Where the Rubber Meets the Road

This isn’t the first time I’ve been tested on a subject shortly after writing about it, but this life lesson kicked in only a little more than 24 hours after finishing my last article. I posted “Where Am I?” at about 6:30 on Sunday morning. Then I went back to bed to top up what had been too short a night. But I could not go back to sleep after my early awakening.

The rest of the day was intense. There was church, followed by a baby shower, followed by having friends over for dinner, and then finally a late-night phone call with one of our daughters. I wasn’t settled until midnight. A day like that can still stress my adrenals, seven years after crashing them. So Monday morning when I woke up once again at 5:00, I knew I would need several more hours after I’d had my first breakfast. By the time I saw Greg out of the house and got settled again, it was 9:00. That’s almost too late for me to get sleepy again. But I tried to relax in the Lord, and I read scripture on my phone for a few minutes while I tried to gear down.

A phone call came in, and it presented something that was going to make a demand on my schedule for the day. Up until that point, there had only been a dentist appointment to consider, early in the afternoon. Now I could feel myself getting tense with an added responsibility. Once again I tried to relax and push the cares of the day away, reading scripture until I began to feel sleepy. I was just powering off my phone when it rang again.

This call was longer, and it engaged my emotions in a negative way. I finally had to cut the conversation short. I lay back on the pillows and took some slow, deep breaths, but I found my emotions starting to spiral out of control. I wasn’t going to be able to go back to sleep, or so I feared. The day was beginning to look like too much to face. (Perhaps this doesn’t seem like a big deal to many, but for me it is a frequent challenge on my long, slow journey back to health.)

I knew I needed Jesus. Remembering the article that I had posted the day before, I knew I needed to find my place in Him, but suddenly it just seemed too hard. Instead I phoned my husband. And I ranted a bit. I considered aloud that perhaps I should cancel my dentist appointment, and Greg agreed with me. Then all at once I realized that Greg had arrived at his destination and I needed to let him go.

Saying goodbye, I hung up, phoned the dentist’s office and left a message, then lay there wondering if I had done the right thing. I was starting to fret. I knew I had to call on the name of the Lord. And I did, even though I wanted to cave in and wail, “This is too hard! I can’t do it!” Mustering the self-control afforded by the Spirit of God, I called Jesus’ name, really loudly. Then I clasped my wrists like in the photo in the previous article, and aloud I said, “Jesus, I am in You, and You are in me. I am hanging on to You, and You are hanging on to me.” I thought it was going to have to be a long prayer, but I felt the oppression begin to break with just taking that stand, affirming my place in Christ.

The dentist’s office called back and told me they could see me the next afternoon. Thank You, Lord!

Before turning off my phone, I texted my husband, saying, “Please don’t worry about me. Jesus is helping me.” Then I lay there breathing deeply, praying in the Spirit. Amazingly, I fell asleep within a few minutes. When I woke up, I was surprised to see that only an hour had passed: I felt so refreshed, as though I had slept two or three hours. There was a great peace and calm in my soul, and I got right up, ready to take on the rest of the day. 

As I turned on my phone, it displayed a text from my dear husband: “Satan has asked to sift you,” it said, “but I have prayed for you that you will not faint.” It was perfect. Tears prickled in my eyes as the Word of God touched my heart, a word in season (Proverbs 15:23 & Isaiah 50:4—two beautiful scriptures on this concept). Greg was quoting Jesus, shortly before Simon Peter would deny Him: “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift each of you like wheat.  But I have pleaded in prayer for you, Simon, that your faith should not fail. So when you have repented and turned to me again, strengthen your brothers.”

Yes, Satan had tried to sift me, to shake me in the sieve of emotions and circumstances, hoping that all my faith might run out the bottom. But my husband had been praying for me—and then I suddenly realized that, according to the scripture above, Jesus also had been praying for me: anything Jesus told His followers can be applied to us in our day as well. And Hebrews 7:25, KJV, says, “He is able also to save them (deliver or protect them—Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary) to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.” I had just experienced the truth of this: Jesus had rescued me from my circumstances and my emotions.

When I looked up that scripture, I was struck by the fact that when Jesus spoke to Simon here, He concluded, in effect, with this: “So when you have changed your mind and turned to cleave to Me again, share what you’ve learned with your brothers and sisters in order to encourage them.” The desire to do exactly that is what, in fact, compels me to write.

