What God did
Hi all,
this is an update but it's written more for the purposes of reminding me the steps God led me through this morning.
I've been in a rather broken state since leaving for the UK and have had immense difficulty in mustering the enthusiasm or faith for anything since. The struggle to believe God was still there, still interested, and that the word was still true has plagued me for more than a month now. Discouragement set in in the UK and had not left me since. I think the straw that broke this camel's back were the words of a brother (although i don't think he intended it). At that point I had been struggling with having faith that God would honour faith, however little one had to muster. Cos for a long time one had not seen the fruits of one's faith in Him, and it took peservering in faith to hang on. I persevered in simple faith at LDC, and as far as I was at the camp, it was good. I knew God was leading me into everything I'd done and taught to the primers. I had to leave for the UK on the last night though, and could not stay to see the culminated outcome of that faith. Perhaps it was both bitter disappointment and apprehension that made me cry all the way to the UK. Encouragement was what I'd been badly needing--being there to see the boys finally meeting God and making a decision for Him would have deeply encouraged me to keep trusting and humbly obeying. But I felt as though it had been most cruelly snatched from me... that I should never see fruit, that I should never be allowed to hope for their healing or mine. What's more, my apprehension came from a premonition that I was about to take a huge blow for having trusted Him. I simply knew my spirit was going to die, that I would give up on Him, though I didn't know how, and wasn't willing that it should happen. I feared losing Him, for after that I'd be suicidal. Without knowing why, from the counters to the gate and onto the plane, one inexplicably felt like a sheep most unwillingly being sent to a slaughterhouse.
So yes, it has been a struggle since those words that planted fatal doubt in me were spoken that night. My brother didn't believe anything lasting would come out of camp, and I would never be able to see for myself just how much of an impact the things I did had. What feeble faith I had that God had taught the primers something invaluable died under the weight of my reasoning that wanted to agree with my brother. I was crushed. I didn't just become discouraged. I wanted to stop caring. Because it hurt to have given all one's strength, all one's hope, and all one's heart in the midst of years of brokenness to Him, only to have it irrepairably crushed underfoot, with a callous wave of a hand (belonging to someone who was supposed to know God) that said it didn't mean anything. If God was there, it was incomprehensible that He could allow (heck, even bestow) this on the servant who'd have given life and limb to His service.
I tried again to find a reason to hope, chatting online thereafter with another brother who'd been at LDC to find out how it'd gone. I shared with him my frustrations and discouragement with the things I'd experienced inthe UK, hoping to find something contrary in his opinion, but this got back to my brother in the UK. I was promptly called a gossip, given stern warnings and reminded that God didn't tolerate gossip. It silenced me. As badly as I needed encouragement and a companionable response, I simply stuck a knife in me and shut up. From then on I resolved to keep my pain and struggle to myself, even if it meant self-isolation, ridicule, and the incomprehension of others. After weeks alone, and feeling utterly worthless, I found myself at the limits of my strength of will to cling on to Him. Facing up to the odds in my lived experience telling me I was being self-delusional, or that anything I did was ever at all pleasing, I finally told God that if He was God, He was going to have to bring me back, for I had no more strength to hang on believing. It was more than discouragement. I simply gave up hoping in God, and gratefully slipped into the darkness semiconscious.
Since then life has been lived with a task-orientated disposition. Upon reaching Singapore, one started work the very next day (they called me back 8 days early). Having stopped hoping in Him, I felt like I'd died, and simply existed on as a well-meaning brain with arms and legs that still hoped to find some shabby form of purpose in productivity. At work I still wanted to give my best. Getting things done became my preoccupation. But of course those who knew me well noticed it. But as much as I was thankful for them, there was little they could do once I'd died to hope. I'd be broken as long as God didn't heal. What I needed to know was that He was still interested in me. Having "died" to Him, one started to cling to other things for security. A job and its salary, for instance. One's capacity for faith had died, because one's felt need for faith had died. One lived well, materially, even if one was not happy. And I suppose money can buy you a lot of things that take your mind off the misery of your vague existence. That's what the entertainment industry and other vices are for anyway right?
And how I've prayed!: Someone show me the truth! That I may believe again in His love. Someone show me how they know God hasn't given up on me. Someone show me how He's still involved in my life. God I'm willing to give up my unbelief, just please help me believe. Help. Somebody.
