Called to Grieve

As I shared in this morning’s post, today I felt overwhelmed by the darkness that the world (including the Church) finds itself in. And God spoke a lot to me, to the point where it became multiple blog posts, as my attempt to communicate clearly. But what I needed to acknowledge was the need I felt – the call, if you like – to stay in the place of conviction and grieving, and not just ‘positively confess’ my way out of it. For some reason I needed to stay in the place of overwhelm, feeling like I was drowning in the lack and barrenness of God’s Church. Tomorrow I will share what God showed me this morning that helped me to process with a bit more clarity, but for today I just felt to share the unending feeling of grief that we are sometimes called to.

It reminded me of the years when my husband and I were dealing with another kind of barrenness – doctors had said we could not have children naturally, but God then promised we would have them supernaturally, so we trusted Him. For many years we prayed, confessed, prayed, trusted, prayed and believed – but there were occasionally times when the pain of our situation overwhelmed me. I would cry out to God and tell Him our lack was too painful – I couldn’t keep pressing in in prayer and just needed to stop. He was always gracious to carry me through the pain of those times and – after giving me space to grieve – would patiently remind me of His promises and His call on my life to be a mother, and would bring me back to the place of pressing in once more, until His promises finally came to pass (see my testimony).
This week I have been in that place of acknowledging God’s promises that he is doing a new thing and making streams in the desert etc. With all my heart I believe an outpouring is coming, to revive the Bride of Christ and restore us to who we were meant to be. BUT I have also been overwhelmed by our lack of fruit and the sheer pain of barrenness; by not being the Kingdom-carriers we are called to be.

And in that feeling of overwhelm God took me to Jonah 2:3-7
“For You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas,
And the floods surrounded me; All Your billows and Your waves passed over me.
Then I said, ‘I have been cast out of Your sight; Yet I will look again toward Your holy temple.’
The waters surrounded me, even to my soul; The deep closed around me;
Weeds were wrapped around my head. I went down to the moorings of the mountains;
The earth with its bars closed behind me forever;
Yet You have brought up my life from the pit, O Lord, my God.
When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord;
And my prayer went up to You, into Your holy temple.”

Jonah was literally overwhelmed when he was thrown into the sea as a consequence of running away from God’s call. But his story was more than just a cautionary tale: he became a foreshadowing of Christ, as referred to in Matthew 12 – there is so much more to discover from His life. And what God spoke to me was that although many Christians like to pray that God would take them deeper into Him, they rarely appreciate the overwhelming feelings that come with deep places. Jonah went to the very bottom of the sea (the ‘moorings of the mountains’) before he was swallowed by the whale/ big fish! That’s deep! And it was not a comfortable feeling – it felt like he was out of God’s sight, but we know God had prepared his salvation. The point is: going deep into the things of God is not necessarily the nice tidy progression we would like it to be. It can be overwhelming and very disorienting. But when we keep our minds fixed on God, His way will be revealed.

The other day I shared the picture God had given me about the deep river of the Spirit and how it was rushing so fast and deep that it sometimes feels overwhelming & disorientating. What God showed me about these few days of grieving for who we have become as a Church is that He doesn’t always call us to the nice, light and fluffy, or even the authoritative and victorious. Sometimes intercession feels messy and dirty. Sometimes He calls us to grieve. Sometimes – often – ‘going deeper’ involves pain. The baptism of suffering is an old-fashioned doctrine that doesn’t get taught much nowadays, but I have a feeling God is bringing us to a place where He is going to reveal the truth of it once more. And that may sound heavy, but we can take heart, because I know from experience that suffering truly does bring us to a closer experience of Jesus’ love – it brings us so much deeper in Him, and like Jonah, if we remember to focus on God through it all, the result will be not only our own salvation, but many many more will come to Him too!