Adhesion – Healing For The Soul

Our souls cling to our bodies like sailors to the mast of a ship tossed about in a storm. The knocks and the tossing waves would seek to throw our souls from out of our bodies and return them from whence they came. Such power we find in these things, for we cannot dismiss our own souls from our bodies, though some say that they can do so for a time, we cannot commit to personally giving up our souls from our bodies in death until death comes to us.

Yes, we can so wreck our own bodies that our souls have no option but to leave, but such is the nature of what we are that we cannot force our souls to leave by mere willing them to go.

And so is our human condition, that we have to face the daily struggles, the turmoil and the issues that not only touch on our bodies but also our souls. Only there’s no running away;

If an issue is outside of my body, and it becomes enough of a burden, I can place myself away from it; I can move my body away from the influence and find peace elsewhere. But when an issue silently breaks through my skin and touches my soul, then there is no walking away, there is no running to a paradise beach whereupon I may rest in peaceful bliss for wherever I go, the issue goes. It will follow me to the grave for there is no massage for the soul, there is no plaster or ointment that can bring gratifying solace for a wound in the soul.

Man’s most common remedies cannot remove our ailments, but numb us to them. Our sorrows are never drowned, only temporarily silenced. Our headaches are still there, but the tablet temporarily separate us from the pain which will only depart when it is ready.

Here then is the power of a One who can comfort the sailors in the storm, place a gentle hand on our invisible wounds and strengthen us though the body is weak, for He said;

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

Better than any ointment, the remedy for sickness of the soul is found in someone called Jesus.

End of Level Boss

For some time, I’ve been listening to podcasts from Celebration Church where the preacher is usually the very entertaining, yet extremely challenging Pastor Mark Gungor (you may have seen his popular Tale of Two Brains on YouTube).

His most recent sermon is called The Thin Line Between Faith and Stupid. As ever, it is very humorous but often uncomfortably challenging. There’s one point that the speaker made which really struck home for me two days ago and I’ve been mulling it over in my heart saince. He asked how come it wasn’t stupid for David to take on Goliath when he did, in the way he did (we’ve all heard the story, but you can refresh yourself here in 1Samuel 17)?

And so I got to asking myself the same question; how come David could have been so confident in taking on this giant of a dude who may have looked not dissimilar to Brian Blessed on stilts?

You know, if you’ve ever played any computer games at any point since the 80s, you’ll be familiar with the end of level boss. You face the end of level boss after you’re managed to get through all the other smaller bad guys as they come against you in wave after wave of merciless attack.

If you can’t fight the little spaceships, you’ll never be able to take on the mother ship.

David had experience of what God can do in fighting off the threats he faced in his life. In fact, such was David’s attitude with God’s strength that if a lion came and stole one of the sheep he was shepherding, he would actually get up and chase the lion, get the sheep back and kill the lion for its trouble! He did the same also with a bear!

It’s precisely because David had tackled the lion and the bear in the strength of God that he knew he could tackle Goliath. If he’d killed the lion and the bear in his own strength and self confidence, he’d have had reason to doubt his ability against an armoured lump of a man like Goliath.

Sure, he said that he believed in God, but all the soldiers in the Israeli army would have believed in God. David had experience of God and was an eyewitness to what God can do with people who trust him.

Everything we face in life is the next big thing, every problem is the biggest problem we’ve ever faced and every heartache is the darkest heartache, every disappointment is the deepest, every let-down is the biggest, but it’s because we trust God to get us through this one that we can be confident that He will get us through the next one!

If you can’t get passed this hiccup in your experience, you’ll not stand a chance with the next one. When we feel that we’re finding ourselves in the same situation, over and over, it’s usually because we’re not facing up to it as we should.

You could be looking down the barrel of  the pistol of potential disappointed-hope; But what to do? Sure, you could run away and be bitter and stew on what you feel was done wrong by yourself and/or others, or you can take back the joy that the disappointment has taken from you and trust in God to help you through it, even to kill the disappointment that’s in your heart. I know that if you don’t handle it properly, you’ll only have to come back and re-play the level and face again the same butt-ugly end-of-level boss; you’ll only have to come back and re-sit the test.

