Lately in my prayers I have been asking God for an affirmation that it was indeed He who has been the one leading me to make certain intrusions into a friend's life, that ultimately resulted in an outcome that came to hurt us both very much. At that point He'd told me to pen the letter, and despite knowing the extent of the potential consequences my spirit had peace with obeying this instruction. Part of the things I was led to pen involved an image God had brought to mind:
Jesus and I were walking along the soft banks of the river of life. I gave Him my heart, and he planted it beside the river that its roots might drink life. It grew into a beautiful tree against the backdrop of an already heavenly weather, sunny but cool--a gentle summer. The tree grew to provide coolness and shade, and bore fruit that was good.
This I did accordingly, and included in the letter. Because it was so real, it was an extremely personal image, and this combined with the immediate weeks and months of pain that followed after the letter, made me wonder if I had heard God wrongly, or if I had written from impulses derived from my activity-prone imagination--it was all too beautiful to be true! But Jesus was there! I saw! He'd led me, an I'd followed!
Everything I said in that letter was real. I was both as honest as I could possibly be, and frightened by the worst possible outcome I'd expected, which did come to pass. My friend questioned if I was absolutely sure God had led me to send that letter and promptly stated that he wished I'd never sent it. This outcome, God had told me prior to sending it, and He gave me peace, that is why I stand by what I have written.
I must say that the continued lack of favour with my friend and brother made me anxious to give him a better answer than what I had given. He'd pressed me more than once for my certainty about a God-led decision to send the letter, and all I could tell him was it simply was my personal conviction that I'd obeyed. I have a poor memory. When the memory of God having spoken to you is fresh, it is easy to remember the intangible conditions which accompanied His presence--the peace, the holiness, sense of safety, etc--and these become idexical for recognizing again when He speaks next. But I went through a period of dryness with nothing but the memory of that experience and the word. I continued to be led by His promptings, but not experiences that were this real. After months of being led by promptings, both with regards to my friend, and other people to whom I was led to minister, I came to be hungry for more certainty. I wanted God to show me in black and white, in some tangible way, that I'd done exactly what He wanted. But if I didn't obey the promptings I'd find my sensitivity to the Spirit growing weaker, so I couldn't just keep waiting for confirmation to drop from the sky, I had to obey in order to be able to walk on. As experiential memory faded, so did I fail to hear as easily as before His voice speaking through His word, and that is when I came to doubt the memory, doubt that Jesus spoke, and that my misguided imagination was indeed silent at the creation of the memory.
In this time of trying to make sense of all that has gone on from the beginning of last year till now, stock-taking, as it were, I have asked God to help me understand why He chose to lead me into some of these decisions. It's not that I doubt His goodness, I know in faith that in His time all things shall be restored to their intended beauty and perfection, be it a friendship or the condition of wholeness in the people I ministered to. But I wanted to know that He really was there leading me, that it wasn't my misguided imagination.
Today He laid to rest my latent doubts and anxieties concerning whether writing my friend really was a God-led decision. In the bible, Psalm 1 describes people who are "like trees planted by streams of water" The image is of lives that are healthy and productive, bearing fruit in appropriate ways. It wasn't my imagination! =) Jesus was showing me something from His word, and made it real to me in a way that no one could have, even if I had memorised psalms back to front and explored every metaphor in there like in bible study. I'd never known such an image was in the word, and that it might actually become so literal in a personal sense. But that led me to ponder in wonder again, upon how personal God really means the bible to be for each one of us, how He speaks to us when we read it by His spirit, despite its being mass produced. And that is the power of God--only God can make something mass produced speak so individually and uniquely to a person, so much so that his heart is changed and filled with life and love.
To know again that God makes His word real to this degree, where I am no longer a spectator of events, with set examples in my bible heros to follow, but the protagonist being personally challenged every turn I make, and lovingly disciplined, as though I were His very child, fills me with greater faith, anticipation and expectancy. See I know I am His child, but I have never felt this much like it, and that makes all the difference. And I need to continue to know, experientially, that I am His very own, that I am found in Him, He loves me as He loves himself, because it is my lifeline to a real, dynamic relationship with Him. I want to know the stirrings of His heart, aside from His love for me, but He chooses that we should know that He loves us, making sure we're all good and well soaked in His love, until we are entirely overwhelmed and secure in Him, before He will lay the burdens of His heart upon us. What a sweet, awesome, mighty God we serve!
Yes faith comes from hearing the word. I think I now understand how.
| e.s.t.h.e.r in the arms of Jesus @
1/14/2006 12:36:00 pm |
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