Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me Psalms 23:4.
I have heard this scripture time and time again, but lately I have only been living part of it. The valley with the shadow of death. The rest just fell right out of my ear and my mouth. With so many things filling my life with stress, I just sat down in it. For those of you that know me, you know that's not me. I try to be positive, and seek the good, I am not a worriers(I know that worry is a sin).I won't bore you with the details of the things in my life that are causing the pain, but I will give you my testimony.
For the past several weeks, maybe more I have felt physically, mentally, and spiritually beat up, poured out, and running on empty. I am busy, but I like to be busy. I love to pray for others, encourage others, and be a servant. It always seems to build me up to be able to pray or encourage another soul. But lately... I could pray for them, but not for myself, or my situation. The encourager needed encouragement. I felt like God had just lifted his hand from me, forgotten about me, or maybe even had more confidence in me than I did on how much I could handle. With me trying to fill the roll of encouragement for many, I am always a clam when it comes to my issues, and try not to let anyone know what I need, even prayer. I think I was ashamed that I had all these things going on, defiantly embarrassed. So I have suffered alone for this little bit of time that passed. Letting only a few tears out when emotions overflowed the dam I had created. When they did, I felt like crawling in a hole, hoping that no one would see me or ask me what was going on. You see I felt like I would lose my testimony for the Lord if others saw me suffering, saw me broken down. But today...today I had revelation. I made a call this morning and was telling this person about how beat up I was. She said you know..I was just talking with a friend and he said the same thing. Until he happened to run across one of your post today, and he felt lifted up again. You are helping people. I replied, sometimes the helper needs help too. Then it hit me. I have been looking frantically all over for answers to my problems. All but the one place, where I send everyone else. The Word. Oh I was still reading everyday, but it wasn't the same. I would find my mind drifting to all these other places, and during my prayer time, I was praying so hard for the needs of others. Skipping over the trials going on in my life so God wouldn't "see" them. I wanted to be pleasing to him, and with all this going on, surely that wasn't possible. So today when I turned on the computer, I saw post after post from my wonderful facebook friends. They were a message from God straight to me.
Here are some examples:
So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your
God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my
righteous right hand,” (Isaiah 41:10).
