Inherently I am strong, fearless and clear thinking. However those natural dispositions are just as much a potential for great evil as great good. As C S Lewis said, it is our strengths we need to fear more than our weakness. They had to be tempered by the Spirit of God or they would have destroyed me, and perhaps others along with me.
The means He used were those in most women's hearts, if they are honest.Through my inordinate desire to be safe and admired in the arms of an earthly lover and settled into the security of a beautiful home, I exposed myself to evil and was smashed and left for dead. No earthly power could preserve me as it was masterminded in hell, aided and abetted by the anger and jealousy of close family and an apathetic, indifferent Christianity, unable to perceive the forces ranged against me.
Out of this abandonment God was reshaping and restoring me for true spiritual beauty and life, totally drawing on His loving faithfulness to His covenant with my people and to me as one to whom those promises had been made. Scripture reflects the story of my life, both the sin and reconciliation, being lost and then found. The Word which God has implanted in my soul and written into my mind. That's how I know He is true and His Word is true.
It is true at all times and does not depend on my conscious appropriation of that truth. I am living proof of that, a demonstration to the heavenly powers and wicked forces of the immutable, underserved and victorious loving kindness of the Godhead who know no other heart beat than that of mutual love for one another. There is no reason for Him to love me other than that He has chosen to do so.
It is this we are called to reflect to the world, that demonstration of His love which is the rain which makes the implanted seed of His Word grow. This love is unmoved by the miserable condition of those we are called on to love. Our only hope for the salvation of this world. God overcame the evil heart of this world but it is our task to demonstrate this.
We read His promises and start to cling to them and as we look back we can see how they have shaped and kept our lives, revealing His greatness and goodness to the world. Bringing His children safe home is His greatest work and demonstration of His self-giving love and power to those who fill the heavenly realm.
Ephesians, the book that changed my life.
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