Friends have brought messages of encouragement to me, and for their love I am extremely thankful. But it is not enough to tell me that God still wants me to go off to Turkey. That just makes me feel used, because God hasn't healed me yet. And it is the truth that there is no condemnation in Christ, but no condemnation is still not good enough. From where is there the assurance that one is precious in His sight and fiercely loved, loved more than death itself can destroy? In His word, yes, but from where shall I find the faith to turn intellectual acquiesience to a life-giving encounter with Him again?
So God started working in two ways. First He sent a colleague who barely knew me, to speak encouragement into my life. This colleague developed a burden to pray for me. I thank God for sending friends with words of encouragement. Second God finally ministered to a lifelong need, through the Church of Our Saviour deliverance ministry. Strange though that meeting was, God opened my eyes to see that although I have forgiven my father and love him, I had yet to learn to let him love me. I have simply always accepted his well-meant care and concern, but have never allowed myself to fall in love with him again. I am afraid of ever having to grieve over losing him again. Since I was little I've never felt like anyone wanted the burden of protecting me, or watching over me. Not him, and not God who allowed beatings, nightmares, demonic faces, depression and suicidal thoughts to happen first and only coming to comfort me when I prayed later. That was cold comfort, but at that time I thought that was as far as God had intended to be involved in our lives, (distantly, that is, because He was a busy God) and at least He was trying. For that reason perhaps, I think I've never quite grown used to being cared for, or allowed anyone to care for me, except God, and even that bridge of trust between me and God was fragile. If I should be dependent on someone for that provision, and that dependence abused again, I will have no idea how I should ever get up again and walk on.
So you see, Satan knows. Since learning to hear God 4 years ago, He's affirmed my faith in Him and changed me in ways more wonderful than I can describe. My depression melted away, I was no longer suicidal, because the God I'd loved and trusted in was for real, and He was every bit mine just as much as I was His. Best of all, I could never lose Him or His love. So Satan's most poisonous arrow in destroying me is in leading me to believe God has rejected me. It's in leading me to experience the dryness, silence, discouragement, tearful peseverance, and bleeding intercession as God's rejection of His child. And I am plunged into the depths of despair again, because I have been deceived.
Two things keep me going:
1. knowing that God does what He says He will. So if He says He's sending me to Turkey and I'm willing to obey, somehow He'll have to help me through this denial of Him.
2. That if God is God, and I am His, then He'll do something about me when I can no longer do anything for myself.
This morning God led me through the heartscape again. Where there had once been a cell with a prisoner inside, since COOS the cell had been razed to the ground, the prisoner was nowhere to be found, and the ground was black and charred. In the heart was a deep need for ministry, but one didn't know what to do or how to start at all. But God led. In short:
1. we dug up the ground under the cell, to reveal a vast foundation of raw stone, at least 50 metres thick, and spread over a vast territory at least 2 football stadiums wide. I was led to find my security in Him alone again, and not depend on the fact that one held a job etc to sustain the finances needed for ministry, for the future, etc. I was led away from a felt need to hoard thousands away for rainy days, to being the simple varsity student I used to be, with not much materially speaking, but still having everything to share. These foundations of stone were broken to pieces, and replaced by foundations of faith. It's kind of strange to describe what faith "looked" like, but they were like beams of light, only they were much stronger than stone, less brittle, and things could pass through them without their ever giving way. The huge knot in my heart that I'd unconsciously been carrying around loosened and came undone. There was a sense of release.
2. Deeper down, past the foundation of stone, was a trapdoor in the ground. This trapdoor had been sealed over by the heavy layer of stone. (I think I now know why we call ministry "breakthrough".) If any of you remember the chambers of the heart and the one God never entered, this is the same last trapdoor right at the heart's bottom. God lifted the small but immensely heavy door, made of the densest metal i've ever encountered. It opened and we peered down. What followed the door was a stark drop into a deep dark pit of a room. It was as though the door had been built into the ceiling, with no steps leading down.
From the shaft of light that fell in through the opening where we were, we could see coals roasting on the floor below, and anyone who wasn't careful could have fallen in. It was hot, sooty and the heat rising from the coals administered singeing and searing sensations, and threatened to blister the skin. We got to the bottom but were not burned.
The coals lay spread out over the floor of a room that had been dug out of the earth, much larger than it seemed from the top. Thoughts surrounding persecution came to mind, although I am not sure if they were in preparation for the future, or they if were there for me to learn to dispel them. As though the roasting, burning coals lay on a mat, Christ started to gather up the four corners and folded the coals up into the mat, and as I watched Him, it was as though the fear I'd experienced concerning persecution folded up into itself and became smaller.