Having cancelled my dentist appointment in Edmonton, I realized there were some things I needed to look after in Wetaskiwin instead. I got ready to go with an uncharacteristic efficiency and drove to town. It was a warm spring day, bright and cheerful. I felt sunny too, body, soul, and spirit. I was so in-the-moment, so unhurried, still filled with that peaceful calm, aware of God’s presence, cognisant of His leading and timing. I had several encounters that could only be described as divinely orchestrated, all of which would take way too long to relate. 

But here is a small excerpt: I stopped to drop something off for an elderly shut-in and found God making me very aware of his recently widowed state and cautioning me not to be in a hurry but to take some time to let him chat for a bit. And then as I left him, the timing was such that a staff member passed me just as I arrived at the exit. She smiled and said hello. It would have been perfectly appropriate to just return the greeting and keep right on going, but God prompted me to pause, resulting in a delightful conversation with this complete stranger. The subject of health came up (no big surprise to anyone who knows me!), and she indicated that she would like to come by the Farmers’ Market sometime and talk further.

As Greg and I got ready for bed that night, I shared with him all about my amazing day. Then I thanked him for the timely word he had texted me, telling him how much it had helped me. He draped a big arm across my shoulders. I thought it was just a gesture of affection, but it was more than that. “When two walk together…” he said.

Right. Ecclesiastes. ^“Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble” (4:9-10, NLT).

“The enemy really was sifting me,” I said.

“But God was there too,” Greg said, “giving you an opportunity to test what He is teaching you and to prove it true.”

The next day I made my way to Edmonton for my dentist appointment. As I waited my turn, the receptionist said to me, “It’s a good thing you cancelled yesterday. We were crazy busy and were running really late.”

“So it worked out for the best at your end too?” I commented.

“Yes,” she said, “it was meant to be.”

Greg stayed out of town that night, so as I ate my dinner alone, I went on YouTube to listen to Graham Cooke. I clicked on a short piece obscurely entitled “Why We Must Always Begin with the Goodness of God.” I was astounded to hear him summarizing many thoughts from my last article and this one.

He began by speaking prophetically in the voice of the triune Godhead:

“Beloved, we abide with you in both the present and the future. Our intention is to teach and develop you to live in Us—now. All your life circumstances…, no matter how hard, grievous, or oppositional—they can be turned around for your good, and for your personal growth in Us. We do not cause the painful moments in your life…. However, we will teach you how to take charge as you lean in to Us, yield to us, and practice your identity in Jesus.”

Yes, this whole experience had been an object lesson in deliberately taking my place in Christ.

Think about the freedom that we experience when every single circumstance … becomes an opportunity for us to encounter the goodness of God. It doesn’t mean that what’s happening is always good. But it does mean that God wants to come to you in those times and say, “Here’s my goodness, here’s my peace, here’s my kindness—whatever it is that you need, here is my gift for you…. And every gift I bring is wrapped in self-control, because you’re going to need that….

Graham’s mention of self-control (which is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit mentioned in Galatians 5:22) reminded me of how I had been required to get a grip on my emotions that morning and to choose deliberately with my will to lay hold of Jesus and His provision.

Self-control is like the crossing guard who stops the traffic of negativity…. When fear rises, self-control joyfully rises up from inside of us. He puts his hand out and says, “Stop right there! There is no fear in perfect love [1 John 4:18], so fear, you stay there, and perfect love, you come right on through. …” [Self-control] is like pressing a pause button: it creates the stillness that allows us to hear Him saying, “Take a deep breath. Be at peace. Don’t fear.” It gives us a “pause moment” when we can be still and come into a greater awareness that He is God….

He finishes off speaking once again in the prophetic:

“My peace … will elevate you to a place of stillness, rest, and confidence where you’ll know that I am God.”

“Stillness, rest, and confidence”: that perfectly described the great calm that had enveloped me as I awoke from my nap and moved on with the rest of that glorious day.

The next morning when I got up, wanting to once again remind myself of my powerful place in Christ, I linked my hands on my wrists once more and repeated the current theme: “Jesus, I am in You and You are in me. I am hanging on to You and You are hanging on to me.” 

In a split second, an entire thought flashed through my mind. 

“Yes, Lord,” I responded, “there is a difference between how I hang on to You and how You hang on to me. I hang on to You because I need You; You hang on to me because You love me.”