Personal stories chosen by body posture -
Posture 12
The people who wrote the following stories selected this body posture as the best match for how they felt through this time of their life.
Silence
By Pete
Categories: Loose footing, Dark blue, Posture 12, Confused
I have always felt like I had a lot of potential, that I was bright, at least smart enough to navigate through this life. About seven years ago the things that I was trying to create in life started falling down around me.
My career seemed to evaporate, and I couldn’t make any sense of what was left, I had put so much into applying my ‘talents’ in this world, but God didn’t seem to want that. I was committed and involved in a small church group, but God didn’t seem to like something about that and I found that I had stepped out of it. I had a small house which contained a small family but that didn’t create in me a feeling of being grounded or content. I was doing love practically but wasn’t feeling it.
At the start I felt like God was challenging me by removing things from my life, I would say, ‘thank you Lord for this lesson, your involvement in my life’. But the removal of ‘important’ things in my life didn’t stop and I started to say to God, ‘thank you, but I cannot cope with any more, I have learnt enough’. It started to hurt, it started to make me sad, it made me work harder, fight harder and pray harder. I tried everything that I had learnt to do.
I was confused and started saying, ‘where are you Lord, why Lord’. God seemed to have gone silent on me, I couldn’t understand the signs.
I came across a song by Jars of Clay called Silence which connected directly to how I was feeling at that time. I listened to it again and again; I would see how many repeats of the song it took for me to get to work.
I thought you were silent.
I thought you left me
For the wreckage and the waste.
On an empty beach of faith,
Was it true?
I got a question,
I got a question-
Where are you?
I felt stupid and humiliated; I felt like I had failed, that nobody understood what was inside me. The song didn’t give me a lot of direction about where to go next, but reassured me that other Christian men had asked God some hard questions while waiting for answers.
At this time I came across Philippians 4 verses 4 to 8. It seemed to encourage me to persist in embodying the characteristics of Christ, and even though I didn’t seem to have the eyes to see it God was rewarding me and that He wanted good things for me.
Philippians 4 - Think of Excellence
6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Since that time when I felt that God was silent, God continued to take things away. God was preparing me to trust more fully in Him, to fully experience love through His eyes. Around this time a Christian man suggested I work through the book Experiencing God – knowing and doing the will of God. This book changed me from knowing God; to having a relationship with God, a daily two way relationship.
I realised that God wasn’t silent, I was asking the wrong questions, God wasn’t silent I just didn’t like what He was saying. God wanted me to sacrifice my pride, my capability and to sacrifice my ego and carry my cross. The blessings I desired were on the other side of my sacrifice.