trust His purpose without understanding the circumstances.

 

Christ showed the ultimate example of self-surrender the night before His crucifixion when He surrendered Himself to His Father’s plan. True surrender says that if the circumstance or hurt you find yourself in is needed to fulfill God’s purpose and to glorify Him, then you will take whatever may come your way.

 

This kind of faith and maturity does not come easily but true surrender is hard work and requires intense warfare against our self-centered nature.

 

Trust in the LORD with all your heart 
       and lean not on your own understanding;

 in all your ways acknowledge him, 
       and he will make your paths straight. 

Proverbs 3:5-6

Evident

“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 4:4-7

 

The joy came but as it came, so did the testing. Scripture tells us to take joy in the testing of our faith but that is not always easy and often times require a lot of faith and a ton of patience. It is amazing though that through our testing we can still experience a great amount of peace as well as joy.

People seek after things like peace and joy and most definitely hope but often do not find them very easily because they are searching in the wrong places. These things can only be obtained when we have a relationship with God. Joy, peace and hope are benefits that we receive when we choose to walk with Him and are willing to sacrifice for that relationship. We know that more often times than not, sacrifice goes hand in hand with suffering. Does God want us to suffer? Absolutely not but He knows that through our suffering, hope, joy and peace will be most recognized in our life.

We are only able to obtain true peace, joy and hope in our life when we have a true relationship with God through Jesus Christ. We can read the Bible, attend church and countless bible studies but doing these things will not bring us that which we seek out. We must choose to walk with God, obey His commands and seek to have a heart like His. We must accept our circumstances and choose not to worry about those things for which we have no control. If we fix our eyes upon Christ instead of our situations then our future becomes full of hope and in that, those around us will see Christ living within us. Our actions and words will be reflective of a life lived walking with God and not focused on ourselves.

Choose to lay all your hurts and worries before Him and accept the circumstances you find yourself surrounded by and in Him you will find comfort as well as hope and peace.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Romans 15:13

 

Lost

Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18

I have spent months in a place so deep and dark that I did not think I would ever find my way out. It has been cold and lonely and there has been the sound of silence echoing all around me over and over. I had finally found myself at the very end of my rope and had totally lost hope in everything.

How does this happen? How do you get to such a dark place and not even realize you are headed there? For me, it was a slow process but I clearly remember waking up one morning and being surrounded by darkness. Of course, it was not actual darkness but was the darkness that comes with loneliness and complete emptiness. I have spent months feeling my way around in the dark looking for some way out but have had no success. Now let me clarify and say that in my complete loss of hope, I did not lose hope in Christ but instead lost sight of Him. This feeling of being lost made me realize that I looked to people for direction and support instead of the One who truly knows me and knows my every need. This is how it all happens. This is how we lose our direction. We make people into gods, which in turn take our eyes off the One who should be our direction.

This can be a scary place to be in when you feel like you have nowhere to turn and you have yet to realize what has actually happened. You truly find yourself standing in a room filled with people who love you and you are standing in the center screaming at the top of your lungs for help but they all look at you and smile as if nothing is happening.

As Christians I feel that we have this tendency to get lost in our own agendas and we sometimes forget to love and minister to those who are in need of it. We tend to focus on the unsaved and embrace them where they are but forget that even those fellow believers around us have times of pain and hurt and true turmoil but we can miss it. When this happens, and you are the person needing help, you can often times find your world turned upside down because suddenly nothing makes sense anymore. Things you once thought were true no longer seem true anymore. It is a painful and lonely place but there is hope and I have finally found that faint light at the end of the tunnel that is leading me out.

The exciting part is that now that I can see a faint light, there are also shadows, shadows of those who have been there all along that I was unable to see before but are there now who are pointing me in the direction of the light ahead. Suddenly things do not feel as cold and there is a warmth to the light ahead that is pulling me outward to where I need to be again. It is surreal and comforting and I know that once I finally get to the end there will be a peace like I have never known.

Right now, my life is not perfect. It is a huge mess all over the floor, shattered into a million different pieces but I have this most amazing Artist who is waiting for me to hand Him every piece so that He can put it all back together and create what He knows my life can and will be when my eyes are set back on Him. He is waiting for me to lift every one of those pieces back up to Him so that He can create a spectacular masterpiece through His mercy, grace, forgiveness and love. Only then, will my life be turned back into something that makes sense and is useable and only then will I be renewed and complete and His fingerprint on my life will be truly evident.

