Walking Naked: Blessed to Be Challenged
July 21, 2018 Leave a comment
Today, while washing my face in the morning, I was tempted to rage at God for taking His time in keeping His promises to me. After all, doesn’t God’s Word in Proverbs 13:12 say “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when desire is fulfilled, it is a tree of life.”amp. But in that instance, God took over my spirit, and a thought arose above that which had preceded it “Even if it takes 400+, 70 or 22 years, I will keep packing, keep waiting for Your deliverance for YOU WILL COME.”
I realised this: It does not dishonor God to acknowledge one’s challenge, pain [[i]Romans 4:18-22, [ii]Hebrews 11:11-12] – what dishonor’s Him is to raise whatever it is above Him. To say in essence that He brought me to this trouble, and then left me. He is not a mere man to resort to such – After all isn’t He The One Who became and then overcame manhood to retain His Divinity? And isn’t it what I am called to?
So, in the last weeks my family has gone through an intense increase of occurrences on attacks on our health, seeming brazen heavens regarding our finances, deep debt and are currently walking through a season of eviction and are at limbo over exactly where home is. Loneliness bites, as associations stream out faster than you could take your next breath. I have known deep despair to the point of seriously considering taking my own life. Worse for me, is seeing those we love go through similar and sometimes even worse situations, and finding ourselves in conditions where we could be counted as absent to them in their time of need, because we could neither go to them or be of any assistance.
Key for me, has been my parents. This week for instance, things have been so hard for me that most of the monies received has gone directly to the hands of my landlord leaving me with nothing left by way of transport to go to them. The cabbie who normally extends affordable credit to us was arrested earlier on in the week for obstruction, and being unable to raise the fee stipulated by the courts, finds himself in a remand prison out of town. This, aside from the fact that I already owe him too much to even ask him for assistance if he was available. This was the week in which I desired mostly to stand with my parents as Daddy went through his clinics to receive an update on his health status. But I have not been able to.
Yesterday, I was reading through the chapter in the book of Isaiah [[iii]Isaiah 20], where God commanded him to take of his shoes and be naked before Israel as a symbol of God’s intention for His chosen nation. As I read that, I too felt naked, and empathised with Isaiah – THREE YEARS OF NAKEDNESS! Each day he lived through that must have felt like a year in itself. People looking and not looking, while seeing and not seeing, and making often unkind judgements about where you are at. About how you are. About how it should be worse for you…
And yet, God is bigger than all these. A week later, although we are no longer thought of as tenants in this house, we remain in it. Packed, but yet undisturbed aside from the constant visits by the agent demanding what we owe. God has also directed my focus on Him as my true Home. He also led seven prayer warriors and three old friends to give towards reducing the gap on what I owe the landlord. I am humbled, we are grateful for their initiative. We still owe, and we still have no idea where we are going. God has been Good to us, His Grace constant.
In this time, members of my household have received one attack on their health after another. Each time, without fail, there has been someone standing with us, who obviously would rather be elsewhere or spending their resources on what would benefit them and theirs. God placed them by our sides to bless them, to bless us and bring Glory back to Him. It has been for me extremely humbling – so much that there is no sense of relief for having received for the perceived deep wounds by those who have given. Still, we have slept and connected with God in our sleeping and waking hours. This too is God and His Grace. Oh, and in each of these cases we have received courage, God’s promise and healing. My daughter who emits chaos and mayhem at the mere sight of an injection told me last night that she had by herself taken off the stitches she received on her forehead two weeks ago after a fall, because we could not raise the money for her to go back to hospital for their removal.
Shame is a luxury we can no longer afford. A close friend of mine who faces an eviction from her servants quarter house, who had for years received a salary of approximately U$5,000 told me the same. Her seeming downfall has been so public that she stands poised, enraptured, expectant of her breakthrough from God. She too has been an invaluable treasure to me in this season; You see, when the world seems to fall on you, we are tempted to think that God is picking on us and giving everyone else a vacation. It helps our sanity to have someone to converse it who is both compassionate and empathetic, because they are either walking or have walked that path. There are many others, who have passed through this while I was still in it, overcome and turned back to judge me for not getting out as fast as they have – that was our mutual story. I laughed all through our phone conversation this week – of cause interspersing each spasm of humour with a sincere ‘HalleluJah’.
So, today I hurt. I have no idea when God has scheduled my healing and breakthrough for, but I am not alone. The One in Whose Hands I have trusted my life, assures me that in a place above and beyond time – I have made it through. I have not failed Him. By His Grace, I do not have the timings and the details of how this will unfold, but He has already convinced me that I am blessed of Him to be this way challenged.
Shalom.
vipslit@yahoo.ca
[i] Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” Without weakening in his faith, he acknowledged the decrepitness of his body (since he was about a hundred years old) and the lifelessness of Sarah’s womb.
Yet he did not waver through disbelief in the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God was able to do what He had promised. That is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.” Romans 4:18-22
[ii] “By faith even Sarah herself received the ability to conceive [a child], even [when she was long] past the normal age for it, because she considered Him who had given her the promise to be reliable and true [to His word]. So from one man, though he was [physically] as good as dead, were born as many descendants as the stars of heaven in number, and innumerable as the sand on the seashore.” Hebrews 11:11-12 amp.
[iii] “at that time the Lord spoke through Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, “Go, untie the [a]sackcloth from your hips and take your sandals off your feet.” And he did so, walking around [b]stripped [to his loincloth] and barefoot. And the Lord said, “Even as My servant Isaiah has walked [c]stripped and barefoot for three years as a sign and forewarning concerning Egypt and Cush (Ethiopia),” Isaiah 20:2-3 amp
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