How God Rescues Us From Our Messes
July 10: (July 5th’s post left me in quicksand. Here's #4 in the series:):
According to HowStuffWorks.com, the best way to get out of quicksand is to quit struggling. I was definitely struggling—not only struggling to do what I thought was right but also struggling to get my new husband to do what was right.
Searching for answers to my dilemma, I attended Al-Anon, a twelve-step program that helps people whose emotions are wrapped up in a loved one’s drinking or drug problem. That taught me I couldn’t solve anyone else’s problems, but I could get help for my own.
Attending Al-Anon did help some emotionally, but my biggest agony was spiritual. How could I have fallen into this pit? How could I, a “good girl,” have failed so totally to be a good witness for Christ? Did I destroy forever God’s plan for my life? Why did God let this happen?
I was full of questions and confusion about how I was supposed to think.
As I prayed in my confusion, asking these heart-rending questions, the feelings began to form into a poem. “Prayer of Confusion,” begun in 1982 and completed years later, began to help me. When I asked Jesus to take control of my life (see line 13), I began to hear the answers I needed.
Prayer of Confusion.
Will somebody tell me how to live?
What is the secret? How do I give?
How do I yield my heart?
Will somebody tell me who I am?
Which is the truth and which but a sham?
How did deception start?
.
What are the answers? I need them now
to questions I can’t figure out somehow.
Am I wise or am I a fool?
Am I loving or am I cruel?
How do I listen and who will speak?
I feel confused and amazingly weak.
.
O LORD, take control of my inner soul.
Where I am lacking, please make me whole.
Search me and make me true.
For you are the One who gave me life!
Tell me the secret, thus end my strife.
Teach me to live for You!
.
After several months, I found a church that accepted me. I felt terribly guilty for my adultery. (Marrying him hadn’t resolved that guilt). I also still suffered the grief of divorce, which felt like a tragic train wreck hurting everyone in our family. I felt I’d failed God and sought his forgiveness. This church (appropriately named Hope) helped me heal spiritually. It seemed God spoke directly to my heart when they prayed Scripture over me with their hands on my head, for instance using the following passage:
“I have loved you with an everlasting love [says the Lord]; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. Again I will build you and you shall be built,” (Jeremiah 31:3-4).
To be continued July 12, 2018
(The following video is quite lengthy, but he has some good things to say about the importance of reading and meditating on God’s Word and Prayer Against the Spirit of Confusion.”) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ8RH9uHqzs
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