Unfamiliar Territory
1 Corinthians 10:13 Amplified Bible (AMP)
13For no temptation (no trial regarded as enticing to sin), [no matter how it comes or where it leads] has overtaken you and laid hold on you that is not common to man [that is, no temptation or trial has come to you that is beyond human resistance and that is not adjusted and adapted and belonging to human experience, and such as man can bear]. But God is faithful [to His Word and to His compassionate nature], and He [can be trusted] not to let you be tempted and tried and assayed beyond your ability and strength of resistance and power to endure, but with the temptation He will [always] also provide the way out (the means of escape to a landing place), that you may be capable and strong and powerful to bear up under it patiently.
There is nothing more uncomfortable and more frightening than being in a place you have never been before. I have moved countless amounts of time because I was military and I have had to adjust to change and many different things in my life that when I share my story with people most say they could not have endured and remained sane or without hurting someone. But it has always been through God’s grace that I have survived and it was always my ability to pray and go running to God that I have felt that kept my mind and heart. But recently, I went through a period of time where I viewed God as my problem. I was angry to say the least at my confidant, the one that I had been able to go to and tell all my troubles to, even if I felt He didn’t answer. I was able to talk about anything, but now here I sat in a pile of pain and no one to talk to but humans, which I must admit, I have some of the most amazing people in my inner circle that stood, prayed, let me vent and cry on them, and they told me it was only a matter of time, that I would turn the corner and I would feel better and be able to move on with God and in God. But this was a place I had never been before. This was a scary place on one hand and a place where reason escaped me, and understanding eluded me. I had no ability in those moments to trust or to see that I would be okay and that God and I would get through this.
In the middle of the night as I attempted to sleep but couldn’t; forcibly trying not to talk to God, because of my anger, I found that my spirit was in control not my anger, not my will. What was in me was connecting with God regardless of my feelings. I understood as the morning light began to crack through the darkness of night that what was in me was greater than my pain, my distress, my misunderstanding and the sense of lost that I was feeling. I understood that God knew that I would endure and come out. He understood that what I was going through was not unfamiliar to Him, nor to man. In those moments I began to understand that I would be okay, even without understanding the why’s. That I was connected to God in a way that I could not get away, even when willing it to be so. I understood that just because you find yourself in a strange place with God that does not mean that, He is in a strange place with you or that you will not be okay, that your will not survive. You will survive, just as I have and you will come out just like I did. Turning the corner, may have been difficult, releasing the anger may have been challenging but it could be done, because it has been done. Just like every time I moved I got butterflies and I was anxious because of the changes I knew I would encounter, this was no different, but somehow, it all came together with every move, with every transition with every place that I had been that was unfamiliar it somehow became lemonade even if it started off as lemons, well this new territory with God, was the same way, it was unfamiliar, uncomfortable and it definitely did not feel like good, but now through it all as they used to sing, “Through it all, through it all I’ve learned to trust in Jesus, I’ve learned to trust in God. Through it all I’ve learned to depend upon His word.”
Unfamiliar or not, God knows what is in us. He knows what we can handle, because He Himself has been there, done that. The one thing we need to know is that when we face things we have never had to before, is that many times God is growing us, moving us challenging us to another level in Him. He is proving us and He is trying to get us to understand that no matter how quiet He is, how much we feel He may not be answering, how much we may be uncomfortable and even how mad we get, if our connection to Him is real we will make it and we will come out better than we went in, stronger than we were and wiser than we started. As I have been told so many times, you will make it because, God is never going to place you in a situation that you cannot handle.
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