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"Be Still and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10) is one of my favorites.
It reminds me to let go and trust God to do God's will. The word "be
still" in Hebrew literally means "let go". The New American Standard
Version says, "Cease striving" and in the margin says, "Let go and
relax."
I am a very hyperactive obsessive/compulsive person. I often have to
remind myself to "calm down," to let go and relax. My friend Rev. Marge
Ragona used to tell me, "Get over yourself!" She hit the nail on the
head for me! Part of our persistent approach to dealing with internal
homophobia and low self-esteem is to try too hard and fail to pace
ourselves and give ourselves a break from the action. We try to play
God and do it all ourselves. We have learned to run as fast as we can
in one place and never really go anywhere.
God really does care for you. When I was pastor of my first church
while I was a student at Furman University in 1953, I went with a group
of my classmates to hear a very forceful flamboyant evangelist in
Spartanburg, SC. The message of the evangelist was that unless you felt
saved, you weren't. Somehow, that message hit me and knocked me into a
spiritual tailspin that lasted for several months. I began to doubt
everything. I did not have the exact experience or feelings that the
evangelist demanded.
I was trying to force myself to fit into the religious ideas and
experience of someone else. I felt like a total failure. I could not
do it. One good thing that happened in this was that I decided to
search the New Testament and read everything that I could find about
salvation. I found no place where salvation was connected with
feeling! John 3:16-17 helped me the most. I finally prayed and told
God that if I went to hell, I would go trusting in Jesus. That hit me
as so silly and unacceptable that I began to wake up to the truth about
the false teachings about feelings and exact experiences of being "born
again" that I had heard and accepted without question for a long time.
The one text that still rings in my head that settled things for me was
I Peter 5:7, "Cast all of your anxiety upon God, because God cares for
you." God cares for you. When we say "God loves you," we sometimes get
distracted by the many contradictory meanings of "love" in our culture.
God does care for you and tells us to care for one another.
1. God is always greater than your need.
2. God always is greater than your enemy.
3. God always loves you more than you do.
4. God always has better plans for you than you do.
5. God always gives you what is good for you.
6. God always is available to you.
7. God gives you what you could never give to yourself.
8. Whatever God gives to you can never be taken from you.
How have you handled your doubts about God and your relationship to
God? Sometimes we just need to let go and trust God whether we
understand any of it or not.
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Steps To Recovery From Bible Abuse by Rembert Truluck
Websites:
Steps To Recovery From Bible Abuse
Also In This Issue:
A Candid Look at the Journey to Lynchburg
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