Trust God Who Knows Your Heart

 

“Time and time again I thought, ‘I am just going to sit here and see if anyone bothers to come to me to say hi. Why should I make the first move?’”

— Karen Wilson

CHURCH PEOPLE must arrive at this point above, at least once in life, to understand what it truly feels like to be alone, totally disconnected with other believers, and out of step with community life. To feel estranged to the common Christian love (which can be altogether uncommon – or at least that’s how it might feel) is scary for the active disciple of Christ; hell for the Christian leader.

How do we serve and minister and pray when we can’t feel the love we are so used to thriving on. It’s a confused state that leads many to run or sneak quietly out of church during the last song. Sick of the small talk and superficial babble, the refuge of home is sought; church, during such bedraggling seasons, is fatiguing.

There Is One Who Knows You

When we feel like nobody gets it, it’s God who will eventually remind us: “I hear your soul. You are not despicable or ‘precious’, just fearful and discouraged. Let me revive you. I will use this present weakness for my glory.”

Having understood how vital we are to God – yes, that the Lord desires to save us, to deliver us, and to use us, afresh – and that there is blessing in store, we come also to understand that God will bless us through our service and connection with other people.

We have to get onto the front foot and throw caution to the wind; make a straight way for faith; to toss ourselves into the relational mix.

This poem that follows enshrines a golden and age-old truth:

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The devil loves to discourage

And cause doubt

He loves it more

When we begin to pout.

But God will take us

Right from there

Search us totally

Patiently strip us bare.

In tears of defeat

He lifts us anew

As we tremble

He revives faith that’s true.

Having been searched to the point of tears and outright collapse, and now stripped bare, having nothing left, we are ready to receive God’s compassion.

As we read his Word, afresh – Romans 8; 2 Corinthians; selected psalms, etc – we realise what God is doing. He has emptied us so we may be filled anew in his cherished purity, by and with the Holy Spirit.

***

When the end has come for us, God can finally begin. The Lord desires to do a great work in each of us, but we must first get out of our own way.

The Spirit’s power comes when all our human effort has been burned away. When we have nothing left it is easier to trust, and by trust we will give ourselves over to him who gives us into loving fellowship. And we willingly embrace it.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

Pondering Why When Life’s Not Doing so Well

DEPRESSION and anxiety are not states of being that follow everyone around; for a season or life. Sometimes we are gripped by anxiety for a day or a portion of a day – it breaks through the wall of our consciousness in a hurry and we are overwhelmed and must steady ourselves. Other times it’s the sadness of realisation – we are not as close to our goals as we thought we were, or perhaps it’s a relationship issue.

Some days are just sad days. Other days are fearful days. Others, again, we face stark discouragement. Occasionally we feel numb; nothing; blah.

Enduring such days seems easy at times, but sometimes we really begin to fear life has made a significant turn for the worse. We begin to identify ourselves as the fear, as the discouragement, as the sadness.

A big part of our problem is the lack of perspective. A lack of perspective has gotten us into this, presumably, along with circumstances that are wrought beyond our control.

So, as we find ourselves betwixt and between – neither at home within ourselves nor at home anywhere else – our perspective wanes. It was a waning perspective that got us here, and it is a waning of perspective that keeps us in such a compromised state of being.

But it is just a state of being.

We can move states at any time of our choosing. And proof of this is how we wake up the next day feeling refreshed – or maybe it’s as the next day commences and continues in a more positive vein.

The importance of seeing ourselves as able to transcend the mental, emotional and spiritual problems that hold us is pivotal. Nothing solidifies our identities if we resist such a thing. We are not ‘anxiety’ and nor are we ‘depression’ – these states of mind and heart do not become us.

As we ponder ‘why’ when life’s not doing so well, we can gain a spiritual levity to rise above the sadness, the fear, the discouragement. But if such levity is denial – e.g. humour for escape sake – it only delays progress, prolonging the sense of lack, which also weakens us. So levity must be accompanied by humble honesty – there is no sense in denying what is found to be true.

***

Perspective is a gift of acceptance to know the present sadness, fear and discouragement will pass. We are not the sadness. We are not the fear. Nor are we discouragement. These do not become part of our beings unless we allow them to be. Accepting a bad day for what it is – that’s perspective.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

Experiencing God’s Healing Touch In Sadness

“By handing over my sad [inner] child to receive a gentle touch from God, the tears flowed for that which was appropriate yet they never settled or threatened to drown me.”

