When you're surrounded by blazing fire on all sides, and there's no way to go but through it, and you feel like you're about to be consumed, like you're suffocating, like you're not possibly strong enough to take another step, and you can feel yourself about to fall apart... that it's only the weakest thread left that you're using to hold the pieces of you together, and that last tiny thread is smoking and smoldering and about to snap too... where do you go for the strength that you need to just keep going? When you feel like you've already dropped to your knees, searching desperately for that next gasp of oxygen to get to your lungs and propel you to keep moving, but you start to see the cracks taking shape, the pieces falling, and your own two hands just aren't enough to hold all of you in place anymore... is there anything left inside of you that's strong? Some hidden reserve that's just not tapped into yet? What if there's not? But what if there is?
In my brokenness, when the pieces are falling, as I feel myself unable to hold it together... when the tears are avalanching and my soul is crushed and the pain feels more intense than I can bare... as I find myself in the midst of a fire that I never thought I'd survive... when my last thread of strength has snapped clean through and it's all crashing, each piece wilting away like the petals of a dying flower, falling like shards of smashed pottery... I'm finding that there's something left inside of me that's not even part of me, and yet is the very essence of me, and it's stronger than anything I'd ever hoped to be, and it's pulling the breath in and out of my lungs even when I feel incapable, and it's unable to be stopped, unable to be silenced, unable to be broken. It is Christ in me, the hope of glory.
And He is light and He is goodness and He is strength and He is hope and He is almighty and He is faithful and He is true... And He is the FIRE that created fire and no earthly flame can touch him, no earthly flame can shake Him, no earthly flame can hold Him back or keep Him down. And when every piece of me is broken and falling and shattered, He remains at my core, and He will not let one part of me go unaccounted for, and He will hold each sacred piece as we move through the fire together... and it is the very fire we go through together that will forge me back into something whole again, something stronger than I was before. Because He works all things together for my good.
I am more than flesh and bone. I am more than just a body. I am the temple of the Almighty Creator of the Universe. HE LIVES INSIDE OF ME, and in Him I live and move and have my being, and when the strength of my flesh fails, when my heart is broken beyond recognition, and when the last reserves of my human strength have been poured into the dust, He is the fire that still roars inside of me, the Heavenly fire that overpowers and repels the earthly fires of this world. It is because of Him and Him alone that when I stand in the blazing infernos I thought would overtake me, I do not die. It is because of Him and Him alone that, though the enemy keeps turning up the heat, billowing the fires to five, six, seven times hotter, that instead of death, resurrection takes place.
Where I'm at right now... I don't see the resurrection yet. I'm still in pieces. But though I am broken I am held together by Him. And the resurrection is coming. I know it. I can feel it in my bones. When all that is left on my lips is a whisper, I will speak the name of Jesus, and all the forces of Hell will bow before the power of the one who makes His home inside of me.
In my weakness, HE IS STRONG. It is in Him I find strength when my heart is broken.
If the last of your strength feels poured into the dust, this song and this song are speaking strength and truth to my spirit. Maybe they will speak it to yours too.
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