The Hand of Providence

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the LORD”

Jeremiah 29:11-14

 

There are so many people including myself that are struggling and hurting. People waking up every morning wondering what in the world is happening in their life and why God is allowing the pain that they are experiencing to take place.

So many times, we truly believe that we have given God every part of ourselves. We believe that there is really nothing more we can do but truthfully, we are walking in deception. Many are pleased with the twenty minutes that may give God each day if that and think that showing up on Sunday morning is all they need to live righteously. What a wicked web we weave when we fall into those lies that Satan uses to deceive us.

This past week there has been a lot of joking around about the providence of God. How He has a bigger picture for our lives than what we can see in the moment that we are living. Back in high school, I participated in a youth musical by Michael W. Smith that was about this very thing. The story is about a high school student who is accidentally killed and how it affects those in her life as they try to figure out why she is gone. It is the discovery of how God used her life while she was there to lead those to Him. I had not thought about that musical until this past week and it has led me really to reflect on my situation and the situations that those in my life are experiencing.

I have written in the past about the distress that we cause in our own lives. Sometimes we choose to take control of our own lives and think we know exactly what it is God wants us to do. We start making decisions on our own choosing to go our own way and we end up falling flat on our faces.

We cause our own distress out of disobedience to the Lord. We find ourselves in the middle of a storm and the only one, who could end it, is the One we are running from in the first place. How many times do we run away from God instead of into His arms? Clearly, His arms are the safest place to be and there is protection from the elements of the world within His arms.

Sometimes we think that not all may deserve God’s mercy and grace and so this attitude will put us in harms way especially when we try to take care of situations ourselves instead of turning it over to the Lord and obeying Him.

Reality:

1. Sometimes we cause our own distress. We can easily make a situation far worse than what it may be by not acknowledging God and giving Him control of it or our life.
   
2. By trying to take control ourselves, we end up in a dark, cold, and lonely place until we become broken and recognize our need for a Savior and His mercy and grace.
   
3. Once we call out to Him, He will deliver us no matter what we have done or where we have been because of His love and forgiveness.
   

Jonah 2:8 says, “Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.” A point to ponder is this: we think of idols as a wooden statue or money or TV but there is more to it than just these things. It can be people pleasing or lack of faith and trust in the Lord and these types of issues can become our idols. We worry about what others may think or whether or not God will really provide or pull us out of whatever situation and it becomes our focus instead of God. Because of our disobedience and lack of faith, we cause ourselves more distress and may miss God’s grace and blessings. Wow, what a revelation!

Clearly, there are two important messages that we should not forget. First, we should never run away from God because it will not bring about positive things. When we run, we can cause some serious storms for ourselves that we can avoid if our focus is on pleasing and obeying Him. He IS the calm in our storms. Second, His grace and mercy are for everyone. We are not to judge who is worthy of His forgiveness because Christ died for everyone and He extends His grace to all. When we forget this, God will quickly remind our narrow hearts by those storms we encounter.

The question becomes, how does this all tie into the providence of God for us? Well, He has our life already planned out for us. It was written before we were born and He has gone before us and prepared the way which means when we choose to follow Him and not our own way, the road ahead will be much easier to travel because He knows just where we are headed. His providence is what we should search and strive for instead of our own agendas and plans. He knows the plans that He has laid out for us. His plans are to bring us hope and they are for our good when we seek after Him. We should find peace in knowing this and turn toward Him and His ways. By doing so, the storms of life may not be as long and as hard to endure.

 

The Testing of our Heart

This has been a very interesting week for me because not only has my faith been tested but my obedience as well and if it were not for truth, I do not think I would have headed down the right road. God is in control of my life and I truly believe that this week more than ever He prepared the way for me so that I could be triumphant over my situations. It was only by His strength that I made it through.

This posting is one I wrote a few months back but because of all I have been through this week, I felt I needed to post it again.

“I know, my God, that you test the heart and are pleased with integrity. All these things have I given willingly and with honest intent. And now I have seen with joy how willingly your people who are here have given to you.”

