The Secret Place - Maryville Restoration Fellowship

Have you ever told God no?

I have.

Did God get mad at me?

No.

What happened?

My spiritual life came to a halt.

It was a gradual thing.

I didn’t even realize it was happening.

I woke up one morning and realized there was silence in my life.  I was going through the motions, saying the right things, doing the right things…

It was so gradual it became a suddenly.

Suddenly I realized I had no direction or vision for the future.

                        Silence…followed by desperation…

Then He showed me something…

I came upon a bald eagle sitting on the ground.  In this part of the country it is rare to see one so I stopped.  Eagles are clumsy and awkward on the ground.  As I watched, the eagle spread his legs, squatted, and LEAPED into the air and then he spread his wings and flew away.  God spoke then… 

            “You’ll go no farther until you LEAP…”

But God…what you are asking…

            I’m not qualified…

                        I’m not smart enough…

                                    Send someone else…

                                                I can’t…

                                                            I won’t…

                                                                        …uncle, God, I cry uncle…

As my no changed to yes, vision came and desperation fled.

                        God doesn’t call the equipped…He equips the called…

                                    The time has come to take a LEAP of faith…

“…the world gives scant attention to what it means to live, to really live, to live eternal life in ordinary time.” Eugene Peterson

Wow!  I want to be aware of eternity in my mundane, every day life.  I always strive for “what will be” and therefore I am usually absent in the “right now”.  My prayer is that starting today, I flip it…I want to live in the “right now” and let tomorrow take care of itself.

Matthew 6:34

Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow.  God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

Luke 9:62

Jesus said, “No procrastination.  No backward looks.  You can’t put God’s kingdom off until tomorrow.  Seize the day.

About Hope

¹⁸God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged. ¹⁹We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. (Hebrews 6:18-10a)

If there is a verse that describes my life, it is proverbs 29:18a – ¹⁸Where there is no vision, the people perish.

I am a visionary; energized and driven by the pictures and possibilities of the future. When I have a God given picture in my head; I find that the passion, creativity and tenacity required to make it a reality are there. Yes, there are obstacles and setbacks. But God’s grace and His picture will not be denied, He picks me up and I go for it again and again until it happens. I call it bulldog faith. It does not let go.

Lately (to me it seems like forever), I have felt stuck in a visionless state. No dominant picture. God, in His mercy and faithfulness (and as Paul said in Philippians 2:27: lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow), has been faithful to provide pockets of water in the dessert to help me survive. But by and large, it has been pretty dry. No burning picture means energy, passion, creativity and tenacity suffer as a result

My natural dominant personality is not the most empathetic or compassionate. I walk around with a schedule constantly in my head and am pretty task oriented. I resent superficial activities and connections and I am known to skip niceties and fluff to get down to business. I have also been known to directly say or indirectly communicate a “Get over it” message when people have ‘whined’ or seemed stuck and unable to get up. Then, as is often the case, life happened. To me.  And I experienced the dryness and hopelessness.

 I call myself an introvert with a big personality which means I am pretty reserved and fiercely private, ‘need’ lots of personal space and time, and employ introverted thinking and processing methods i.e. I am constantly thinking about what I am going to say before I say it and constantly aware of context and cues during conversations. But I am also animated and quite goofy once I am in comfortable surroundings. For this reason and also for my continued battle with pride (nothing wounds the proud like the sense that others are grateful they are not you. Ugh! Slap me, hate me if you must. But don’t pity me!), I have found that I seem to derive little comfort from standard operating procedures. I find general words of comfort cliché, condescending and detached- in my opinion, while very well meaning, they seemed more about making the speaker, rather than the hearer, feel better.

Didn’t someone say “God doesn’t waste anything”?  Now that I have been on the other side of the fence,  I find the proverbial get over it words and methods I used to so generously mete out alienating, annoying and quite painful. So my heart now beats for those who are searching, hopeless and for those who have given up.

In all of this, there has been God. Gosh, how I appreciate His faithfulness, patience and mercy. Yes, the bible says that if I faint in the day of adversity, my strength is small (Proverbs 24:10). I admit it is. I should be stronger and tougher. But I am not. And I am so grateful that there is precedent for that. I am comforted by the verse that says God knows our frame and He remembers we are dust (Psalm 103:14). He knows our failings and weaknesses.  And He meets us right there.  I am encouraged by His patience with Gideon, whose stretch of disappointment made him a tough candidate for hope and faith. Over and over, God obliged his fleece requests to build Gideon’s faith and establish God’s credibility to a man who had become jaded by life (Judges 6).  I love that the Gospel records that Peter didn’t make it all across the water because He doubted. But that wasn’t the end of the story. Jesus caught him then and restored Him after the denial. I love that when asked if He was willing to heal a man with leprosy, Jesus gently said. “I am willing” and then did it (Matthew 8:2-3). I love it because it means there is hope for me, in spite of my weakness and faithlessness and wavering. It means that God can work, even here, even now when my faith reservoir is not filled and overflowing