— Karen Wilson

MIRACLES are transformations for life in every single person who submits their brokenness to God.

***

The subject matter, above, is about wetness, dampness, sorrow, fatigue, weeping, the production of tears, the filling of receptacles that seem not to be filling until we seem so suddenly and irreparably overwhelmed. The torrent becomes us. And many are so afraid of torrents that sweep all hope of happiness away. They refuse the risk of going anywhere near there!

Letting the Sadness of the Inner Child Flow In and Go

By taking the risk to pour our honest hearts out to God we also take a risk regarding how we will possibly control the torrent – that never-ending gush forth of salty droplets that form into streams on our face.

But Karen Wilson’s point, above, is a miraculous truth we will know by faith as a product of surrendering that vulnerable child before him.

Tears can be the activator of our secondary sadness – a true heart-rending sadness for what we have lost – or they can come as a product of carrying our sadness to God, then, hence tears.

This is a subtle difference: the former is without God, and the tears may never end, because the root of the sadness is never healed. But the latter is with God, the Presence of him who saves us even in grief, and we then, somehow, receive a gentle touch – knowing he is there with us – which works to the effect that the tears do not now overwhelm us.

The tears of the first sadness have only sorrowful properties. The tears of the second sadness – the one God is invited into – have only healing properties.

Letting the sadness of the inner child flow in and then go is recognising that we need to feel this sadness, but that sadness is only useful if we journey there with the Spirit of God.

***

Miracles are transformations for life in every single person who submits their brokenness to God. Healing is the transformation of God when we feel touched in our sadness through the pouring out of many tears. But, amazingly, these healing tears are neither intrinsically painful nor overwhelming in their longevity.

Faith carries the burden of sadness to God and the Lord never fails to heal.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

Acknowledgement: for more information on Karen Wilson’s book, The Inside Story, go to http://www.karensinsidestory.com/. Both in content and hardback presentation this book is a masterpiece of human authenticity, where one person’s private world is ‘sacrificed’ in love, expressed and enunciated, for the deliverance of others’ private worlds.

The Safe Experience and Expression of Our Emotional World

“The greatest gift we can give ourselves is to be able to acknowledge our faults, to honour our emotions and to express them in a non-destructive way to others.”

— Karen Wilson

VULNERABILITY is something I see more of than most in the specific type of occupation I’ve been called into by God. Sometimes there is a pause – an awkward-enough silence – an uncomfortable space – for another person to take a risk; “What the heck, here is my problem/what I’m feeling.” There is always more to come once the process has started. Putting myself regularly on the receiving end, it is never comfortable, but it is vital for growth and healing.

The essence of growth and healing is captured in Karen Wilson’s quote.

Such growth and healing never take place devoid of the Spirit of God. Let’s break this quote down to its component parts.

Acknowledging Our Faults

To express our weakness requires strength. To even become aware of our weaknesses requires much humility, which also requires strength – to face what we will hate (no overstatement here) to learn or consider is real or right about ourselves. Nobody truly wants to embrace their faults, but when we do, God opens the door ajar, enough for the waft of freedom’s breeze to be tasted in our olfactory sense.

Honouring Our Emotions

We are children. We all are. We only have to be upset or have the capacity for joy to understand the child state is irrepressible. The moment we accept we are children – needy of love – needy of a relationship with God – is the moment we begin to be open to our emotional world; and that paves the way for the blossoming enigma of the spiritual world to emerge – to take its rightful place in our lives. We are empty shells, spiritually, until we have embraced this emotional world – which, at least initially, will scare the living daylights out of us.

Expressing Our Emotional World Safely

Having made the steps of acknowledging the brokenness deep inside us, and having honoured that space where the emotions cry out to be heard, expression is made easier, more palatable, and therefore safer.

We hurt people too easily in our emotional reactions. We regret too much. Hurt people, of course, hurt people. The wisest of all people understand the delicateness of communicating interpersonally where there is the potential for emotional infractions abounding.

It takes such courage and skill and loving tact to communicate our broken vulnerabilities – in humility and in safety – before others so that they won’t be hurt. But such a practice is richly rewarded. And, just as much, there is great character and reward in protecting others when we are emotionally vulnerable.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

Acknowledgement: for more information on Karen Wilson’s book, The Inside Story, go to http://www.karensinsidestory.com/. Both in content and hardback presentation this book is a masterpiece of human authenticity, where one person’s private world is ‘sacrificed’ in love, expressed and enunciated, for the deliverance of others’ private worlds.