God Still Clothes the Lilies, Lesson 5: Be Confident in God (Part 1)
Are there circumstances in your life causing you to feel fear or dread? Are you facing uncertainties? Do the uncertainties stem from circumstances so unfavorable it seems no matter which route your life takes, none of the options are good?
Lesson five for seasons of uncertainty and suffering is:
Lesson #5: Be Confident in God, Absent Fear
Psalm 27:1-3 says,
1The Lord is my light and my salvation;
Whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength of my life;
Of whom shall I be afraid?2When the wicked came against me
To eat up my flesh,
My enemies and foes,
They stumbled and fell.3Though an army may encamp against me,
My heart shall not fear;
Though war may rise against me,
In this I will be confident. (Psalm 27:1-3, NKJV)
Internalizing Psalm 27
During the first two years of my illness, before I “lost my mind” (as I put it), I memorized scriptures that God used to speak to me. Psalm 27 was one of those passages.
One day a family friend came to visit me when she was in town. Charlene felt God prompting her to read Psalm 27 to me. As the words crossed her lips, my spirit melted under the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. It was as if God had walked in to the room and He was reading the words to me.
It was clear—God intended to use Psalm 27 in my life. It was his “medicine” for me in that season. (Hebrews 4:12 says that God’s word is “living and active.” The Greek word for “active” is energes, a word used in secular society to describe medicine.)
If you were around in the 70’s, you remember the commercials about E.F. Hutton. (If not, you can watch one here.) When E.F. Hutton spoke, people listened.
Well, when the Holy Spirit so clearly spoke like this through Psalm 27 and displayed His intention to work through a passage of scripture, I listened . . . and memorized the passage. So I memorized the chapter of Psalm 27.
I couldn’t have invested my time any better. It paid off—with interest!
What The Doctor Ordered for Days of Fear-Inducing Torture
In the most excruciating years of my illness and Lyme encephalopathy, I dreaded being alive and enduring the torture for the next sixty seconds—and dreaded even more waking up the next day.
Every second of the day felt unlivable—too torturous and traumatic to bear. (I described the horrible symptoms and sensations of those days in this post and this post.)
In that season of unbearable illness when I feared being alive, the Holy Spirit reminded me of Psalm 27. (Even though I’d forgotten many of my memories and lost so much of my mental functioning, I never forgot the scripture I’d memorized. God’s word is living and active!)
The Holy Spirit would call to mind Psalm 27:1 and say to me:
“Natalie, I am your light and salvation. Should you dread being alive the next few minutes and hours? I am the strength of your life! Do you need to be afraid of waking up and being alive tomorrow? I am greater than everything that is coming against you! Though it may feel as if an evil, ruthless army of millions has encamped around you, there is no cause for fear or dread! You can be confident in me!”
That was in 1996. As you can see, eighteen years later I’m still here. The army that encamped around me did not consume me! My Light and my Salvation—Jesus Christ—was greater!
I’ll be honest. When the Holy Spirit encouraged me through Psalm 27, He didn’t wave a magic wand and make all my suffering vanish. When I woke the next day, the excruciating torture was still present. Thank God He didn’t miraculously remove it. (If He had, He would have deprived me of a priceless privilege and immeasurable blessing!)
God didn’t extinguish the hot flames that threatened to consume me—He carried me through them.
One Thing I Desire
Psalm 27 continues:
4One thing I have desired of the Lord,
That will I seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord
All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord,
And to inquire in His temple.5For in the time of trouble
He shall hide me in His pavilion;
In the secret place of His tabernacle
He shall hide me;
He shall set me high upon a rock.
By leaving me in the fire of suffering and infusing me with His sufficient grace and strength to meet the challenge, God allowed me to develop ‘one-thing’ desire.
As the deluge of suffering stretched on without any relief in sight, He replaced my fears with His presence and peace.
If He had removed the suffering, He would have removed my experience of His power! Remaining in the suffering meant that my need for Him, and therefore my experience of Him, remained as well.
This Psalm 27 account is an example of how He gave me experiences of Himself.
Can you imagine—forgetting how to read music, which I had learned as a small child and which was my major in college . . . but remembering an entire chapter of scripture that I memorized a year or two before? And this passage I memorized “just so happened” to contain the specific truth and power needed for a specific circumstance years later?
Just so happened—my foot!! It was GOD! It was God giving me Himself and His power to meet the demands before me. It was Him overcoming everything that came against me from without and within!
This is how God works! This is how God infuses us with Himself! This is how He speaks to and meets every need. It begins with His Word!
Yes, thank God He let me remain in the suffering so that my experience of Him remained as well.
If I hadn’t been up against more than I could handle on my own, I would never have needed Him to breathe life into me through His Word. And I would never have developed one-thing desire.
Flip Side of the Coin
As God breathed life in to me through His word, like He did with Psalm 27, I tasted Jesus, the Living Word.
The more I tasted of Jesus, the more I desired. I still felt the pain and agony of the suffering. But there was a flip side of the coin—a side I came to treasure.
On one side of the coin, there was suffering all right. But on the other side there was seeking.
On one side there was torment—on the other, the treasure of His presence.
On one side was a quest to control my own destiny and stop the pain; on the other, relinquishment and glorious surrender.
In the midst of terror and fright, I felt peace in the shelter of His wings.
In a deluge of physical and mental pain, I spent my days dwelling in His presence.
In my trouble, He hid me in the secret place of His tabernacle.
In my lowest moments, He set me high on the Rock.
If God had removed the negative side of the coin, I would have lost the positive side as well. And believe me, the positive side was so worth it! I wouldn’t trade it for anything this world has to offer.
