A Myriad of Ways

"He returns us to a place of rest, and there, we are strong."

“For it was not by their sword that they took the land; their arm did not bring them victory. It was by Your right hand, Your arm, and the light of Your face, because You favored them.” (Psalm 44:3 BSB)

IN ORDER FOR God to obtain the victory, we have to stop doing all the fighting. As long as it is our efforts, our plotting and planning, it isn't His. “But He gave me the idea, the how-to,” we say. Did He? Or was what seems like our inaction beginning to be a strain? PRESSURE.

Pressure begs some relief, so we seek it. There is a place to take a long jog instead of exploding into anger or tears. But it can easily become more endless self-effort. We must keep Him near. He is always IN US and always WITH IS, but we let our minds get distracted by the noise around us, some of it our own groaning, others the mocking and discouragement of death and loss. Failure. When we refocus and seek Jesus, when we listen for the Holy Spirit, we will find Him.

It takes worship. That's the meaning of Matthew 7:7, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find ….” SEEK or WORSHIP me and you shall find me. Worship has been presented to us as our songs about Him, and it can be that. But more often, it is just our thoughts, and we say nothing at all. It is also listening to anointed music with OR WITHOUT lyrics. There is a man, Reinhardt Buhr, who produces live looping beats. You don’t have to know what these are to understand this. But he gives a tremendous testimony of his salvation and deliverance from cocaine, an impossible thing in the natural. He was a musician constantly seeking fame until God got hold of him and set him free. One day, he says a voice told him to make music from his heart. At that moment, his instrumental beats were born. Here is the Spirit speaking through instrumentality just as I've heard prophet Hank Kunneman mention many times.

These hear the Spirit in the notes because they have tuned themselves to listen.

There are others with a unique style who play for Jesus. Simon Wester comes to mind. How beautiful are his orchestral pieces. And a young girl who goes by Nora En Pur who took Brandon Lake's song “Gratitude” to a new level. What is my point? That God works for us in a myriad of ways. He is continually speaking and there, in His Presence, is the healing of our minds. Of our hearts. He returns us to a place of rest, and there, we are strong.

Not in our self-effort, not in striving for some victory which Jesus has already obtained, but in laying all our cares upon Him (1 Peter 5:7). While we're asking "what ifs" and moving mental chess pieces, He's holding out His hand bidding us to sit for a while.

Reading His Word is worship. Read it aloud or quietly in your mind. Read a single verse or an entire book. But hear Him speaking in it and follow His urging to the passage He has for you today. The more I read His Word, even if it's all those Hebrew names in the book of Numbers, the less I desire other things. I'm not interested in news or television entertainment. I just want to speak to my heavenly Father. I want to read passages like in Deuteronomy and see His gentle care where to our human thinking it sounds like hate. It isn't. In fact, reading Deuteronomy in the EasyEnglish translation gave me a picture of Jesus in the gospels. So much of it mirrors His footsteps there. Some of it is inaccurate in how it is presented but in other places, it is so much Him.

Our time hearing Him gives us discernment. We learn His ways and mirror His character. We become like Him. And then He shows us more spiritual things. We move into supernatural giftings. But He only pours them into us in our maturity. He will not give them to children, just as we wouldn't hand the car keys to a toddler or a preteen. They must be able to handle them and to control the power of the automobile, to turn it away from what brings harm. How does this apply? Well, I urge you to spend time with Him and ask Him.

I urge you to worship and to set down your idea of it and pick up His. For your sake. For His. There is nothing our wonderful God loves more than living life with us. And it is far more than we have ever expected.

“For I do not trust in my bow, nor does my sword save me.” (Psalm 44:6 BSB)

LISTEN TO:

“Between Worlds” album by Reinhardt Buhr

“Encounter” by Simon Wester

“Gratitude” by Nora En Pure

Image by Piyapong Saydaung from Pixabay


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com