1 Chronicles 29:17

 

“Yet you know me, O Lord; You see me and test my thoughts about You.”

Jeremiah 12:3

 

“Therefore this is what the Lord Almighty says:

“See, I will refine and test them,

For what else can I do because of the sin of my people?”

Jeremiah 9:7

 

There are things in my life right now that have caused me pain and hurt. Things at the moment that make me feel like I am right in the middle of a storm and that there could be no worse place than where I am at this precise moment. Sometimes we can become consumed with our emotions and our own selfish hurts that we lose focus of what truth looks like and why the actual storm appeared. It led me to look at the prophet Habakkuk who lived in such a time of distress. He was surrounded by wickedness and became frustrated questioning God with “Where are you in all of this?” Have you ever thought that the storm you are in may be a testing of your faith or perhaps it is discipline for disobedience? Have you ever questioned where God may have gone? Where do we find ourselves when we are in the midst of a storm? I thought about the three verses I listed above and the areas in which God will test us.

1. He will test our heart and the attitude of our heart in order to instruct us to be honest, teachable, generous and joyful just as He designed us to be. He wants us to have an attitude and behavior that demonstrates integrity and truthfulness. (1 Chronicles 29:17)
   
2. He will test our thoughts to see what our attitude is toward Him. Do we really trust Him to be faithful in all our circumstances? (Jeremiah 12:3)
   
3. He will test us because of our sin. When we rebel against Him, we are refusing to obey and trust Him and so in order to bring us back into His grace because of our sin, we must experience His discipline. (Jeremiah 9:7)
   

When we enter into a time of testing, it is imperative that we seek after the truth of our circumstances. We must evaluate the attitudes of our heart and the choices we are making. Are we walking along side of Him or are we choosing to go our own way. The Israelites wandered for 40 years because they chose to put their trust in themselves instead of God. They chose disobedience instead of putting their faith in Him. They felt they could do it on their own and do it better than what God had planned. When those trials come into our life, we have to make a choice. We have to choose whether we will rely on ourselves or turn to God for His strength. All we have to do is ask for His guidance and He will begin to reveal those issues in our lives that are leading us right into the middle of a storm, a storm that we have created all on our own due to our lack of faith, trust and obedience. God provides for our every need and it may not always be what we planned but He has already been down that road and prepared the way for us and so He knows exactly what we need.

If you have found yourself in the middle of being tested, you must be aware of the choices that are laid out before you. Whether it is wealth, friends, family, neighbors or your own understanding, you will always come up disappointed with the result. When we find ourselves in the thick of the storm, our only refuge is the Lord. He cares for those who trust in Him (Na 1:7) and those that trust in Him will be filled with joy, peace and hope (Ro 15:13). He is the only True Way to find our way out of the storm.

“To become tenderhearted, insightful and responsive to the Lord and others, we must first wade through out [own] losses. That means a willingness to feel the effects of our loss, to examine our hearts under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit, to release tears and to relinquish our rights to understand. In doing so, we will feel the pain, but we will learn appropriate ways to express it. Sometimes it will be through the healing release of tears, prayer, some form of art, or words (spoken or written).”

Patsy Clairmont

Letting go

“Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble,

and he saved them from their distress.

He brought them out of darkness and the deepest gloom

and broke away their chains.

Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love

and his wonderful deeds for men.”

Psalm 107:13-15

How can the lack of forgiveness and hurt affect our walk with the Lord? So many of us walk around bound in the chains of the past and become stuck in a place of unhappiness. Everyone at one time or another experiences the pain of betrayal by someone we love and care deeply for whether it be a spouse, a friend, a child or a parent and we all also carry the experiences of our own sins and hurts that we have caused to others. It can literally destroy our lives if we let it and severely hinder our walk with the Lord if we do not let it go because we can become bound up and miss the opportunity of fully living in the present.