There’s an element of testimony in this post because I’m mid-way through a personal battle. It may last a few more days or weeks yet, but looking back through it even from here, I can see the changes that God has made in my heart already. He’s been able to make changes as I’ve trusted Him at various points and I can’t afford to stop now.

Dudes, you aren’t going to get anywhere spiritually if you don’t trust Him right where you are to do what He wants to do in your life. You might not like it! You might not even think it’s fair! It may even result in people thinking you’re the biggest schmuck to have been born of a woman, but hold on in there! Don’t give up! Don’t pack it in if you make a mistake along the way! Trust God, trust God’s grace, trust God’s wisdom and trust God’s love.

Trust.

Trust

When it comes to worry, I am the king. Nobody comes close to me when it comes to fretting, worrying and stressing over the most miniscule of matters. I worry about things that do happen, could happen, might have happened, couldn’t happen, would have happened and if I have nothing to worry about, I worry about the fact that there could be something to worry about if I only knew it was there!

Worry, which is just a friendly word for fear, is a mind killer and a soul destroyer. It wipes us out before we can say a word. It makes us tired before we get out of bed and it blinds us to the good things that want to bless us.

In recent times, my worrying has reduced somewhat, as I’ve learned to trust in Christ. The only way I can describe how I feel about what I’ve done may not be theologically sound; I’ve outsourced my worrying, so anything that I should be worrying about, I pass on to Jesus and He does the worrying for me.

At its most essential, worry is lack of trust. Preacher after preacher will encourage you to take your burdens to Jesus and people will come forward in tearful submission, leaving their worries at the altar but after the service ends, they grab their coats and their worries again before leaving.

Why do we do that? Why do I do that? Why do I ever even give my worries to Christ and then pick them back up?

As I said, I believe it is down to lack of trust. I can’t drop my worrying because I’m worried that my worries won’t be dealt with as I want.

I was preaching in a small chapel last week and my subject was the yoke that Christ wants us to carry. Part of the sermon was just this, why do I refuse to leave my worries with the One who can really deal with them?

• I know the Answer
  It’s common for us to think that because we know the answer, we can take it from here. In other words, there’s no need to bother God when we know what to do.
• God Won’t Give Me The Desired Outcome
  I know that in my subconscious, this has been floating around like some deadly jellyfish; I won’t give my worry to God because my worry is based on something that I really want and I’m not sure He’s going to let me have it, so I have to deal with it myself to ensure I get it.
• God’s Not Taking Me Seriously
  Maybe it’s because we don’t think our concerns are big enough to warrant the universe’s CEO’s attention, or maybe we just think God can’t be bothered anyway, but I can sometimes think that God can’t be bothered with me or He doesn’t see things the way I see them and so can’t see the severity of my cause for worry.

Whatever the reason, whether one mentioned above or something else, it would seem that I tend to maintain my right to worry because I don’t think that God can or will help me.

That, my buddy, is lack of trust.

And there’s no need for a lack of trust if you know the Testimonies of God. Looking back through the history of God’s dealings with humanity and the things He’s said, I know deep in my soul that I have every reason to trust God.

Psalm 55:22 says “Cast your burden upon the LORD and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken.”

1Peter 5:6&7 says “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.”

So it’s not even some kind of cold contract that should make me trust Him, it’s the fact that He cares!

There are so many examples of people worrying, not trusting God and ending up going the wrong way through life. The Children of Israel would have got in 20 years earlier than they did, if they only trusted their God. Jonah wouldn’t have had to endure weeks of smelling more fishy than Captain Birdseye. Abraham could have saved his family a whole bunch of trouble. Moses could have been a great spokesperson before Pharaoh. Peter wouldn’t have sunk. Saul wouldn’t have been dethroned…. Adam and Eve wouldn’t have eaten the forbidden fruit.

As I see it this morning, everything boils down to trust.

Do I trust the Lord?

Proverbs 3:5 says this; “Trust in the LORD with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding.”