Heart Tracks - In His Presence

"In Your presence there is fullness of joy." Psalm 16:11....."Choosing to hope is the first step to healing." Dutch Sheets

Pain. Deep, unhealed inner pain, is a great affliction in the midst of the church today. So much of that pain finds its way out in our lives through anger, acting out, and all types of destructive behavior. Broken relationships, divorce, abuse, can be, and are by-products of unresolved and unhealed pain. How can a people who profess belief in the One who is the Healer live in such brokenness? The answer is so simple, yet we never seem to see it. We don't take our pain, our wounds, to Him. The results are many, but the foremost may be our loss of hope.

I heard Sheila Walsh make a suggestion to her listeners. She asked them to take a chair and place it in the center of a room, simply sit there, and invite His Presence, and then enter into His Presence. In doing this, we need to understand some things. In His Presence darkness cannot exist. In His Presence, emotional and spiritual wounds cannot thrive. In His Presence, our brokenness cannot remain broken. In His Presence, our pain cannot remain in its hiding places. All of these are rooted out by His Holy Spirit when we abide, sit in His Presence.

Walsh noted that when we do this, when we abide in His Presence, He leads us to the place of "processing our pain." He will bring to the surface those things that we may have spent a lifetime keeping hidden while all the while they caused destruction to ourselves and others. Our flesh despises this process. When Adam and Eve sinned against God in the Garden, their first response was to hide from Him. Some of us have been hiding from Him all our lives. We've hidden in plain sight, in church worship services, in church ministries, even in church pulpits. Not only have we hidden in plain sight, we've remained hidden even in His Light. We've never processed our brokenness.

In Isaiah 1:18, the Father called to His people Israel, "Come, let us reason together....No matter how deep the stain of your sins, I can remove it. I can make you as clean as freshly fallen snow." What do you need to "reason together" with Him about? What do you need to process in His Presence? Haven't the wounds and brokenness festered, lay hidden long enough? In His Presence there is fullness of joy...hope....healing...wholeness. No more running. No more hiding. No more denying. In His Presence there is Life. Death in all of its forms cannot be found there. Come into His Presence today. Let the healing begin.

Blessings,
Pastor O