Once we have made Jesus Christ Lord of our life, we hand over the reins, giving Him the control of our lives able to lead us in the direction that He wants us to go. It means that we are no longer our own and have been brought back to God by the shedding of His Son’s blood for us. When we allow Him to lead, we have to let go of the things in our past that are controlling us and hindering us from being able to walk in God’s perfect plan for us. Jesus said that not anyone who is trying to move forward in his walk for God the Father – but keeps looking back – is fit for the kingdom of God. (Luke 9:62) When we are walking with the Lord, we are to let go of the past and press forward because if we do not, we become stuck right where we are unable fully to accomplish all that God had planned for our lives. We cannot walk with Him if we are carrying loads of baggage because we are choosing the bondage of our past instead of the future He has for us. This then mean either we choose to throw ourselves pity parties, blaming everyone else for our misery or we can choose to rise up and be a brand new creation in Christ, choosing fully to surrender our lives to Him. Once we do that, He cleans out those closets and begins to heal our hearts making us usable for the plan that He had laid out for us even before we were born.

Now it is important that we learn from our past and realize where God has brought us but it cannot consume us to the point of becoming our focus. God is our healer and He is able to break away those chains and heal our hearts IF we fully believe that He can do it. For me, this came with the forgiveness of someone who betrayed my trust and hurt me deeply. I lived with anger towards this person for quite some time and every time I saw them, it would rage within me. Here is what I have learned. When someone hurts you, that person moves on with his or her life. If they have sinned and repented of this sin, for them it is over, God has forgiven them. They have moved on and God has redeemed them, giving them a new song to sing and a new life to live for Him. For those of us left in the wake of their sin, we must deal with the pain and hurt of the turbulence they caused in our lives. We are the ones who must deal with the resentment, bitterness and anger while they go about feeling freed of their past. Does not seem quite fair? Well here is what I have learned. It is totally fair because we too have sinned against someone in our own lives just like they have and we too have had to seek forgiveness from God for the hurt we’ve caused someone else and we too have moved on. So, why then do we dwell in self-pity and allow resentment to rage within our hearts? This is called human nature and happens when we are not willing to let go of the baggage we cling to so tightly instead of grabbing a hold of and clinging to God. You see, you cannot hold on to both things together because you cannot worship and follow God when you are clinging to the past, which has become your idol. He has to be your focus and He should be your focus because He is worth it all!

“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 3:12-14

We have to put into practice not focusing on what is behind us but instead pressing ahead toward the goal, the life God has planned. We must reach ahead and surrender every part of our lives to Him so that He can accomplish all that His plans entail for us. If not, we are allowing the past to steal our joy and happiness and distort our thinking. We must offer true forgiveness that can only come from the Holy Spirit living within us and turn it over to the hands of God and His justice. He is the One who will right every wrong ever done to us and because of this; we are able to relinquish even our worst enemy over to Him. It all comes down to us reaching out and grabbing His hand and allowing the Holy Spirit to clean up the wounds in our life so that we can live out the life that God has for us. It is our choice as to whether we will continue to allow it to strangle and paralyze our lives or say enough is enough and give God that control and move forward.

Drought

Living in North Carolina, we have had issues with drought this past year. It was actually pretty severe and water restrictions were taken very seriously. It led to the pastors at our church praying together specifically for rain. Like all things, you do not always realize the importance of things until you are without it. Days, weeks, then months went by and there was still no rain, rain that was needed to keep our lakes full so that we would be able to sustain the water needs of the people in the community. People were looking to the skies hoping that when they saw clouds, the rain would come but when it did not, people began to lose hope. Now, God is not in the business of granting our every request but He does know that we cannot live without hope. The question we must ask ourselves is; where does our hope come from?

Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from Him.

Psalms 62:5

Just as faith is a gift from God to us, so is hope. It is this wonderfully sweet blessing from God that is given to us when we enter into His family. Our hope is found in His unfailing love for each one of us and the fact that our full redemption is guaranteed. God Himself protects this precious gift for us in heaven.

But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear Him, on those whose hope is in His unfailing love.

Psalms 33:18

Droughts are bound to come into our lives and when they come, where do we find ourselves? Do we find ourselves surrounded by doubt or are we hopeful and our faith strong because we know God is faithful? When those droughts come, we must be prepared to sustain them by being filled with His word and His spirit in our lives. Our nature requires that we need something tangible when troubles come our way and so God has provided His word as a way to show us that there is hope.

For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

Romans 15:4

The bible is God’s promise to us and all of His promises were made to us through Jesus. Jesus Christ is our living hope, our promise, the source of all Truth, our Anchor. Hope is what allows God’s grace and kindness to pour into us and it is our link to strength and courage. If our hope is not found in Christ alone then we will surely flounder when times of despair and trouble come our way because there is no other hope for our rescue.

