Post by Deleted on Nov 14, 2015 10:28:00 GMT -7
Only God can hang with us through the length and depth of our need. And the length and depth of our baloney.
Maybe I’m just talking about myself, but whether or not I realized it, I usually found a way to frame my pit to make me look like a victim. Not only is God omniscient, His Word is “sharper than any double-edged sword” cutting our baloney so thin He can see straight through it. He knows when we’re kidding others. He knows when we’re kidding ourselves. Knowing all we are, all we feel, and all we hide, God overflows with love and willingness to deliver us. Even after Israel sought the help of the Egyptians, inviting the chastisement of God, Isaiah 30 testified,
Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; He rises to show you compassion. - Isaiah 30:18
Longs to be gracious. I like the ring of that. We’re also repeatedly told that “His love endures forever” which means the Lord is gracious for long. That’s what former pit-dwellers like me must have. We need a Deliverer who is in for the long haul. Philippians 1:6 tells us that God, who began a good work, is faithful to complete it. Frankly, work doesn’t get harder than pit-dweller pulling. Man, who may begin a good work, wears out too fast to finish it. And rightly he should. It’s not his job. True delivery takes some time, some titanic effort, and more patience than the best of people possess. You and I need a strong arm and a long arm.
The apostle Paul described God’s tenacity in 2 Corinthians 1:10 when he said,
He has delivered us... He will deliver us. On Him we have set our hope that He will continue to deliver us.
Past. Present. Future. That’s the kind of deliverance from the pit you and I are looking for. We’ve got to have a lifetime warranty.
The “Sovereign Lord” alone is “my strong deliverer” (Psalm 140:7). Everybody else will wear out. They may pull us out of that pit and even hang around a while to push us away when we try to get right back in it. But eventually their backs will give out. And when they do, we’re liable to be mad at them. In fact, we might not speak to them for years. They let us down.
I’m sure I’ve worn people out, and I’ve been worn out. A fellow human may have initially pulled us out of a pit, but somewhere along the way, he or she accidentally sold us into the slavery of nearly debilitating disappointment. Even subtly encouraged yet unmet expectations can be devastating. When it happens, we reason that we might as well have stayed in the pit. Tragically, countless relationships end exactly that way.
One person invariably cuts the rope before the other, leaving the remaining party feeling, in the words of William Dean Howells, “betrayed and baffled still.”
I wouldn’t for a minute minimize the pain of a relationship broken by unreasonable - or at the very least, unsustainable - expectations. When such a close and dependable relationship is injuriously severed, the knife penetrates to the exact depth we’ve invited them into our private lives. Indeed, one of the primary reasons we’re so wounded is because the person knew what we were going through and still abandoned us.
What I’m about to say can be painful to hear, but I pray that God will use it toward someone’s healing: sometimes a person abandons us not in spite of what we’re going through, but directly because of it.
They either ran out of answers or they ran out of energy and no longer had the wherewithal to go through it with us. If our helping friends actually did something that overtly wronged us, they bear responsibility before God for that. But if they wronged us only by running out of fuel and dropping out of the struggle, we might need to realize they’ve done all they felt they could humanly do and let them go without bitterness or anger.
Maybe I’m just talking about myself, but whether or not I realized it, I usually found a way to frame my pit to make me look like a victim. Not only is God omniscient, His Word is “sharper than any double-edged sword” cutting our baloney so thin He can see straight through it. He knows when we’re kidding others. He knows when we’re kidding ourselves. Knowing all we are, all we feel, and all we hide, God overflows with love and willingness to deliver us. Even after Israel sought the help of the Egyptians, inviting the chastisement of God, Isaiah 30 testified,
Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; He rises to show you compassion. - Isaiah 30:18
Longs to be gracious. I like the ring of that. We’re also repeatedly told that “His love endures forever” which means the Lord is gracious for long. That’s what former pit-dwellers like me must have. We need a Deliverer who is in for the long haul. Philippians 1:6 tells us that God, who began a good work, is faithful to complete it. Frankly, work doesn’t get harder than pit-dweller pulling. Man, who may begin a good work, wears out too fast to finish it. And rightly he should. It’s not his job. True delivery takes some time, some titanic effort, and more patience than the best of people possess. You and I need a strong arm and a long arm.
The apostle Paul described God’s tenacity in 2 Corinthians 1:10 when he said,
He has delivered us... He will deliver us. On Him we have set our hope that He will continue to deliver us.
Past. Present. Future. That’s the kind of deliverance from the pit you and I are looking for. We’ve got to have a lifetime warranty.
The “Sovereign Lord” alone is “my strong deliverer” (Psalm 140:7). Everybody else will wear out. They may pull us out of that pit and even hang around a while to push us away when we try to get right back in it. But eventually their backs will give out. And when they do, we’re liable to be mad at them. In fact, we might not speak to them for years. They let us down.
I’m sure I’ve worn people out, and I’ve been worn out. A fellow human may have initially pulled us out of a pit, but somewhere along the way, he or she accidentally sold us into the slavery of nearly debilitating disappointment. Even subtly encouraged yet unmet expectations can be devastating. When it happens, we reason that we might as well have stayed in the pit. Tragically, countless relationships end exactly that way.
One person invariably cuts the rope before the other, leaving the remaining party feeling, in the words of William Dean Howells, “betrayed and baffled still.”
I wouldn’t for a minute minimize the pain of a relationship broken by unreasonable - or at the very least, unsustainable - expectations. When such a close and dependable relationship is injuriously severed, the knife penetrates to the exact depth we’ve invited them into our private lives. Indeed, one of the primary reasons we’re so wounded is because the person knew what we were going through and still abandoned us.
What I’m about to say can be painful to hear, but I pray that God will use it toward someone’s healing: sometimes a person abandons us not in spite of what we’re going through, but directly because of it.
They either ran out of answers or they ran out of energy and no longer had the wherewithal to go through it with us. If our helping friends actually did something that overtly wronged us, they bear responsibility before God for that. But if they wronged us only by running out of fuel and dropping out of the struggle, we might need to realize they’ve done all they felt they could humanly do and let them go without bitterness or anger.