The Lord Jesus led me to read
Psalm 119:105-112 ESV.
Back in the early 1980s, when
my children were still quite young, and I was a young mother of four, I had a
situation in a church with the leadership misjudging me, and honestly, not
being very nice about it, either. The pastor said to me, “Would you say that you
have been crucified with Christ?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Well I say that you
haven’t.”
Wow! That hit me like a ton
of bricks. My heart was broken. It was crushed, in fact. So, what did I do? I
ran! I mean, what else could I do? He had sealed my fate, and there was no
other way around it, right? I felt I had no other recourse. So, I just played
the game “I’m ok.” “You’re ok.” And, then everything was fine. They were happy
with me, but I wasn’t happy with me.
Your word is a lamp to my feet
and a light
to my path.
I have sworn an oath and confirmed it,
to keep your
righteous rules.
Then, one day I was reading
the story of Jonah to my children, and God spoke so clearly to my heart that
that was me, that I was running from God, not for the same reasons Jonah ran,
mind you, but still I was running from the situation. So, he told me to get
back in there and to fight this thing through.
And, then I said, “But God,
you don’t understand!” The thing of it is, I really believed that. I believed
God had no power over my situation, but that this pastor did, and that there
was nothing I could do to change it. I was doomed!
But, the Lord kept encouraging
me to get in there and to fight this thing through, so I went and talked with a
good friend of mine, who was also the wife of one of the church elders. I told
her my situation, and she told me that I came across too much like I “had it
all together.” So, she tried to help me identify where that was coming from.
But, I kept saying, “No, that isn’t it.” It wasn’t until she said, “I know what
it is. It is a spirit of fear,” that I knew this was it. So, we prayed for God
to deliver me, and he did.
I am severely afflicted;
give me
life, O Lord, according to your word!
Accept my freewill offerings of praise, O Lord,
and teach me
your rules.
But, what came next was
something I would not have ever imagined. I had been severely abused by my dad
in my childhood, but I was told I just needed to stuff my pain, basically, i.e.
to forget it. I had no one I could talk with about it, so I thought I was doing
the right thing by just trying to forget it. But, I wasn’t forgetting it. I was
just hiding the hurt deep inside me.
So, when God delivered me
from this spirit of fear, all these memories and hurts began to come to the
surface, and I began to weep out loud to God. I didn’t know what to do with
what I was feeling, and my friend didn’t know either, so she suggested I talk
with the pastor. “Oh, no, I couldn’t do that”, I said. “He hates me.” So, she
talked with him for me, with permission from me, and she told him what my deal
was, i.e. about my childhood.
I hold my life in my hand continually,
but I do not
forget your law.
The wicked have laid a snare for me,
but I do not
stray from your precepts.
Well, this same pastor who
had been so cruel to me now called me on the phone. He told me he was sorry. He
told me that, as my pastor, he is supposed to be a spiritual father to me, but
that he hadn’t been a very good one, and he asked me to forgive him and to give
him a second chance. And, so I did. I did cry, though, when he told me that. I
couldn’t hold back the tears. No man had ever said such words to me, that I
recalled.
So, I told him about all
these memories that were surfacing, and I asked him what to do with them. He
told me to cry them out to God, and then to just release them to God and let him
have them, rather than to stuff them back inside, so that is what I did, and
God began to heal me.
Then, this pastor gave me an
assignment within the church to observe another woman in the church teaching a
class, and to see what I could learn from her. I submitted to his request, did
what he said, and then he and I met a few times to talk about what I was
learning, and to see how things were progressing with me and with my healing
process.
Just think of it, if I had
hung in there with the whole Jonah thing, I would have totally missed out on all
that, and so would have this pastor.
Well, to make a long story
short, the Lord took me through a long healing process, because there was so
much damage done to my heart and emotions and mind, but this pastor was there
to help me through the beginning stages of it, anyway, until we moved away from
there, and through it all we actually developed a friendship. Weird, huh?
Your testimonies are my heritage forever,
for they are
the joy of my heart.
I incline my heart to perform your statutes
forever, to
the end.
Anyway, when we run from
things God has allowed in our lives, for his purposes, we miss out on all the
blessings he has for us through them, and so do many other people for whom the
Lord wants to do marvelous things in their lives, too.
For example, this pastor
finally admitted to me that he was threatened by me because when I shared
during group Bible study discussion, I spoke with too much authority for a
young woman. He told me, at one time, that I should wait until I had gray hairs
on my head, and then people would listen to me. But, now he was admitting to me
that he had misjudged me; that they, the elders had misjudged me. Now he could
truly see my heart.
So, instead of running, we
need to see what God wants to do through our circumstances, and believe that he
is completely sovereign, and that he does truly understand what we are going through,
and that he has a plan.
But, to be perfectly honest,
that is not the last time I ran from God. You would think that I would have
learned my lesson, and I did for a long while. But, there were other times in
my life when the pressures of life got me down, and instead of running to God,
I ran from him, again.
Some of those situations had to
do with other pastors or church leaders misjudging or mistreating me. There
were many of them, in fact, more than one could possibly imagine would happen
to just one person. Some of these situations had to do with other people
abusing, betraying and/or using me for their advantage. So, God had to heal me
of those heartaches, too. I had to learn to trust fully in his sovereignty, and
to rest in his promises, to rely fully on his grace to help me in my time of need,
and to keep pressing on, in his strength, in being the woman of God he created
me to be.
Praise the Lord, I stopped
running from God quite a few years ago. Now I run INTO his arms, which is the
ONLY place to be ever!
Jesus, I am Resting, Resting
Jean Sophia Pigott
Jesus, I am resting, resting,
In the joy of what Thou art;
I am finding out the
greatness
Of Thy loving heart.
Thou hast bid me gaze upon
Thee,
And Thy beauty fills my soul,
For by Thy transforming
power,
Thou hast made me whole.
O, how great Thy loving
kindness,
Vaster, broader than the sea!
O, how marvelous Thy
goodness,
Lavished all on me!
Yes, I rest in Thee, Belovèd,
Know what wealth of grace is
Thine,
Know Thy certainty of
promise,
And have made it mine.
Simply trusting Thee, Lord
Jesus,
I behold Thee as Thou art,
And Thy love, so pure, so
changeless,
Satisfies my heart;
Satisfies its deepest
longings,
Meets, supplies its every
need,
Compasseth me round with
blessings:
Thine is love indeed!
Ever lift Thy face upon me
As I work and wait for Thee;
Resting ‘neath Thy smile,
Lord Jesus,
Earth’s dark shadows flee.
Brightness of my Father’s
glory,
Sunshine of my Father’s face,
Keep me ever trusting,
resting,
Fill me with Thy grace.
Jesus, I am resting, resting,
In the joy of what Thou art;
I am finding out the greatness
Of Thy loving heart.
Friday, November 17, 2017,
9:45 a.m. – Thank you, Jesus, for how you spoke your words to my heart this
morning, and thank you for putting this song in my mind when I awoke. I praise
you, and I thank you. Love, Sue
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