Unleash Your Inner Warrior
Earlier this week, I realized that I had an extremely important tool in my possession that I was carrying with me. As I was chatting with a new friend, I immediately knew why she was sharing her heartbreak with me: she desperately needed what I had. And I realized, I have shared this same tool over and over again -- how many more people are out there who are in absolute turmoil who need to know what I know? "Be still, and know that I AM God" - Psalm 46:10 Scripture repeatedly tells us to "be still." Yet, in this fast-paced world, it can seem almost impossible to quiet your mind. It seems like you'd have to be a monk on some remote mountain top to get any kind of peace, and yet, even that seems like a foreign thought. But Warriors must know how to still their minds, how to silence the thoughts that rage through their heads, to calm their hearts. "The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still" - Exodus 14:14
A few years ago, when I was in the midst of some of the worst turmoil of my life, God taught me just how to do that. It is always in the midst of a storm that God teaches us peace. We don't learn peace when everything is going well. We may be introduced to peace when all is well -- but our peace is established in difficulty, in the midst of the storms of life. It is right when your mind is everywhere, when your eyes are on the size of the waves around you that God wants to teach you peace. After Peter stepped out of the boat to walk to Jesus, he noticed the size of the waves and the intensity of the storm around him. Once his eyes were off of Jesus, he became overwhelmed by the storm and began to sink. If he had kept his eyes on Jesus and not been overwhelmed by the noise, he would not have gone under. It's the same for us. But in the midst of confusion, keeping our eyes on Jesus is hard to do. So here is your task: Get a notebook and pen. In the middle of my hurricane, God told me to write. Write and write and write until I had nothing left to say. Let me first give a visual explanation of what it looks like for us to carry unnecessary burdens: When we talk to other people about our problems, about our inner turmoil, we further on our turmoil. We give our thoughts to other people, they add their input to it and return the thoughts back to us, which in turn gives us more to think about which we then regurgitate back out which is then cycled back to us, ad nauseam. Or if we keep to ourselves, we bottle up all of our thoughts and emotions, and the pressure of the thoughts begins to build and build in us until we crack under the weight of the burden we carry. Neither of these is healthy. We were not meant to carry our burdens this way. God tells us to lay our burdens down before him. He says, "Come to Me all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light" (Matthew 11:28-30). When we come before Him and lay our burdens down, we are not cycling them back to ourselves over and over, like when we share with other people. When we give our burdens up to Him, we are literally giving them to Him, and they are no longer ours to carry. Imagine yourself walking up to the foot of the cross burdened with an extremely heavy bag. You lay it down at the foot of the cross and say "here you go God, I'm giving this to You" and He takes it from you. It's gone now. That is precisely what you need to do. Here's how. Got your pen and paper? (or a Word document on your computer). Yes? Good. What I want you to do is this: write. You're going to write a letter to God. Begin with "Dear God," or "Dear Father," or "Hi Jesus" or however you feel like beginning, and then write. Write out every single thought on your mind, every thought that has been burdening you, every feeling that has plagued you, and write all of it out. Write out all the things that are on your heart until it hurts, and then keep writing. Push through the difficult parts, the emotional pain, the mental struggle, and keep writing. It's going to hurt. It's going to be painful. It's going to be extremely difficult to face all of the clamoring thoughts in your head and to write them all out, but you need to push through. Write until you literally cannot think of one single word anymore, not even "and" or "the" or "uh." Write until it's all out. When you do this, you're doing the same thing as laying down that backpack at the foot of the cross. You are writing all of it out, and it is a sacrifice to God. You are presenting it to Him, saying here, I trust You with this. Take it from me, I don't want it anymore. And guess what? He honors that. Do that every day. Write 10 pages, 50 pages, 100 if you have to! Just keep writing. You will find that your heart begins to be still, and that you have peace. You will find that your thoughts become easier to deal with, and that God gets to be easier to talk to. He's not scary to come before. He loves when you share your heart with Him! He wants you to share all that's on your heart! As you continue to write, you will also find that it becomes easier to hear God's voice. It's not some kind of magic formula, it's simply a fact of reality. When God speaks in a still small voice, when the sound from His lips come as a whisper (as in 1 Kings 19:12), then we must quiet the noise inside us so that we can tune our ears to hear Him. If you are a Warrior for Him, how do you expect to take orders from your great and mighty King if you cannot (or will not) listen to His voice? Take time to write. Take time to clear your mind of the turmoil, and to commune with Him, to listen to what He has to say to you.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Check out Michele's new book, now available for purchase on Amazon!
Mere Humanity: Becoming a Mature Christian in an Immature World
|