For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.

2 Corinthians 1:20

The story of Abraham is another perfect example of Gods kept promises to us. There are times we may have to wait for His promises which can be hard, but we can be sure that when our hope is found in Christ, we will receive what is promised. (Hebrews 6:15) God’s promises that were fulfilled in the past are our assurance that He will fulfill those promises in the future.

And so after waiting patiently, Abraham received what was promised.

Hebrews 6:15

When you experience a lack of hope, you have to believe that God “will make the Valley of Anchor a door of hope”. (Hosea 2:15) God takes our troubles and turns them into a doorway that leads to Hope, to Him. When we enter into a time of distress and worry, we do not have to be afraid to walk through the doorway where Jesus is standing on the other side ready to take our troubles. When we turn them over to Him and allow the Holy Spirit to fill us and become our living hope, His faithfulness and love will give us the hope we need and we will not be let down.

“Father, may my soul find rest in You and may You be my source, my living hope when the droughts of this life come my way. May Your Word and Christ be my sustenance, strength and my Anchor.”

Do we trust when tested?

“I know, my God, that you test the heart and are pleased with integrity. All these things have I given willingly and with honest intent. And now I have seen with joy how willingly your people who are here have given to you.”

1 Chronicles 29:17

“Yet you know me, O Lord; You see me and test my thoughts about You.”

Jeremiah 12:3

“Therefore this is what the Lord Almighty says:

“See, I will refine and test them,

For what else can I do because of the sin of my people?”

Jeremiah 9:7

If you watch the news, you probably heard this morning about the five year old daughter of Steven Curtis Chapman(contemporary Christian music artist) being killed by one of her older brothers in a tragic accident. This story brought me to tears realizing the heartache and pain that this family is dealing with right now but praise the Lord we know where they will find their hope. I thought about how God will cover them with His love, peace and comfort and how they will experience His strength in a way that none of us will ever understand because they have chosen to trust Him with their lives. This led me to thinking about those in my own life right now who are dealing with some hard stuff, none that could ever compare to the death of a child, but still stuff that causes hurt and pain in our lives. We think that when we are in the middle of a storm, that there could be no worse place than where we are at that precise moment. We become consumed with our emotions and our own selfish hurts that we lose focus of what truth looks like and why the actual storm appeared. It led me to look at the prophet Habakkuk who lived in such a time of distress. He was surrounded by wickedness and became frustrated questioning God with “Where are you in all of this?”. Where do we find ourselves when we’re in the midst of a storm? Do we find ourselves questioning where God has gone? Have you ever thought that the storm you are in may be a testing of your faith or perhaps it is discipline for disobedience? I thought about the three verses I listed above and the areas in which God will test us.

1. He will test our heart and the attitude of our heart in order to instruct us to be honest, teachable, generous and joyful just as He designed us to be. He wants us to have an attitude and behavior that demonstrates integrity and truthfulness. (1 Chronicles 29:17)
2. He will test our thoughts to see what our attitude is toward Him. Do we really trust Him to be faithful in all our circumstances? (Jeremiah 12:3)
3. He will test us because of our sin. When we rebel against Him, we are refusing to obey and trust Him and so in order to bring us back into His grace because of our sin, we must experience His discipline. (Jeremiah 9:7)

When we enter into a time of testing, it is imperative that we seek after the truth of our circumstances. We must evaluate the attitudes of our heart and the choices we are making. Are we walking along side of Him or are we choosing to go our own way. The Israelites wandered for 40 years because they chose to put their trust in themselves instead of God. They chose disobedience instead of putting their faith in Him. They felt they could do it on their own and do it better than what God had planned. When those trials come into our life, we have to make a choice. We have to choose whether we will rely on ourselves or turn to God for His strength. All we have to do is ask for His guidance and He will begin to reveal those issues in our lives that are leading us right into the middle of a storm, a storm that we have created all on our own due to our lack of faith, trust and obedience. God provides for our every need and it may not always be what we planned but He has already been down that road and prepared the way for us and so He knows exactly what we need.
If you have found yourself in the middle of being tested, you must be aware of the choices that are laid out before you. Whether it is wealth, friends, family, neighbors or your own understanding, you will always come up disappointed with the result. When we find ourselves in the thick of the storm, our only refuge is the Lord. He cares for those who trust in Him (Na 1:7) and those that trust in Him will be filled with joy, peace and hope (Ro 15:13). He is the only True Way to find our way out of the storm.
“To become tenderhearted, insightful and responsive to the Lord and others, we must first wade through out [own] losses. That means a willingness to feel the effects of our loss, to examine our hearts under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit, to release tears and to relinquish our rights to understand. In doing so, we will feel the pain, but we’ll learn appropriate ways to express it. Sometimes it will be through the healing release of tears, prayer, some form of art, or words (spoken or written).”
Patsy Clairmont

