where waves grow sweet

First, I would like to apologize to the people I grossed out with my last blog post and particularly to my friend who is now afraid of flies. Sorry about that 🙂

Without any further reference to insects, I’d like to recap what I said in that post, which is that we have authority over our thoughts and can inhabit our warrior selves by claiming the ground of our minds for peace. But I want to add something. There will be times when it won’t go down with that kind of glory. Not because the truth has lost authority over darkness, but because the enemy has blurred the truth so we don’t even know who we are or what we are supposed to be standing for.

I had some days last month that looked a whole lot like that. Doubt suggested through perpetual harassment that I resided outside of the gospel of grace, with all its forgiveness and hope and restoration; that it wasn’t for a person such as myself. Accusation presented all my failures as evidence of doubt’s insinuations. I knew it wasn’t true or thought I should know it wasn’t true, but it all sounded so damned convincing. So instead of charging like Braveheart with a primal shout, I cowered in a fetal position on the battlefield, waiting to be trampled by horses and pierced by swords.

“Drinian’s hand shook on the tiller and a line of cold sweat ran down his face. The same idea was occurring to everyone on board. “We shall never get out, never get out,” moaned the rowers. “He’s steering us wrong. We’re going round and round in circles. We shall never get out.” The stranger, who had been lying in a huddled heap on the deck, sat up and burst out into a horrible screaming laugh. Never get out!” he yelled. “That’s it. Of course. We shall never get out. What a fool I was to have thought they would let me go as easily as that. No, no, we shall never get out.”

But in my weakness, I remembered that sometimes courage looks like whispering “Jesus” from a fetal position. He hears His name, even when it is spoken only in the heart and even when it is clouded by doubt.

Lucy leant her head on the edge of the fighting-top and whispered, “Aslan, Aslan, if ever you loved us at all, send us help now.”

And He answers. Without fail, He answers. Sometimes it is vivid and immediate, but so often it starts as a small, fragile sliver of light or a barely discernible breath of hope.

The darkness did not grow any less, but she began to feel a little—a very, very little—better.

He whispers back with a voice of quiet authority, gentle and true. He enters our darkness with us. He becomes our courage. And He leads the way. Out of darkness and fear, through circumstances that reach far beyond our ability and the mazes of self-destruction we have created.

[An albatross] called out in a strong sweet voice what seemed to be words though no one understood them. After that it spread its wings, rose, and began to fly slowly ahead, bearing a little to starboard. Drinian steered after it not doubting that it offered good guidance. But no one except Lucy knew that as it circled the mast it had whispered to her, “Courage, dear heart”, and the voice, she felt sure, was Aslan’s, and with the voice a delicious smell breathed in her face.

In a few moments the darkness turned into a greyness ahead, and then, almost before they dared to begin hoping, they had shot out into the sunlight and were in the warm, blue world again. And all at once everybody realised that there was nothing to be afraid of and never had been.

from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by CS Lewis

I too heard my Lord say “Courage, dear heart.” Though the peace didn’t come all at once, the warmth of His love broke through the condemnation and His light swallowed the darkness surrounding me. As it turns out, there is nothing to be afraid of and there never was…. and there never will be. His love has made sure of that.

Hillsong’s You Never Fail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj7gFmdB3no