Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: A MIGHTY FORTRESS (don't write about the song) (04/23/15)
-
TITLE: How I Got Safe 4/27/2015
By Teresa Crumpton
04/27/15 -
LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE
SEND A PRIVATE COMMENT
ADD TO MY FAVORITES
He indwells me. He renews my thinking and gives me healthy feelings. To nurture my sense of self, he shines truth in my being and reveals that by the Father’s doing I am in him—Christ Jesus, and I am being changed from one degree of glory to another. He heals me from the inside out. Safe in him, he frees me to love others.
He guarantees my future. I am a ceaseless spiritual being with an eternal destiny, and someday I will have a new body. He has gone to prepare a place for me, and when he returns, he will take me with him, and when I see him, I will be like him for I will see him as he is. His joy will be in me, and my joy will be full. Gladly, gladly I will shoulder the yoke with him for he honors me by planning work for me to do with him.
He deals with my past—this is where I am most prone to stumble. For decades, I’ve lugged my past around like a leg manacle chained to cinderblock. My Redeemer King takes the chain into his hands and squeezes, and the chain disintegrates into fine powder and blows away. He picks up the cinderblock and hands it to me, and finally, finally I hand it back to him.
[Years of fondling the thing? Trying to figure it out? My foolishness astounds me.]
“Be done with it,” he says, and his voice is at once tender and directive.
“Lord, you know everything about it,” I tell him. Believing him, knowing his power and goodness and wisdom, I follow his example—How To Make an End—and I say, “It is finished.” Though my it is tiny compared to his, he still values it, and peace rushes through me.
He heaves the cinderblock into another world’s ocean, gone. And the parts of me that were torn raw from the past being ripped out—these he anoints with healing balm.
He stays with me in the present. Holed up in odd corners, rebels still hold out inside the fortress, sniping at me, carping and complaining and dredging up old pain.
But the King strides in, and he shines with the brilliance of a billion stars, and he grins at me. At me.
He sees me.
He knows me by name.
More than that—he knows everything about me, and he accepts me. He bends and puts his mouth next to my ear and whispers, “Before the world was formed, I thought of you and created you because I wanted you. And here you are: created, redeemed, filled with my own Spirit, and my mind being formed in you. I love it when a plan comes together.”
“The A-team? Really, Lord? When we’re being serious like this?”
“This, my true friend, is some serious joy,” he says. “I am so glad you are with me. I am so glad you are mine.”
Speechless, I dry my face.
My God is a mighty fortress.
“No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Joshua 1:5 (NIV) [true story]
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.
Accept Jesus as Your Lord and Savior Right Now - CLICK HERE
JOIN US at FaithWriters for Free. Grow as a Writer and Spread the Gospel.
God bless~
God bless~