In my distress I cried to the LORD,
And He heard me.—Psalm 120:1
And He heard me. What assurance and comfort in the midst of distress. I can no longer even imagine the horror, desperation and helplessness of being forsaken by the Lord. My heart can’t even go there. I am His, and He is mine. He is always with me. He hears me when I cry, and I am always helped. His grace covers me, and His lovingkindness surrounds me. Empty, insufficient, helpless me is literally filled with the fullness of God.
Yesterday when my heart began to suffer the grief of much long-term, ongoing hurt and loss, instead of taking it to my Father in heaven, I responded to its outward manifestation….a desire to control the immediate world around me by decluttering and cleaning…as if that would somehow stop the passage of time. As if I could just hit the reset button and be back when the ones I was missing were with me. As if I could just clean my house enough to bring me back to 2001 when it all started. Time, however, doesn’t go backwards. It waits for no man. It marches on. Precious moment by precious moment. Each and every minute that passes is time lost that I can never get back. I saw clutter and dirt everywhere…but what I really saw was my home…my clean home where memories of the past lived and time passing was evident. By God’s grace, instead of giving in to my fleshly desire to control, I recognized the truth and chose to walk through it with my God. My own inability to fix it and the overwhelming grief that accompanied it humbled me, and in my emptiness and insufficiency, I cried out to God. And He heard me. I moved forward, no longer walking in the lies of my flesh but in His Spirit. My grief was still with me, but it was pure…I was able to laugh and smile with my loved ones who were with me and look forward and not back. I was able to leave all in God’s hands, knowing that He cares for me and that my future is and has always been in His control and not mine. And that is a good thing.
Beloved…Cry out to Him in your sin, in your emptiness, in your weakness, in your grief, in your insufficiency, and in your desire to walk in His Spirit and be a help to those around you. He will hear. He will answer. You will be helped. He who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all will supply your every need in Christ.
that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Eph. 3:16–19)
Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.—Hebrews 4:14-16
