Dagnabit again! Would someone please rep this man! I keep having spreadability problems, and he needs a rep for sheer "This is my reality!"
I'm reading this thread again because I got a lot from it. I like that post of Utah's too. When I read it the first time around, I remember thinking, what he is describing is a trial to prove our faith. It is permitted for our good. It can be a long, long process - decades even - in which we struggle with our faith - but when we really, really get pressed, like through sickness, for example, the struggle kicks up to world war proportions rather than a series of skirmishes over decades.
It's exacerbated by the fact that He seems to go silent during those heavier pressings sometimes (this is like with Israel in the desert where it says He allowed them to become very thirsty, to see what they would do.) We get peeved at Him, we lash out in the pain of it all, we struggle with why He allows it, we are furious with Christian platitudes that don't do one dang thing for the suffering and don't give any practical help.
In these larger pressings, we feel ourselves becoming unmoored, but the truth is that He is preparing us to bear more of the weight of His glory. And there is a turning point in them but we don't know at the time that it is the turning point of the war. It is where we stop struggling because we have become too exhausted to do it any more. We just say, okay, I will just shut my mouth and bear it and trust that You know what's best for me even though it looks like You have just become cruel and heartless toward me. This is the point where our hip is touched and put out of joint, as with Jacob, and we have a limp but a blessing at the same time. The limp is a hit to our self will and a growth in humility. We suddenly see some things more clearly and as it all begins to somehow turn around and become more calm, we have more light and understanding than when the pressing began. He is able to share more of His mind with us.
We may have struggled in studying the word for years, but all of a sudden, it's easier. Every time we pick up our bible it seems, verses we read for years come into focus with no work on our part. We don't have to ponder or meditate to try to tease out meanings, it's just like, bang!, it's there. And we see connections between verses without work. We'll be reading one and suddenly a few more pop into our heads and we see the connection between them.
In our pressing, which felt awful, He did something. He removed some more impurities but it would be useless to try to figure out what He did or how He did it - we just know we are receiving more light than before and we aren't working for it, it's just being poured out for us. Where before we were always laboring to bring water up out of a well by cranking a handle to bring it up, a faucet has been turned on and we don't labor.
It's amazing. And we begin to thank Him for the pressing, which seems odd to us, because when we were in it, it was awful. So it's like a woman not remembering her birth pains later for the joy of what she now holds. And we want to stay in this state of wonderment and rest for a long time before we meet with the next pressing. His ways are...there are no words for it, are there?
