3
months in, 9 days til Christmas, and a little less than 2 weeks til I get to
come home for a bit and be with my family over New Years. Anyone who has kept up with me much the past
few weeks knows its been an intense and overwhelming time—both here within the
program and community, and personally within my own life. Last time I blogged I was already sitting in
the tension that I was living in a world outside my comfort & support and
felt I needed a strength & reliance beyond my own to get by. And then this last month hit and everything
got a lot harder. Snow fell,
temperatures dropped below zero, residents and mentors left in the midst of
distrust, dissension, angry outbursts, and, dare I say, spiritual
oppression. And in the midst of it all,
I found added burdens and heaviness to my own heart as my own support system
seemed to get smaller….
So
what can I proclaim? God’s faithfulness.
His love. A peace. His never-ending strength, when my own fails. He will guide me through. I know this to be true; I don’t necessarily
feel it, but I know it. So I’ll proclaim
it. In the words of Psalm 40: “As you
know O Lord, I will not seal my lips. I do not hide your righteousness in my
heart. I speak of your faithfulness and
your salvation. I will not conceal your
love and your truth from the masses.”
“But as for me, I will always have hope; and I will praise
you more and more”—Psalm 71:14
So
its with all that in mind that I recently read this devotion based off John
14:27: “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you….let not your heart be
troubled.” Its called The Great Life:
Whenever a thing becomes difficult in personal experience, we
are in danger of blaming God, but it is we who are in the wrong, not God, there
is something somewhere that we will not let go. Immediately we do, everything
becomes as clear as daylight. As long as
we try to serve two ends, ourselves and God, there is perplexity. The attitude must be one of complete reliance
on God. When once we get there, there is
nothing easier than living the saintly life; difficulty comes in when we want
to usurp the authority of the Holy Spirit for our own ends.
Whenever you obey God, His seal is always that of peace, the
witness of an unfathomable peace, which is not natural, but the peace of
Jesus. Whenever peace does not come,
tarry till it does or find out the reason why it does not. If you are acting on an impulse, or from a
sense of the heroic, the peace of Jesus will not witness; there is no
simplicity or confidence in God, because the spirit of simplicity is born of
the Holy Ghost, not of your decisions.
Every decision brings a reaction of simplicity.
My questions come whenever I cease to obey. When I have obeyed God, the problems never
come between me and God, they come as probes to keep the mind going on with
amazement at the revelation of God. Any
problem that comes between God and myself springs out of disobedience; any
problem, and there are many, that comes alongside me while I obey God,
increases my ecstatic delight, because I know that my Father knows, and I am
going to watch and see how He unravels this thing.
