Wrestling of This Soul

"This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." 1 John 5:4

I was lying on my bed this afternoon trying to grab some moments of rest, but my spirit was struggling too severely to find rest today.  I hate those days of wrestling, crying, battling the unseen.  Today I was feeing much like a boxer lying bloodied and bruised on the mat, with the referee's count at 6...7...8...  I reached a weak hand up to grab a devotion book that I keep in my room.  The referee's counting paused.

I read:
"To trust in spite of the look of being forsaken; to keep crying out into the vast, whence comes no returning voice, and where seems no hearing; to see the machinery of the world pauselessly grinding on as if self-moved, caring for no life, nor shifting a hairbreadth for all entreaty, and yet believe that God is awake and utterly loving; to desire nothing but what comes meant for us from His hand; to wait patiently, ready to die of hunger, fearing only lest faith should fail---such is the victory that overcometh the world, such is faith indeed."  --George MacDonald  (excerpt from Streams in the Desert)

The words hung in the air all around me: to desire nothing but what comes meant for us from His hand...

The truth is that today is one of the few times in my life that I am actually scared of the thing I believe He wants to give me.  From my limited human perspective, I see the weight of this thing in His Hands, and it *appears* that if He drops it into my life, everything precious to me will break and crumble into a million fragments.

Here's a word picture:

Let's say that I have a delicate crystal table that I adore...it has some broken pieces and has been mended here and there...it is fragile and in need of some TLC.  And He seems to be asking me if I'm willing to trust Him to drop a 1,000-pound wrecking ball onto my crystal table.  The wrestling is agony because I love my crystal table dearly. The wrecking ball swinging above it is nerve-severing, as I want to pick up my table and run the opposite direction.  

Remember that I'm human and have very limited perspective.  What I feel is what is SEEMS from my point of view.  He is asking me to trust Him with something far bigger than I've ever had to trust Him for in my life.

And I'm scared.  I feel sick.  I'm running the opposite direction.  And there is no peace when you run away from Him.

Am I willing to truly, really desire nothing but what comes meant for me from his hand?

The tossing and turning in my spirit continued on this afternoon, wearing into the evening.  And I read on in my devotion book, skipping ahead to tomorrow's devotional thought.  It was about Abraham not withholding his son Isaac from God when God asked.

"Because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son...I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven...because thou has obeyed my voice."  Genesis 22:16-18

"And from that day to this, men have been learning that when, at God's voice, they surrender up to Him the one thing above all else that was dearest to their very hearts, that something is returned to them by Him a thousand times over."
"That is just the way God meets every real sacrifice of every child of His.  We surrender all and accept poverty; and He sends wealth.  We renounce a rich field of service; He sends us a richer one than we had dared to dream of.  We give up all our cherished hopes, and die unto self;  He sends us the life more abundant, and tingling joy."  --C. G. Trumbull

And another quote on the same page:

"We sometimes seem to forget that what God takes He takes in fire; and that the only way to the resurrection life and the ascension mount is the way of the garden, the cross, and the grave.  

"Think not, O soul of man, that Abraham's was a unique and solitary experience.  It is simply a specimen and pattern of God's dealings with all souls who are prepared to obey Him at whatever cost.  After thou has patiently endured, thou shalt receive the promise.  The moment of supreme sacrifice shall be the moment of supreme and rapturous blessing.  God's river, which is full of water, shall burst its banks, and out upon thee a tide of wealth and grace.  There is nothing, indeed, which God will not do for a man who dares to step out upon what seems to be the mist; though as he puts down his food he finds a rock beneath him." --F.B Meyer

Soul, please quit wrestling...please surrender...