UNTIL I WAS LED INTO A wilderness experience, I did not know how frail I am. After finding myself financially, emotionally, intellectually, and physically exhausted; I would have been happy to die, for, in the midst of a nightmare in which I could not escape, my life no longer had meaning or purpose.
As a church lady, I clung to my faith and cried out to God to save me. I buried myself in my Bible, prayed like Jabez 1 Chronicles 4:10, and demanded, in the name of Jesus, that Satan get behind me.
One day, after returning from a local prison where I spoke to about fifty women offenders, to deliver a message of hope, I sat in my reading chair and confessed to the Lord that I felt like a hypocrite.
How can I tell them Jesus is all they need when they get out of prison and face the prospect of rebuilding their lives?
I’m in the same boat, filled with shame and humiliation from the knowledge that my choices led me into the consequences I now face.
The only difference is that these women made bad choices and I supposedly made good ones following your lead.
“What am I missing?” I asked the Lord.
“Your answer,” he said, “is the same as you spoke today at the prison. It is in the resurrection.”
Here’s what I learned:
Resurrection follows death.
The seed is buried into the ground with a hope that it will break through its tomb and become something greater than it was; something that will give beauty or fruit far more than it can achieve if it does not enter the tomb.
The notion of this beauty and fruit is not born in the mind of the seed, but in the one who owns the seed.
The seed cannot bury itself. It relies on the circumstances in which it finds itself, either at the hand of the farmer, or the hand of God, who will bring the elements of nature; the wind and dirt and rain.
I never thought of myself as frail as a seed, but in so many ways I am nothing more than a seed.
I began life from the seed of my father, buried into a certain tomb inside my mother, and soon I resurrected to take my place in the world. If there is to be beauty or fruit emanating from my life, it is not for my pleasure but for others.
After the financial, emotional, intellectual, and physical life goes into the tomb, the panic sets in as if one has been buried alive.
You will be tempted to scratch and dig and suck out the last of the air in an effort to save yourself. But, the very purpose of this death is to test what you really believe about God against what you think you believe about God.
Everything you believed about your money, feelings, best thinking, and physical abilities being able to save you have been exhausted and you’re left with only your spiritual self, which belongs to God.
It was knitted into your body inside your first tomb, and for whatever reason—God only knows—the Lord wants you to know him apart from what you ever wrongly believed about him before.
He also wants you to know what you wrongly believed about yourself.
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;
that they may be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord,
that he may be glorified. From Psalm 61 (ESV)
John 15:1-8, Colossians 3:5, John 12:24, Isaiah 17:10-11, Luke 9:23-24, 1 Peter 4:1-2, Matthew 10:38, Galatians 5:22-26
As always, it is my intent and hope that my words may encourage you wherever you are in your journey.
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If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.–Jesus(Mark 4:23)
See more of Andrea’s work here:
www.fineartamerica.com/profiles/andrea-sims
