"I waited patiently for the Lord" Psalm 40:1
No, I didn't. I had no idea what patient waiting looked like. I didn't know when I was aged twenty-nine to thirty-nine that waiting is necessary to go from one stepping stone to the next.
When God was giving me just enough light for the step I was on, I wanted the whole path illuminated.
Psalm 119:105
"Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my pathway." Psalm 119:105
In Greek lamp and light really are two different words. Lamp (niyr) as in a candle. Light ('owr) as in the sun, moon, and stars. The candle lights the feet. The sun lights my path. I wanted the sun, moon, and stars instead of the candle.
God has his own plan -- the only plan. I thought I was going to retire as a high school English teacher, but he didn't. He knew where he wanted me to go and how best to lead me. I had been the stubborn child who became the helpless adult he was supposed to agree with. Remember? He was teaching me I needed to agree with him; not the other way around.
Or maybe he was teaching me I didn't even have to agree with him. We take our own children kicking and screaming. Don't we? I didn't have to agree and neither do you.
I had to learn the hard way that God does things in his own time. If I am waiting for God, he is waiting until I am ready. If I am waiting on God, I am waiting until he is ready. God isn't in a hurry.
In 1984 I had no idea that it would not be until 1994 that I would receive proof of the chemical imbalance. For ten years I went from doctor to doctor wondering what was wrong, finally finding a Neuropsychiatrist who ordered the right test that I wish I could tell you the name of. The test revealed I had a very overactive hypothalamus, which controls vomiting, I might add. I have no medical information to back this up, but I've often wondered if this wasn't the root of my obsession with vomiting.
Why did God want me to wander ten years before discovering what if I'd known in 1984 could have spared me years and years of grief and wondering?
Why should God treat me any differently than any other person he's created? God really does have a plan for each one of us; one for you and one for me.
Only God can make things grow. Remember Paul planted, Apollos watered, but God made it grow.
Wisdom, what people seek from me, has taken a lifetime to grow. It's not achieved overnight. It comes from years of trial and error and waiting on God. If you want to know how to do something right, do it wrong. Much wisdom comes from learning from your mistakes.
Moses, who thought he would be a leader forty years before he became one, is a perfect example.
Acts 7:23 was another pivotal verse for me that proves God's timing.
After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai.
Moses fled to Midian after killing the Egyptian "where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons" verse Acts 7:29 tells us, for forty more years. He lived as a foreigner, much like I felt wandering in my wilderness too. At the age of eighty Moses was where he wanted to be, but couldn't be when he was forty. For forty years Moses falls off the radar.
Another pivotal verse surfaced when I found Acts 7:23:
Isaiah 48: 3
I foretold the former things long ago, my mouth announced them and I made them known; then suddenly I acted, and they came to pass.
God foretells, he plans and then he suddenly acts. He suddenly acts. Yes, he does. I've seen him do it time and time again.
Just yesterday I had a lady come to me who is barren, and who so desperately has wanted a baby for years. Harvesting of eggs, shots, invitro fertilization, miscarriages. Hopes dashed, prayers prayed over and over again. Now since the adoption process has started, doors are opening quickly. Time has speeded up and she sees God's handwriting on the wall. Daily, her waiting is making sense. When she thought God was sitting on his hands, he was working fervently for her.
God knows what's going to happen if the plan goes according to his design, or even if it doesn't. God uses even the tangents for his glory. Even though some think the time is wasted, the most meaningful part of the trip when you've missed the road is the one that takes you back to where you went wrong.
The greatest way I can defeat Satan is to glorify God for recovering me when I was lost, comforting me when I was weary, healing me when I was sick--thanking him for my situation whatever it is.
All the years I was in the pit, God knew exactly where I was and what he was doing. The puzzle pieces were fitting together, coming together one piece at a time. I am now standing on the rock, telling others about him. Even if you can't see his hand, trust his heart that he knows what he's doing.
Psalm 40:3
He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord. And they are. You are.
Mental illness is the route God chose for me, which may be the route he's chosen for you, to grow close to him. He is a jealous god who wants your undivided attention. He'll go to great lengths you don't understand to get it.
But how can God use mental illness as a means of glorifying him when people think it's wrong for a Christian to have it? Just because one person has an opinion does not make it a fact or mean I have to believe it. If God chooses to leave a burden in my life, then it's for my benefit and for his glory. Who am I to say, or who are you to say, that God doesn't know what he's doing?
Paul says in Romans 7:22:
For in my inner being, I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Paul's words are mine.
Five words in this passage I can relate to: War. Mind. Prisoner. Wretched. Rescue.
How did God use depression to rescue me?
1) Being in the pit, I had nowhere to look but up. I kept bumping into God.
2) God had my undivided attention. Being unable to think about anything but myself made soul-searching easy. The silence was the key to hearing God's voice.
3) I was forced to run to scripture--where God could be found.
Nothing physical touches the soul. Nothing external satisfies our deepest inner needs. Remember that! The soul belongs to God. He alone can satisfy us in that realm. Charles Swindoll, Living on the Ragged Edge.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men, yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
God created the longing for faith. One has to acknowledge there is a God before he can doubt that he exists.
Where does faith come from?
Romans 10:17
Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. NIV
I needed faith, especially the kind that moves mountains--the kind that you and I need. And developing it takes time.
No, I didn't. I had no idea what patient waiting looked like. I didn't know when I was aged twenty-nine to thirty-nine that waiting is necessary to go from one stepping stone to the next.
