WHAT CAN MAKE ME SWERVE

Many are my persecutors and my adversaries, but I do not swerve from your testimonies.  Psalm 119:157

What testimonies might David swerve from when he is treated poorly by others?  I suspect the same ones I could easily discount when I am mistreated.  It is difficult to believe, and rejoice, in God’s love, goodness, and favor when someone near me withholds all three in my presence.

The Gospel is good news.  All of mankind should be rejoicing over the pronouncement of a love we all crave down deep.  And, it’s not expressed by a ‘nobody’.  God, the Creator of the universe, loves me purely, faithfully, completely.  This is too good to be true.  So why does it take so long for the message to sink in?  Why did I not throw a party much earlier in life to celebrate such good news?  Why did my heart not feel light and giddy over the reality of being cherished?  Why did I spurn his love but continue to look for it in places that couldn’t, and wouldn’t, give it?

Probably for the same reason you did.  If we live near persecutors and tormentors, or withholders, our heart swerves from declarations of real love.  I can read verses, sing songs about it, say I believe it, but my heart is a 5 lb. weight of dead flesh.  Too many arrows have killed it.  Hope for a different experience ceases to exist.

The issue for every child of God is knowing what brings a wounded heart to life.  1.) Acknowledgement of the presence of persecutors.  2.) Admitting and expressing the truth of the pain they inflicted.  3.) Bringing my pain to Jesus and waiting in His presence for ministry.  4.) Naming each lie, renouncing it, and replacing it with the truth of scripture.  5.)Asking God to turn my heart of stone into flesh.

Five steps to wholeness, and not easy ones at that, will not be undertaken without faith.  I need God to grace me with faith, through the Word, to believe that a God that I can’t see, can’t touch, can’t experience in the flesh has the power to undo all the damage others inflicted; ‘others’ that I could hear, see, and feel.  The possibility for healing can appear to be a long shot but that is only because I do not know the power of the Word to re-wire my mind and resurrect my heart.  God invites me to put Him to the test.

I live by faith, not by sight. What I can’t see will heal me.  My heart is open to you.  Amen