When we endure suffering as Christians, there is a flip side of the circumstance that we can treasure. If God were to remove the negative side of the coin—the suffering—we would lose the positive side as well.
What is on the negative side of your coin, of your circumstance, today? What suffering are you enduring?
Have you begged God to remove it and don’t understand why He hasn’t? Have you let Him show you the flip side of the coin? Have you let Him give you an intimate encounter with Himself through the Word?
How would you fill in the blanks of the following sentence?
- “On the negative side of the coin of my circumstance, there is _________________all right. But on the other side, the positive side, God is giving me ________________.”
If you were to list at the beginning of a sentence the negative side of the coin, as I have, what would you say? What would then follow it as the positive side? What positive, life-altering, suffering-eclipsing experiences of Himself is God giving you?
If God were to remove the negative side, you would lose the positive side as well! You might would be rid of your trial, but you would lose the invaluable experiences of Himself God is giving you through it. And nothing this world can offer can compare to experiencing God!
Like a Box of Chocolates
I love dark chocolate. A decade ago I discovered the wonders of Godiva dark chocolate truffles.
When I began to indulge in Godiva, I consumed hardly any sugar in my diet due to health restrictions. So in the beginning, I would visit the Godiva store, buy just a few truffles, and manage to get them to last weeks by only taking small bites and savoring each bite. I never ate a whole truffle in one sitting.
This only worked in the beginning. Over time, the more I tasted, the more I desired. One bite simply made me want more! And it still does!
One taste of Godiva not only ignites desire for more, it ruins the taste of all other truffles. Nothing else compares! Not Ghirardelli, not Lindt. Nothing! If I go without Godiva for a while, I can settle for less. But give me one bite of Godiva and the taste of anything else is ruined.
This is sort of how God gave me ‘one-thing’ desire for His presence.
The more of Him I tasted, the more I wanted! The more I savored, the more deeply I realized that nothing compared to knowing Him intimately!
Two Steps
There are two steps to being confident in God according to Psalm 27:
1. Desire One Thing—God’s presence. Get to know Him, which includes internalizing His word.
2. Trust what you know to be true of God, regardless of how you feel.
Part two of this post looks at this two-step process.
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Tweetables
- “What fearful situation are you facing? Psalm 27:1 says, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; Of whom shall I be afraid?” The Lord is your light, salvation, & strength! Why fear?
- In your lowest moments of trouble, God will set you high on the Rock. “For in the time of trouble, He shall hide me in His pavilion; In the secret place of His tabernacle He shall hide me; He shall set me high upon a rock” — Psalm 27:5.
- “When we endure suffering as Christians, there’s a flip side of the circumstance that we can treasure, a suffering-eclipsing experience of God. If He removed the negative side of the coin—the suffering—we’d lose the positive side too.” — Natalie Nichols
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Questions:
- What circumstances in your life are causing you to feel fear or dread?
- Is there a problem in your life you’ve begged God to remove, and you don’t understand why He hasn’t? What is that problem, or host of problems?
- Have you silenced your will long enough to let God show you the flip side of the coin? Are you letting Him give you an intimate encounter with Himself through the Word?
- How would you fill in the blanks of the following sentence? “On the negative side of the coin of my circumstance, there is _________________. But on the other side, the positive side, God is giving me ________________.”
- What positive, life-altering, suffering-eclipsing experiences of Himself is God giving you?
- Do you have an “E.F. Hutton” type response to the scriptures? When God speaks to you, or encourages you, or teaches you through a passage, are you internalizing it and memorizing it?
OTHER POSTS IN THIS SERIES
- God Still Clothes the Lilies: 10 Lessons for Seasons of Uncertainty (Part 1)
- God Still Clothes the Lilies, Lesson 1: Rest in God’s Sovereign Rule
- God Still Clothes the Lilies, Lesson 2: View Your Needs from Heaven’s Higher Perspective
- God Still Clothes the Lilies, Lesson 3: Hope in God Alone
- God Still Clothes the Lilies, Lesson 4: Trust in God and His Deliverance
- God Still Clothes the Lilies, Lesson 5: Be Confident in God, Part 2
- God Still Clothes the Lilies, Lesson 6: Wait Expectantly for God
- God Still Clothes the Lilies, Lesson 7: Receive God’s Enabling
- God Still Clothes the Lilies, Lesson 8: Focus on God, Not Your Problems
- God Still Clothes the Lilies, Lesson 9 (Part 1): Give Thanks & Praise, Even in This
- God Still Clothes the Lilies, Lesson 9 (Part 2): Three Results of Your Worship
- God Still Clothes the Lilies, Lesson 10: Reflect on God’s Past Goodness
- God Still Clothes the Lilies, Bonus Lesson: Tell God How You Feel (Part 1)
- God Still Clothes the Lilies, Bonus Lesson: Tell God How You Feel (Part 2)
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“Natalie Grace Nichols is experiencing God’s grace and freely expressing it. My wife, Betty, and I thank God for the ministry of Jesus through Natalie.”
“I’m so thankful that God is raising up women like Natalie for a new generation, providing biblically balanced teaching, encouragement, and comfort for people who are enduring life’s trials.”
Another fabulous article. I too gave been suffering for almost 3 years..lyme..mold covering my brain on all 8 points from house being contaminated. Liver problems…kidney..thyroid…never ever a season like this. He has healed me and I’m still in shock…feeling better each day and it feels strange. I forgot what it felt like. Truly. And it’s gonna get better and better. The experience has like yours been excruciating…and I truly thought it would never even be This far along and I lived…by His GRACE and mercy.