It Starts Small

When I was returning from having helped my youngest daughter move into her new home for the college year, I started up the mountain and said, Father, I guess it is just you and me now. There was a peace and calm in saying that. In Jesus helping me to overcome fear, I could look at this time of living alone without fear. I trust that in all things, God is working.

I wrote about solitude, yesterday. It is the opportunity to get away from the everyday, and sit in the presence of our Heavenly Father as Jesus often did. I was very blessed! I lived a ways from town. It was a quiet place. I could start my early hours out by praying the sun up. Often, I would pray and as my eyes were closed I could feel the sun rise above ridge to the east. It was amazing. I was surrounded by the amazing wonder of God’s creation. The best part was the quiet. No distractions, just me, Jesus and my Heavenly Father.

It was in this time, God began to really reveal truth to me. More than a year ago I had chosen to step off the super highway of pride, selfishness and death, and to take steps into the unknown with my Savior. Each step was walking a path I had never been. I prayed constantly for God to reveal someone’s character, motive and intentions and to help me understand the situation with eyes wide open. I prayed for eyes to see beyond the physical. I started to really journal at this point. As God began to reveal truth I got caught in two places. When God begins to reveal truth you have two options: reject or accept.

As time wore on, the complete acceptance came when a person I was praying for did exactly what the Holy Spirit revealed months earlier. All the way down to speaking the exact words the Holy Spirit spoke. I was shocked. I do not know why I was shocked. Why would the Holy Spirit have lied? The physical evidence was there, but the emotions in me just would not allow me to believe it could be true. As soon as that situation happen I fell on my face before my Heavenly Father. There was no more denying that what was being revealed was indeed truth.

Fast forward to now. I believe there are seasons in our lives that we need solitude with our savior and our Heavenly Father. I gave a quick writing about the benefit of solitude. Today I testify that it was the best seven months of my journey so far! Solitude helped me to get the perspective of looking down from heaven on all these things. Through complete solitude, the Holy Spirit began to take simple faith principles, and move them into a deeper understanding. A better way to put it, was to move from milk to meat.

The Holy Spirit began to work within my ears and eyes to see beyond the physical circumstance to see what was truly going. To see who was pulling the strings. To see that someone was simply a puppet to evil and evil obviously had it’s meat hooks in the way they acted, the way they spoke, and in their motive. It was the heart of evil that sought to destroy instead a godly heart that knew and believe that with God all things are possible. WIth God, love, grace, mercy and forgiveness abounds.

I reflect back onto the scriptures when Jesus was praying in the garden before his arrest. Jesus knew, from spending time with his Heavenly Father what was coming. He agonized over it and sought the presence of his Father for comfort. Jesus understands all the situations and everything we go through on a daily basis. When we walk with him and seek a time of solitude with our Heavenly Father, we are opened to truth spoken by the Holy Spirit and with that truth our perspective changes and we are lead.

Sometimes in solitude we are in the midst of the greatest spiritual battles. For me it was a battle of accepting what was being revealed to me. I did not want to accept what the Holy Spirit was revealing because it was a horrible truth. It shattered the foundation of everything I knew to be true. It was a winding path of just trusting.

I now understand those seven months were not a blessing for someone else, they were designed by my Heavenly Father to prepare me for the things that have come and still to come. I thought for awhile that it was God leading in a different way, but that person was going to do what they were doing no matter what. But our Heavenly Father tells us, he uses all weapons of the enemy for our good. Evil meant tried to take advantage of the situation, but God is more powerful and used the weapon of the enemy for good.

I write these things to encourage everyone to take solitude serious. Make it a priority in your life. Step away from the day-to-day and get alone with your Heavenly Father. Do not make it habit, make it something you look forward to and treasure.

One of my weaknesses used to be, being a hyper vigilant person. It is the result of long term emotional, psychological and physical abuse. It is living in a constant state of thinking and feeling like you are in danger. It makes you sensitive to everything going on around you. It causes you to look at everything and think the worst, expect the worst. You constantly feel like you need to flight or are frozen. What was amazing is that Jesus took that weakness and turned it into a strength. I believe it is what has made me very sensitive to the movement of Holy Spirit. When we choose a solitary moment with our Heavenly Father we learn to be sensitive to the movement of the Holy Spirit.

Find your ‘garden”.

Learn to be quiet in your heart and mind.

The treasure of it can never be stolen by evil.