“19 Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.
20 My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me.
21 This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.
22 It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not.
23 They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness.
24 The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in Him.
25 The Lord is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him.
26 It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord. ”
Today is the day we lay my grandfather to rest. We were extremely close, yet I can say that I’m filled with peace.
As I was reading one of my devotionals this morning, God was ministering to my soul and spirit. No matter what goes on around me, He is faithful and is my ever present help. His peace that He’s given unto me remains and is not contingent upon the troubles of life. When He and Grandpa decided it was time for him to move to heaven last Wednesday, peace was already in my spirit–I just had to reach for it and allow it to rule my heart once again.
Peace isn’t based upon the “absence of disturbances, stillness, etc.” definition in which we’ve grown accustomed. As I referenced in my last blog post, the peace that comes from the Lord is different than the peace we advocate for in our societies. We’re always searching for a sense of peace that is everlasting, but we have to realize that it isn’t something we can concoct. We regularly blame the tragedies of life on the Giver of life, yet those things don’t stem from Him. Unfortunately, our ancestors chose to sin against God, and it was from that choice the consequences of sin came into being–a fallen, sadistic world system.
The gist of my post for today is this: you can have hope in the One who is always faithful. I don’t know what you’re going through right now and I don’t know the degree of your pain and frustration, but I do believe that if you trust in the One who is with you even when you don’t feel His presence, you too can experience His peace. Having faith in the Lord doesn’t mean you won’t ever go through and you won’t ever experience tragedies, but it means that in the midst of it, you can still rejoice because He’s with you in it and has graced you to endure to the other side.
As I end this post, I want to challenge you.
I dare you to take a chance and trust God. Maybe you think you are too jacked up for Him to reach and save–you’re not. Maybe another Christian presented Him as One eager to throw and condemn you to hell–He’s not. Maybe the tragedies and trials you have experienced are enough to make the rest of the world tremble, and so you’re blaming Him for all of it–He’s not to blame.
If you’ve read my book, you’d see what a crazy mess I was–yet Jesus Christ snatched me from out of my darkness. I, too, was under heavy, legalistic fire-and-brimstone theology but when I was on the brink of suicide, I heard Him tell me, “Candace, I still love you. You still matter to me.” As I’ve lived a very hard life in my younger adult years, I’ve seen a lot of hell, and I often felt like blaming God for it. But I realized that sometimes life happens, and I had first to look within to see what fault did I hold.
As I learned about DNA (the divine nature of Abba), I found out about how much He loves us all–and I learned to receive it personally. He became like me in the form of Jesus Christ (a man facing all sorts of troubles like all of us), but He refused sin so He could be my perfect replacement (sacrificial lamb). Then the miracle of miracles is He didn’t stay dead! It gave me hope when I found out that Good News because somewhere I read that salvation meant that not only are my sins forgiven, He also made me brand new! This is why I have hope, and I can dance in the midst of storms. I laugh during the downpour of my tears. I rejoice even as I mourn because God is still faithful.
Although I’m going through my own mourning, my dear reader, if you are experiencing some moments of despair, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us via the contact page or info@CandaceAJones.com because we want to pray and stand with you. Together, we win!
Love always,
