Getting Back In The Water - Part Two
Continuing our talk from last Sunday, let’s look at Isaiah 40:31 again. “But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles.”
If you think about it, wouldn’t you expect to go from walking to running to soaring? Instead, it’s backward, because
God’s saying, “Sometimes, in your pain, I will help you rise up out of it, and it will feel like you’re soaring. And sometimes, I’ll give you strength to run, and you’ll be able to get through the pain
quickly. But sometimes, (in my experience, most of the time), I will give you just enough strength to keep going a little bit more, and then I’ll give you a little bit more to keep going a little bit
more…and then a little bit more, until finally you have made it through.”
This method of making peace with the past is not a one-time event. This is an ongoing process of choosing over and over again that you will surrender this pain from your past to God instead
of dealing with it yourself. The more often we go to God for peace instead of trying to find it on our own, the more natural the process becomes.
What happens when you choose Method #2: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our
troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.”
If we draw near to Jesus and let Him deal with the pain from our past, two things will happen.
1) He will free you from it.
2) He will use your past to bring comfort to those in pain today.
God never wastes our pain. That’s what is so powerful about Bethany’s story. Her decision to not give up but instead to trust God with her future enabled her to be an inspiration to tons of
people. God will do the same through your life if you will just choose not to give up.
If you can’t make peace with your past, then your past will tear you to pieces. And you can’t make peace with your past without Jesus Christ. Some of you need to run to Him for the first time and ask for His help and know that He will give it on the spot and fill you with a peace that
passes understanding. You won’t even be able to explain it, but it will be undeniable.
Some of you have maybe done that before, but you’re still holding onto some pain from your past. You know what you need to do? You need to run to Jesus. Get so close to Him that you
can hear His heartbeat. The world is yelling stuff like “You suck!” “Go home!” “Give up!” so you are going to have to get really close to hear Him.
The choice is yours…what are you going to do?