The Opening and Closing of Doors

This summer has been perhaps, one of the hardest of my entire life. I have had to walk in places I have never walked. I had no experience with where the Shepherd asked me to go nor to the mountains and valleys I had to walk. I have found that when I was broken over and over and didn't think I would ever be able to get up again, that was when the Shepherd picked me up and carried me.

On Friday if I had known that the trial was almost over I don't know what I would have said, maybe just shook my head in disbelief. I can't tell you the whole story because it isn't mine to tell. Yet. When it is I will tell you of the Red Sea's that have been parted. Of how me of the smallest of faith, has a great God.

When I first gave my life to the Lord, I wanted a faith that would be tested. I wanted to be like those people I read about in books, when in trials I couldn't imagine I would also be able to stand firm. This summer I learned that those Corrie Ten Booms, Hudson Taylor's even Elisabeth Elliot and Ruth Grahams, were not writing books as they walked through the trial. They wrote the books after they made it through. As they looked back at all that God had done through them and for them.

This summer has been one that was so hard and beyond anything I have experienced. I have had attacks that have hit hard and deep and sometimes, I wondered if I would survive to live another day. I have seen my character revealed and seen the blackness of my own soul. I have cried out to God to have mercy on me, a sinner. I have seen what I really am and I have begged God to stop. Let me go back to how I was, He has said no and has brought all that I have kept hidden out in the light of day. I have been stripped and laid bare.
I have found that what faith I thought I had, wasn't a real faith. My faith likes warm, safe and secure places.
God made me go to hard places where I couldn't trust my feelings, but had to trust His Word that was the light to my path. I had to go by what was written and count on the fact God doesn't lie.

I finally started praying, Not my Will Father but thine. I give up all of my own purposes and desires. I really did at times feel forsaken. Then today, I found out why God had to let me go through this, because I didn't know that I had my hands so tight holding onto what I wanted, that when I was able to open my hands finally, God was able to show me what He wanted to do. Really, It is so huge I have done nothing but cry, because it is so like God to give exceedingly, beyond anything I asked or thought.

All of the times the quiet sound of God's voice would say, " Will you trust me?" I thought I was but I really wasn't, I was trusting in my own strength. I see why I have had to come this far in the breaking process because of my own determination to do what I want, my way. Oh, will I ever learn?

I was reading the old writers I love, like Andrew Murray, on prayer. He talked of the prayer of relinquishment. It is a old word that we don't hear much anymore. I started praying that prayer giving everything I knew how to give over to God. Today, He answered.

I am sure that I only know the first bit of this answer, I know that I am going to have to keep relinquishing lots more things than I ever dreamed but I know that physically, I have to do it willingly because I don't have the strength to fight God any more.

Just so you know, it is all good, really, really good. When I woke up this morning a verse was going around in my head and I thought it was weird because the last time God gave it to me, was when I thought He couldn't do something huge, and He did.
This was the verse that woke me up.  How long wilt thou mourn?....fill thy horn with oil, and go, I will send thee...I have provided...---1st Samuel 16:1

I didn't know why but now I do and I am so thankful for all of the hard things I went through, because I got to see the greatness of a loving Father.

Thank you for visiting today,
~Kim~