Words Of Encouragement To Start The Day (Tuesday 10/20/09)

My Heart Has Been Restored Once Again…

James 5:16-20 (Amplified Bible)

¹⁶Confess to one another therefore your faults (your slips, your false steps, your offenses, your sins) and pray [also] for one another, that you may be healed and restored [to a spiritual tone of mind and heart]. The earnest (heartfelt, continued) prayer of a righteous man makes tremendous power available [dynamic in its working].

¹⁷Elijah was a human being with a nature such as we have [with feelings, affections, and a constitution like ours]; and he prayed earnestly for it not to rain, and no rain fell on the earth for three years and six months. [I Kings 17:1.]

¹⁸And [then] he prayed again and the heavens supplied rain and the land produced its crops [as usual]. [I Kings 18:42-45.]

¹⁹[My] brethren, if anyone among you strays from the Truth and falls into error and another [person] brings him back [to God],

²⁰Let the [latter] one be sure that whoever turns a sinner from his evil course will save [that one's] soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins [procure the pardon of the many sins committed by the convert].

Some weeks ago, my sister and I were having a conversation about faith and conviction. She was sharing with me that she was having some challenges in reference to feeling as if God was leaving her hanging. As we continued to talk we conversed about, being in the midst of struggle and feeling as if God was not present or just silent, when we are crying to Him. How it becomes so hard to get up dust ourselves off and move forward, especially feeling forsaken. I told her we all have been there, we all go through periods when life gets rough, crazy and out of our hands as we are trying to do all we know to do and it seems as if God is quiet or even as if He has pulled up stakes and moved away. We get frustrated trying to hold onto the promises of God, our prayer life and His word, it seems like we are just slipping. It seems like we have really “fallen and can’t get up.” For both of us we had found ourselves doubting (at one time or another), God’s existence, to our salvation and our sanity. In these moments it felt for both of us as if our hearts, had broken, or had been ripped apart and everything that once was a certainty became a question at best. What do you do when it seems all assurance is gone?

I was speaking with a friend and during her conversation as she expressed her frustration over a situation, the statement, “How quickly they forget all we have done for them.” came out, I heard myself breathe deeply, because in that moment the Holy Spirit convicted me. When we are stressed out, stretched to the max, and can not see clear or hold on, it has a lot to do with the fact that we have forgotten, all that God has brought us through to begin with. We have forgotten that God’s word has worked in times past and it will work again. It is in those moments when we fall and feel we have no energy to get up that we have forgotten in our weakness He is made perfect, and that God has promised to never leave or forsake us. That as He was in the fiery furnace with the three Hebrew boys like wise He is with us in our fiery and contentious situations. As my friend and I talked and as with my sister I realized it is not for us to struggle to get up, but it is for us to stay down and die to our flesh and allow the spirit of God to rise up big in us to handle and see us through these times. When confess our feelings with wise counsel pray and immerse ourselves back in God and His words that are heart can become strengthen and restored, once again.

So today no matter where you are, if you are in a going down, all the way down and in a place where you feel as if God didn’t show up for duty. Know that restoration is ours; it is available when we are in need of it. Don’t stay down pinned by shame, doubt or confusion, find a friend a sister or brother in Christ that can help you up, give you a ear and reassure you that no matter how bad it gets, God is there, and He isn’t going anywhere; that this too shall pass and you will make it to a new day, new level or new season. Someone that can remind you that God is real and He is neither a man that He should lie nor the son of man that He should repent. For God is there waiting to restore you heart, once again…