I tell you, if you are serious about wanting to be like Christ, God is going to put you in circumstances where your only true choice is to become like Him.
~ Francis Frangipane
O Lord, You have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, You know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it. Where shall I go from Your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from Your Presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, You are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to You; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with You. For You formed my inward parts; You knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made…. How precious to me are Your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with You…. Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!
~ from Psalm 139
Oh beloved, it is true.
The pain of this life can be horrendous. And as we go through it we are tempted to feel alone. And we are not. We most surely are not.
This fool of a writer had the greater portion of his life crushed out of his hands in the past. Due to a number of circumstances, including my own failures as a husband and father, i went from sleeping in my own bed, in my own house, with my family one morning – to alone within six hours. My house was gone, my family with it. And the pain of that event is not something that can be put into words. And what made the situation even more painful was that the house and family were still standing, but i was no longer a part of it, ever again. i was never really given a full answer as to why it all happened, and it was not handled well by almost anyone who was party to the situation. And in my despair, i made a number of astoundingly bad choices that nearly ended my life.
But G_d.
This six hours one day was nearly eight years ago. Yet the results of what He has done in my life are more than worth the price. Along the way as well, He has restored many things that the locusts i let loose with my former life, had eaten. i have added two to my quiver, and have six beautiful children now instead of four. And G_d sent me a perfect soulmate to walk together along the final trips around the sun He sees fit to give us.
Beyond giving me a new Life in a new place with a bigger family, He has given me 356 students in an Asian megacity to Love. And over the past couple of years, perhaps 100 of them have come to understand and surrender to the Great Love with which He Loves us. The restoration of Life and family and ministry and finances and health and strength has been a story that is astounding in its scope. The story is so beautiful as to be nearly unbelievable. Yet, even in its fully stupendous breadth, it is true.
And even in all of this, there has been something dogging me. It is a fear that has been nipping at my heels, and sometimes attaching itself to my back, and i did not even really know it was there. It was just this dull (and sometimes bitterly painful) sense that something was not right, and that things were going to come flying apart. And a highly intelligent and beautiful, though exceedingly emotional, wife was the catalyst of both the painful fear and the gateway to its solution.
In some of the more emotional moments we have had, emotional people will sometimes say things they do not mean. They may actually be people who have more maturity than a fool who is just getting his life back together. However, when the emotional things were said, they rubbed up against a wound in me that won’t ever fully heal, because the wound is an amputation – and all that is left is a stump where a former way of life used to be. And as the rubbing against that wound would happen, i would hurt. Which is understandable.
What was more difficult to understand was a feeling of near panic that would rise up in my soul.
In this moment, He peeled back another layer of the onion of my life to reveal another thing of which i needed to let go. The fear i had was a fear that the same thing was going to happen to me again. That i would wake up one day and the locks on the doors of my new life would be changed just like the doors on my old life were, one cold morning in December, 6 years and 15,000 kilometres away. And for the past two years, this writer has been running hard with the whip of that fear cracking in his subconscious mind.
But G_d.
A brother laid his hands on me this morning in church during prayer, and the One who alone is Good, deemed it time to show me this part of me, that i might continue more fully on the journey into freedom that He has set before me. It was as if a great wound was lanced and drained out of me. i had lived in so much pain before, and had become so free, that the pain of this deep and hidden wound was not noticed until it had festered and begun to rot the edges of my soul and spirit.
i was able to share this event in the spirit with my beloved wife. And to my deepest joy, she was able to receive the message that came to both myself and to her through that time of prayer. As we held hands on the couch, a wound healed up within minutes – whereas in the past it might have taken months or years. He is so good to us.
Can we see it?
The beauty of all of this is, hopefully, evident. He is relentless. He will make us like Him. He will cut down to the dividing of soul and spirit, and in the cutting, release and cleanse the putrid wounds of our past. He will crush us with pressures that push anything not of Him out of us. He will break us that, as He puts the pieces back together, there are gaping holes for His Light to shine through – and breaches for His Love to seep out.
So, are you being crushed and pushed hard right now beloved? Good. Let it happen. Let Him show you what He wants to heal in you tonight.