The folding of the mat revealed a kind of grid on which the mat was laid, and beneath the grid we now stood on, was another drop deep into a stony cave-like place which no daylight ever reached. But there was a faint glow at the bottom, and I thought I heard protesting whimpers from a voice feeble and sapped of strength.
3. We descended (I don't know how, since there were no stairs, just like with the trapdoor, I guess you could say we simply went through the grid and descended) gently upon that slimy dark rock floor. The ground was full of rock shards everywhere and it would have cut the feet, but nothing cut ours either.
The source of light was a fire upon a stone altar. There was a wooden post driven into its middle. And on it a girl was bound and being burnt alive. The flames danced at her feet and rose as high as her waist. Her face, neck and shoulders were blistered, her clothing was charred, her skin was raw and bleeding. She had been made to walk that shard-littered floor a long way with bare feet so that there was blood in the fire. It is the same girl I used to see, whose agonizing screams used to wrench my heart. Except that now she was soundless, limp and she seemed to have lost consciousness--her head hung face down into the fire. Hidden in the shadows was a small, dark, imp-like figure quietly watching and chuckling. Upon Christ's entrance it immediately took off and fled.
Christ undid the chains that held the girl to the post, then gently lifted her and set her limp frame down on a flat rock surface, then walked away from the altar, turning his back on the girl. Puzzled though I was for a moment, after calling his attention to help the girl, I followed after him. We came to a small opening, which must have been the mouth of the cave through which that figure fled.
It led directly out to a rocky small beach and the sea, which covered the beach when the tide rose. There were dark grey clouds rolling in the distance over the sea, and a wind was starting to pick up. It was about to rain. Christ took the mat of coals off His shoulders and hurled them far out into the sea. He set me upon a rock to watch.
Facing that sea, there was a moment of quiet, where God so gently spoke that it broke me. I was led to give up my resistance to a father's love, and a floodgate opened and flooded my heart with His mercy, grace, and love. At the same moment I was prompted to sing. The song that sprang to my lips suprised me, since I've not heard it in a long, long time.Jesus took my burdens, and rolled them in the searolled them in the searolled them in the seaJesus took my burdens,and rolled them in the seaNever to remember anymore.
The song grew, from the small feeble voice of a girl in the wind, to one that grew in strength, empowered by the certainty of His presence there. It swept across the waves, and they started to respond, their crests rising higher, and crashing more and more dangerously upon the rocks.
A storm started to blow, and the tide started to rise. The sea water entered the cave, and the cave started to flood. The fire on the altar was lapped out of existence, and the filth upon the altar swirled in the water. Then when Christ raised His hands, the storm began to calm, and the water began to subside, carrying away with it every ounce of grime, dirt and charred filth from the altar and cave. The stinging of salt water that licked the girl's wounds caused her to return to consciousness.
Returning to the cave, Christ gave her a new white robe and draped it over her. It was most soft and lovely, because although it rested upon her blistered, raw, bleeding skin it was like wearing light, where one knew one was covered, but couldn't tangibly feel the material covering oneself. To the touch it was like wearing and being cushioned by lovely warm air. Christ lifted her and brought her to a place where she could rest.
4. Then we returned to the beach where I first met Christ, at the other end of the heart, the northern end. We saw from a distance the little ragged girl with matted hair from the now-razed cell wandering the beach, a lost, war-torn, homeless look in her eyes. She was looking for Christ, but the beach was empty.
I lingered a little longer in prayer. Still wondering if I was becoming a split-personality since all these girls were me. Also wondered how much of this was my imagination. But then drawing my attention to the last girl on the beach, God said to me that once I was free, I was going to have to learn to live in that freedom, and that meant knowing, really knowing who I am in Christ. For too long I have lived in brokenness and poverty of spirit. I have grown accustomed to imprisonment, defeat and pain, despite resisting them since these many years as a Christian. Not that I hoped or asked for such pain, but that in spite of my hoping for deliverance I'd not been delivered till now. But now God does want to show me that although we are called to carry our crosses and identify with His suffering, there is also time for the victory and freedom found in Him. God is it now? Is it soon? I can feel You doing something in my life, as though something is about to happen, but I scarcely dare to hope it is for real. Oh God, tell me who I am, and give me faith to believe it.
| e.s.t.h.e.r in the arms of Jesus @
7/16/2006 01:11:00 pm |
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