When God was giving me just enough light for the step I was on, I wanted the whole path illuminated.
Psalm 119:105
"Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my pathway." Psalm 119:105
In Greek lamp and light really are two different words. Lamp (niyr) as in a candle. Light ('owr) as in the sun, moon, and stars. The candle lights the feet. The sun lights my path. I wanted the sun, moon, and stars instead of the candle.
God has his own plan -- the only plan. I thought I was going to retire as a high school English teacher, but he didn't. He knew where he wanted me to go and how best to lead me. I had been the stubborn child who became the helpless adult he was supposed to agree with. Remember? He was teaching me I needed to agree with him; not the other way around.
Or maybe he was teaching me I didn't even have to agree with him. We take our own children kicking and screaming. Don't we? I didn't have to agree and neither do you.
I had to learn the hard way that God does things in his own time. If I am waiting for God, he is waiting until I am ready. If I am waiting on God, I am waiting until he is ready. God isn't in a hurry.
In 1984 I had no idea that it would not be until 1994 that I would receive proof of the chemical imbalance. For ten years I went from doctor to doctor wondering what was wrong, finally finding a Neuropsychiatrist who ordered the right test that I wish I could tell you the name of. The test revealed I had a very overactive hypothalamus, which controls vomiting, I might add. I have no medical information to back this up, but I've often wondered if this wasn't the root of my obsession with vomiting.
Why did God want me to wander ten years before discovering what if I'd known in 1984 could have spared me years and years of grief and wondering?
Why should God treat me any differently than any other person he's created? God really does have a plan for each one of us; one for you and one for me.
Only God can make things grow. Remember Paul planted, Apollos watered, but God made it grow.
Wisdom, what people seek from me, has taken a lifetime to grow. It's not achieved overnight. It comes from years of trial and error and waiting on God. If you want to know how to do something right, do it wrong. Much wisdom comes from learning from your mistakes.
Moses, who thought he would be a leader forty years before he became one, is a perfect example.
Acts 7:23 was another pivotal verse for me that proves God's timing.
After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai.
Moses fled to Midian after killing the Egyptian "where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons" verse Acts 7:29 tells us, for forty more years. He lived as a foreigner, much like I felt wandering in my wilderness too. At the age of eighty Moses was where he wanted to be, but couldn't be when he was forty. For forty years Moses falls off the radar.
Another pivotal verse surfaced when I found Acts 7:23:
Isaiah 48: 3
I foretold the former things long ago, my mouth announced them and I made them known; then suddenly I acted, and they came to pass.
God foretells, he plans and then he suddenly acts. He suddenly acts. Yes, he does. I've seen him do it time and time again.
Just yesterday I had a lady come to me who is barren, and who so desperately has wanted a baby for years. Harvesting of eggs, shots, invitro fertilization, miscarriages. Hopes dashed, prayers prayed over and over again. Now since the adoption process has started, doors are opening quickly. Time has speeded up and she sees God's handwriting on the wall. Daily, her waiting is making sense. When she thought God was sitting on his hands, he was working fervently for her.
God knows what's going to happen if the plan goes according to his design, or even if it doesn't. God uses even the tangents for his glory. Even though some think the time is wasted, the most meaningful part of the trip when you've missed the road is the one that takes you back to where you went wrong.
The greatest way I can defeat Satan is to glorify God for recovering me when I was lost, comforting me when I was weary, healing me when I was sick--thanking him for my situation whatever it is.
All the years I was in the pit, God knew exactly where I was and what he was doing. The puzzle pieces were fitting together, coming together one piece at a time. I am now standing on the rock, telling others about him. Even if you can't see his hand, trust his heart that he knows what he's doing.
Psalm 40:3
He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord. And they are. You are.
Mental illness is the route God chose for me, which may be the route he's chosen for you, to grow close to him. He is a jealous god who wants your undivided attention. He'll go to great lengths you don't understand to get it.
But how can God use mental illness as a means of glorifying him when people think it's wrong for a Christian to have it? Just because one person has an opinion does not make it a fact or mean I have to believe it. If God chooses to leave a burden in my life, then it's for my benefit and for his glory. Who am I to say, or who are you to say, that God doesn't know what he's doing?
Paul says in Romans 7:22:
For in my inner being, I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Paul's words are mine.
Five words in this passage I can relate to: War. Mind. Prisoner. Wretched. Rescue.
How did God use depression to rescue me?
1) Being in the pit, I had nowhere to look but up. I kept bumping into God.
2) God had my undivided attention. Being unable to think about anything but myself made soul-searching easy. The silence was the key to hearing God's voice.
3) I was forced to run to scripture--where God could be found.
Nothing physical touches the soul. Nothing external satisfies our deepest inner needs. Remember that! The soul belongs to God. He alone can satisfy us in that realm. Charles Swindoll, Living on the Ragged Edge.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men, yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
God created the longing for faith. One has to acknowledge there is a God before he can doubt that he exists.
Where does faith come from?
Romans 10:17
Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. NIV
I needed faith, especially the kind that moves mountains--the kind that you and I need. And developing it takes time.
Amen!!! I know God uses the wilderness to prepare us to do His will and to teach us we absolutely must trust Him; for He alone is our source for all we need. Until we reach the point we can depend solely on Him and trust Him in all we say and do, just like many of the biblical characters we love so much: Moses, David, many of the prophets of old, including Elijah & Jeremiah, as well as the apostle Paul, He is going to leave us wandering (and wondering) in the wilderness. Thank you for sharing your experiences and wisdom in love! Love you <3
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