Foundations of Hope by a Survivor of SRA
I love waking up in the morning with clear thoughts as this is often when I hear from the Holy Spirit most clearly. My emotions can be like a whirlwind and I am often left watching the swirling winds spin uncontrollably around me carrying the often disconnected debris from horrors past. I sit calmly in the very eye of the storm waiting for the gusts around me to subside so that I can break free and have a day that appears fruitful and stable. When I sit in the center of the storm I am waiting on God for His help. If I don’t wait for God but try to brave this gale myself I will quickly find myself being launched into unknown peril and danger. The vestiges of pain past are large sharp objects that can cause great bodily harm if I am left to the uncertainties of the debris field and their certain paths of collision.
The eye of the storm is a place of complete calm and peace. It is the safest place in the storm but you have to be careful to travel with it as it is surrounded by a wall of the fiercest winds and power. The eye is always moving so we need to move with it or we will be thrust into the tightly spinning storm surge packed around it. The most secure thing to do is to ask the Holy Spirit to give us the wings to soar in this center and as the eye forges ahead so will we. We will find ourselves kept secure in that place of peace. It is there that we hear that still small voice speak to us. He brings words of comfort to our troubled minds as we find scripture after scripture coming again before our weary focus. The words will speak hope if we can make ourselves listen. This is the hope that can be like a bright shining light in the darkness of the cavern that we all too often find ourselves falling into.
If we seek to fill our minds with God’s word, even just a little time each day to start off with we will have a built-in supply of truth for the Holy Spirit to draw from. The trick to all this is to realize that we have free will as all mankind and that we have to go to God ourselves for Him to help us. I know that He can work sovereignly for us but this is more the exception than the rule. He longs for us to rely on Him and seek Him for His intervention and again we must choose whom to listen to. There will always be stiff opposition to everything that is good for us as we live amongst great wickedness in the very air that we breathe.
The world of spirit can be likened to our nasal sinuses full of all types of crud. When these become congested then infection can set in and we find ourselves with a throbbing headache reaching for a decongestive remedy along with an antibiotic to kill the infection itself. But if we wash our sinuses out regularly with a saline rinse the crud gets flushed out before it can become breeding ground for bacteria to settle in. I know this is a very crude illustration but it is most descriptive in that we need to flush with the “water of the Word” to keep senses clean. We need clear senses to hear His voice amid all the other noise. This also takes much time and training as sorting out the voices that we hear is no small task. It may seem that all we ever come across is the other voices and we can lose heart easily at that prospect. You can look at it this way or you can realize that every time you come across a voice that lies you have just seen God’s light exposing what lies in our darkness and you now have taken one giant step in learning discernment of spirits.
It is all “training wheels” and Jesus is teaching us to ride our bikes well. He loves us and will not allow us to fall on our faces more than what is absolutely necessary. He knows how delicate our hurting hearts are and has seen all the things that we have endured. Our loving heavenly Father has fashioned for us special training wheels that are sturdy enough to hold us securely until we develop our balance on our own. We should not deem the time spent “locked in the eye of various hurricanes of our lives” as time lost or wasted but rather as time well spent learning to wait for God and hear what He has to say to us. This is where great treasure is acquired; the things God says to us in this place are often the foundations of hope that will keep us secure in the hands of Jesus. Jojo