Our Own Distress

“Those who cling to worthless idols
forfeit the grace that could be theirs.”

Jonah 2:8

On Wednesday nights at church, our worship team has a bible study that is usually led by our worship pastor. This week he happened to be out of town and so his second in command shared with us what God had shown her in her own quiet time that morning. She and I have talked on numerous occasions about how similar we are in areas of being people pleasers. To the point that it consumes us at times and we can easily lose focus of truth. Last night she talked about the story of Jonah and the whale and wow, did God use her to speak to me.

First, for those who are not familiar with the story of Jonah here is a brief synopsis. (Jonah 1:1-2:10 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jonah%201:1-2:10;&version=31; ) God commanded Jonah to go and preach to a city, which Jonah felt, was too wicked for God’s mercy and forgiveness and so he fled and boarded a ship to run away from God. While on the ship, a great storm came which threatened the life of all those on the boat. The crew woke Jonah up and told him to call upon his god to end the storm. The crew knew that Jonah was running from the Lord and so they asked him what they could do to stop the storm. Jonah knew he was the cause and told them to throw him over the side of the boat. At first, they were reluctant and tried rowing back to shore but were unsuccessful and begged for God’s mercy for taking the life of Jonah as they threw him into the water. Once they did, the sea grew calm. Now, because God is faithful, He provided a “great fish” which swallowed him up for three days. While in the belly of the whale, Johan prayed and called out to the Lord and He commanded the fish, to spit Jonah out.

Jonah caused his own distress out of disobedience to the Lord. He found himself in the middle of a storm and the only one who could end it, was the One he was running from. How many times do we run away from God instead of into His arms? Clearly, His arms are the safest place to be and there is protection from the elements of the world within His arms.

Sometimes we think that God’s mercy and grace may not be deserved by all and so this attitude will put us in harms way especially when we try to people please and take care of the situation ourselves instead of turning it over to the Lord and obeying Him.

Here is what I realized.

1. Sometimes we cause our own distress. We can easily make a situation far worse than what it may be by not acknowledging God and giving Him control of it.
   
2. By trying to take control ourselves, we end up in that “belly” where it is dark, cold, and lonely until we become broken and recognize our need for a Savior and His mercy and grace.
   
3. Once we call out to Him, He will deliver us no matter what we have done or where we have been because of His love and forgiveness.
   

Jonah 2:8 says, “Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.” A point she raised last night was that so many times, we think of idols as a wooden statue or money or TV but there is more then just these. For me, my people pleasing issue is my idol. I worry about what others may think or feelings that I hurt because I am being obedient and it becomes my focus. Because of my disobedience and lack of faith, I cause myself more distress and may miss God’s grace and blessings. Wow, what a revelation!! Now, do not get me wrong, a sensitive heart towards others is not a bad thing but it can become one when it becomes our focus instead of God.

Clearly, there are two important messages in this story that we should not forget. First, we should never run away from God because it will not bring about positive things. When we run, we can cause some serious storms for ourselves that we can avoid if our focus is on pleasing and obeying Him instead of others. He IS the calm in our storms. Second, His grace and mercy are for everyone. We are not to judge who is worthy of His forgiveness because Christ died for everyone and He extends His grace to all. When we forget this, God will quickly remind our narrow hearts by those storms we encounter.

“Father, may I not cling to those idols which take my focus from You. Remind me always that Your grace and forgiveness are open to everyone who will accept it and it is not my place to decide who is worthy enough to receive it. Keep my focus on pleasing You instead of others.”