No, I don’t want a watered down, positive feel good [only] gospel. The word of God is sharper than any two edged sword, dividing the soul and spirit, joints and marrow and judging the thoughts and intents of the heart (Hebrews 4:12). So God does not major in fluff and surface level stuff.  The word commands me to eat solid food so I can be a teacher, rather than a whining baby learning the basics over and over again ad nauseum (Hebrews 5:11-6:3). The word of God tells me study to show myself approved, work out my salvation with fear and trembling and depart from iniquity (2 Timothy 2:15, Philippians 2:12, 2 Timothy 2:19)

But it is the judging of the thoughts and intents of the heart  and the knowledge of my frame that sees me in my weakness, defeat and need and like Philips, Craig and Dean accurately said in their song “Mercy”,  rushes  to me to be with me, encourage me, heal me and  lift me up. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted (Psalm 34:18)

I want a relationship with God that is really real and really authentic. I gravitate towards the psalms in tough times because of the rawness of emotion and the vulnerability revealed there. When I cannot open up fully to people or I do and they are unable to comfort me at the deepest levels of pain, I am so grateful that I can turn to God and be totally real

In a nutshell, this is where I am at. When we are down (and I can now say this with humility and without judgment), what we are missing is hope. We are lacking a vision of the future; an understanding that this will pass, that God is not done with us and His good plans for us will prevail. So we need to be reminded of the goodness of God, of His great plans for us and of all the ‘impossible’ stories that became reality. David said he would have fainted if he did not believe he would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living (Psalm 27:13). And indeed, the bible tells us that the bible is written to encourage us and give us hope (Romans 15:4).

We don’t need science to validate our faith, but we love it when it does. Modern psychologists, of whom Martin Seligman is my favorite, agree on the matter of hope. In his book, Learned Optimism, Marty as he is known to his friends, says that the hope factor is central. If we see an issue as permanent (things will always be like this), pervasive/universal (bad things always happen to me/I never catch a break) and personal (I’m stupid or incompetent), we will be depressed because in effect, we will have no hope, no vision for the future

A wise person once said you don’t chase away the darkness; you just turn on the light. So when we don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, when we don’t have a vision for tomorrow, when hope is seemingly nowhere to be found, we don’t need to kick ourselves or have others kick us in the pants (as I have tried to do to myself and others often without success). We need to turn on the light of Jesus. For me, the light is turned on through worship and other songs that build hope (John Legend’s “Dare to Dream”, Fantasia’s “Believe”, Boyz II Men’s “I will get there” and R.Kelly’s “I believe I can fly” and “Greatest” are my favorite). It is the psalms; it is the story of Jehosaphat and Hezekiah in impossible battles. It is Joseph and Abraham’s story and the New Testament’s analysis of Abraham in Romans 4 and Hebrews 6. It is the hope building words of Joel Osteen and T. D jakes and sometimes even old school Robert Schuller.  It is Brian Zahnd’s book, “What to do on the worst day of your life” and Beth Moore’s “Believing God” devotional. It is serving my students and having the opportunity to be there for one of them having a really tough time.

For you, it might be the words of Jeremiah

In Jer 29:11

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.

Or Lamentations 3:18-26

¹⁸ So I say, “My splendor is gone
       and all that I had hoped from the LORD.”

 ¹⁹ I remember my affliction and my wandering,
       the bitterness and the gall.

 ²⁰ I well remember them,
       and my soul is downcast within me.

 ²¹ Yet this I call to mind
       and therefore I have hope:

 ²² Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed,
       for his compassions never fail.

 ²³ They are new every morning;
       great is your faithfulness.

 ²⁴ I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion;
       therefore I will wait for him.”

 ²⁵ The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him,
       to the one who seeks him;

 ²⁶ it is good to wait quietly
       for the salvation of the LORD.

It may be Isaiah or the gospels or service or comedies or the company of a dear friend. Do what works for you.

When I intentionally seek to flood my life with light, slowly but surely (sometimes it seems to take forever), I am reminded of how big God is. I am reminded of how much He loves me. I am reminded that the God who lives outside of time is not surprised by this challenge and He has an answer to it. I am encouraged by Luke 1:36 and 37 which says of Elizabeth “the one they called barren is now in her sixth month, for nothing is impossible with God”. I am reminded of the miracles He has done in my life. I am reminded that He is faithful. The bible says it is the goodness of God that leads us to repentance (Romans 2:4). As my life and mind are flooded with light, to quote the story of the prodigal son -I come to myself/remember myself/come to my senses (see Luke 15:17)- something rises up in me and I fall on my knees and confess that “I believe, Lord help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24)

So my encouragement to you today is this.  Have an authentic process. Feel, mourn, be real with God. It’s okay. You are not betraying God. Yes, you should be stronger and have more faith. But you don’t and God loves you anyway and will meet you there. Turn on the light any way that works for you. It might take a week, a month or a year. But keep the light on and you’ll wake up one day and the darkness will be gone and you will recognize that God has always been there, loving, working and ordering. And that indeed is a cause for hope

Be Blessed