Journey into Lightl

I have been through several challenges in the last several months that have left me tired and anxious. But now I feel the storm has passed; like it is the morning after! Who knows if it is true, but apparently it is for now.

But what did God accomplish in all my hospital stays and the fear it produced in me? Why did he cause the storm to happen anyway?

As I pick through the broken pieces of my life after the storm, I am looking for what remains. How did the experience change me and make me a better person?

Am I am still anxious to return to my old ways of feeling safe, important or loved, or will I better accept God’s safety, worth and love as gifts from him? Will I repent or will I stubbornly stay the same? Has God’s discipline accomplished anything in my life?

We often find it hard to understand how such a loving God can be so ruthless in stripping away our old habits of feeling good, such as depending on achievements, health, people’s approval and feeling comfortable. We think that if God loves us, he would make us feel good all the time.

Yet, God is in the storm as much as he is in the sunny days. “Whether for correction, or for His world, or for lovingkindness, He causes it to happen” (Job 37:13).

He yearns for us to try his splendor out and experience his joy, peace, and love. Storms are often necessary for us to try his splendor out.

Below is a poem that can help us realize why our storms are so important:

When God wants to drill a person

And thrill a person

And skill a person

When God wants to mold a person

To play the noblest part;

When He yearns with all His heart

To create so great and bold a person

That all the world should be amazed,

Watch His methods, watch His ways!

How He ruthlessly perfects

Whom He royally elects!

How He hammers them and hurts them,

And with Mighty blows converts them

Into trial shapes of clay which

Only God understands;

While their tortured heart is crying

And they lift beseeching hands!

How He bends but never breaks

When their good He undertakes;

How He uses whom He chooses

And with every purpose fuses them;

By every act induces them

To try His splendor out-

God knows what He is about! [1]

In the storm we can become desperate enough to risk giving up the old and learn to rest in the new.

Recovery from the storm is not easy. Old habits do not die easily. We will yearn to return to the familiar, though the familiar failed us miserably in the storm. God is trying to teach us to walk in his ways, even when the pressure from the storm is not on us.

So, ask God to bring to mind a storm that he has brought you through recently. What was he trying to teach you through that storm? Ask him to help you live in these teachings today.

[1] The Character of a Christian-Design for Discipleship-Book Four, (Colorado Springs: The Navigators, 1973), 48.