Over the last two years, I have come to a place of much searching, and much finding. It has been an intense time - probably the most intense time in my life to-date. I have spent a lot of that time facing difficult things - difficult feelings, my failings and addictions, past injuries and hurts, etc.
I have come to realize that I have spent much of my life running from those things - I had built up many "comforts" that I would turn to when I was overwhelmed with pain, lonelyness, hurt, anger, or other emotions. They were false comforts, false friends, and I recognized that, but I still chose to do them. They did bring some minimal relief, some distraction from the pain, but only for a short time, and at a great cost.
In Romans 6:16, Paul says "Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey--whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness" (NIV). In turning to these things I truly had become a slave to them. Eventually I got to the point where I hated these things, these comforts, these addictions. I recognized them for what they were - destruction and slavery. However, I feared and hated the pain even more. As such, I would turn to these things rather than face the pain and walk thru it.
God has revealed to me that this, fundamentally, was a distrust of him and his character, and God has been doing surgery on that. He has revealed three fundamental things that I needed to trust deep in my heart. I didn't need intellectual knowledge or understanding of these three things - I needed them to be real in the deepest places of my heart. I have come to believe that these three things are fundamental, but they are not intellectual things that can be easily communicated in words - they are things that can only be communicated by revelation, by experience, by the spirit of God. Nevertheless, God has laid it on my heart to share these things, and my prayer is that this speaks deeply to you...
First, God revealed his incredible goodness and love. I had always thought I understood God's goodness intellectually, and my heart trusted in his love - to a point. My conception of God was limited, however, to a soft God who was always there to comfort and to reveal things in me he wanted to change. His love was deep, but it was not active, not broad, and definitely not comfortable and natural in its activity. I'm not sure where I got this concept of God from - whether from life, from the church, from my past, or somewhere else. However, it was a distortion, a limit put on God.
God revealed, instead, that he is incredibly active in his love, and it is 100% natural for him to be so - it's not a stretch, not some difficult thing done out of obligation, but something as natural for him as it is for us to breathe. And his active love is so much greater than what I had imagined.
One way he communicated this to me was in a vision - I was looking back at a particularly difficult conversation, and asking what God did - how was he active and involved in that conversation. What I saw was him standing up, and encasing the words that had been spoken in something that let them float away instead of going deeply, directly into my heart (as had happened in the original discussion). And he did this in such a natural, normal way that I could see that this was his normative, comfortable way of operating...
Second, God spoke deeply into my heart that his plans are for my ultimate good, and that I can trust in his plans. I don't have to know and understand his plans before I can trust them, This had been my normal modus operandi - to try to understand God's plans before I trusted them and committed to them. In other words, I could only trust God's plans if I observed that they were good...
God spoke to this wounded, distrusting place in my heart by revealing some of what his plans had been in situations that turned out to be deeply traumatic in my life. He revealed how a big part of the pain in one particular situation was caused by my trying to do what I thought was best and responding out of my hurt, instead of relying on the plans that he had put in place.
Third, God impressed upon my heart that he has the ability to carry his plan thru. He is not incompetent, nor weak in any way, and I can trust in that.
As I learned to trust in these three things, God spoke deeply to my woundedness and distrust in the present - he spoke to my desire to escape the pain and other emotions by revealing them for the gift that they truly are. Those emotions are often not pleasant, but God is good, and I can trust him while I walk thru them. I can trust his plan - that "in all things God works for the good of those who love him" (Rom 8:28). And in that, I can be confident that God is working good as I choose to face and walk thru these feelings I had been fighting so hard to avoid. Finally, I can be confident that God is capable of carrying out his plan.
Over the last two years, I have walked thru much pain and difficulty, but I strongly testify that God has done awesome things thru that - he has freed me from the bonds of slavery, he has grown me into the man he made me to be, he has restored deeply broken relationships, and he has done so much more!
I pray that he brings you to this incredible, deep place of trust - that he reveals to you all that he has for you to hear, and that he speaks deeply and often into your heart and life!
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