Psalm 42:1-2 “As the
deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the Living
God. When can I go and meet with God?”
I was walking to my car from the beach in Coronado with my
sweet golden retriever when a text message came through to my phone from my
sister, saying, “Please pray; my son just called; they can’t find the
heartbeat.” My nephew’s wife was 30
weeks into her pregnancy. This would be
my sister’s first grandchild, and she had moved from Missouri to Arizona in
anticipation of his arrival. My heart
skipped a beat, and as I caught my breath, there was a sinking feeling in my
gut. Although my sister was a believer,
her relationship with the Lord was tenuous, at best, but one thing she did know
about me is that, whenever she asked, she knew I would stop whatever I was
doing and I would pray. I asked my
friend who had been with me at the dog beach if she minded if I called my
sister to pray with her, and of course, as I began to pray for my frantic and
distraught sibling, my girlfriend was right there, praying with me, calling on
the Lord to rain down His peace upon this horrible situation. As I sat down on the grass and closed my eyes
to come before my Heavenly Father, scenes flashed before me to the weeks and
days leading up to my own son’s death, instances where I knew the Lord was
speaking gently into the center of my being, preparing me for what was about to
come, not wanting to believe it, but knowing in my heart that I would not be
bringing my son home from the hospital.
I pushed those thoughts away, willing this not to be about me, but
thinking about my nephew’s wife and what she was about to go through, right
here and right now, and as I started to pray with my sister, the Lord gave me a
glimpse of my niece in the hospital, and instantly, I knew exactly what I
needed to do to intercede on her behalf.
I didn’t know her very well, but the Lord was revealing to me bits and
pieces of her, enough to know that she needed to be bathed in prayer, she
needed protection, she needed a shield about her, and she, my nephew and my
sister all needed the Lord, not just this one time, but they all needed His
angels and His warriors to be encamped around them as a safeguard for what was
about to come. Yes, mostly they all just
needed Him.
1 Peter 1:6 says, “In all this you greatly rejoice, though
now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of
trials.” For the past three years, even
though I have longed and desired in the depths of my soul to have a deeper and
more intimate relationship with the Lord, even though I am head over heels in
love with Him, my need for Him is abundant and so incredibly significant, if I
am truly honest and transparent, I will tell you my deepest darkest secret -- I
don’t always like God and there are times I struggle in trusting Him that what
is occurring is really in my best interest.
I don’t like it that my great nephew just died; I don’t like it that my
son was disabled; I don’t like it that my friend just died from cancer; I don’t
like it that mothers are grieving for their lost children; I don’t like it that
we have to suffer many trials and tribulations on this earth. And yes, if I’m
really truthful, I don’t want to endure the sorrow, the pain, the loneliness
and the devastating fallout that has occurred as a result of the death of my
son. Here’s a spoiler alert -- He already knows how I feel and He takes great
joy in the fact that I’m honest with Him. Because if you really think about it,
I bet you anything, at the heart of every single agnostic, at the root of all
atheistic people, at the foundation of every ambivalent person who has walked
away from an intimate relationship with a loving and benevolent God, is an
unanswered prayer or a deep-rooted anger toward our Heavenly Father for not
coming through for them when they needed Him most.
John 16:33 says, "I have told you these things, so that
in Me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take
heart! I have overcome the
world." We are citizens of Heaven
and we don’t belong here on this Earth; this is not our home and we are just
passing through. The Bible tells us we will have tribulation, we will have
pain, we will have heartache, and we will have death. So the question I have
for you is this. Where do you find your
peace? What is hindering you from
developing a deep, genuine, personal, intimate relationship with our Heavenly
Father? True intimacy means you have a
hunger and a thirst to get to know God; you have a longing in your heart to
cultivate a relationship with Him, and you are not satisfied until you truly
know Him on a deeper level. But how can
you be intimate with someone you really don’t trust or even like very
much? How do you get past your thoughts
that sometimes this life really sucks and all of this is all just way too
hard? I will tell you how. You
consistently spend time getting to know Him.
Spending time with the person Jesus Christ, being honest with Him,
brutally honest and transparent, having a desire and a thirst to be intimate
with Him, seeking Him with all of your heart, your mind and your soul,
earnestly yearning for Him, is the key to developing trust in Him. My soul thirsts and pants for the Living
God. Where can I go to meet Him? He is right here, right now, He sees me, He
knows me, He is for me, He loves me and He sees every tear that falls. He knows me more intimately than anyone else
on the face of this planet, and all I have to do is look up and He will meet me
right where I am and He will fill me with His peace and I will be satisfied
that He is enough just for today.
– Melody
