Self Preservation

What was it Pastor Rick had said that last Wednesday night? Mary thought to herself; it had hit home and stayed with her. His topic was miracles but his sermon ended up being about faith. It never occurred to Mary that going to church that night would be such an eye opener. In fact, Mary hadn’t intended to go to church at all. If it wasn’t for a needy friend who had cancer and wanted to go Mary would have never gone. In fact, the first week in this series of sermons on miracles Mary had missed going. Her friend had asked her to go to the service last week but she had said no as she already was doing two round trips to the church every day to drop off and pick up her husband Robin.
However, God had convicted her during the following week about what it was to love those around her and to be an example. Mary, felt lately God was asking her to be obedient despite what it might mean or what she might think. Her thought life had gone overboard with “stinking thinking”, as Joyce Meyer called it. Mary never thought stinking thinking had anything to do with obedience but God showed her that to be obedient meant not trying to figure out how things would work out. Mary was just to do what God asked. God had already showed her with her visit to the dentist that trusting God meant going no matter what she thought or felt. Boy, had her imaginations been wrong about what would happen at the dentist. It had been an awesome experience and Mary learned she had to get past how she felt or what she thought.
Now here was Pastor Rick sharing about the need for faith to obtain miracles. However, faith meant not analyzing things to death. In fact, faith was all about trust. Pastor Rick had gone on and on not meaning to spend so much time on this topic but God knew what he was doing. The sermon was tailored for Mary and afterwards Mary found out others were affected by it as well. However, it was that one liner that stuck with Mary and was a sore spot to deal with. Pastor Rick, octaned by the Holy Spirit, had shouted out that there was some out there who spent too much time thinking about “what they did wrong instead of what God had done right”. It was huge! Mary realized her negative thought life had been her downfall. She knew however, that the tendency for abused people – out of preservation- was to try to figure out things, analyze the situation, and prepare every move just to be safe. It came with the territory of getting “caught” in the past. It came with trying to prevent the same thing from happening again.
Unfortunately, this over analysis often affected being obedient. You see, if the abused person figures out they will somehow get hurt they find it hard to do what God asks them to do. It’s all about protecting oneself. All the good intentions of the world disintegrate when faced with being obedient and thinking one is going to get hurt. The key word is “thinking” because most of the problem is not with what is actual but with what the imagination creates.
Just this past week Mary had experienced a double blessing because she decided to be obedient despite what she thought. The first blessing had been to go to the service despite the drive. The pastor’s words had relayed to Mary the need to stop looking at her failures and focus on what God had done. The next blessing came with saying “yes” to an invitation by Mary’s mentor, Diane, to go to the ladies prayer meeting at the church the next morning.
God was very gentle and the women were all kind in not jumping upon her when she arrived, after all she was the stranger that day, the unexpected guest. Another day someone might not be so lucky and might be overwhelmed by too much kindness! Mary couldn’t handle that kind of suffocation and was glad when they got right to prayer and praise. Boy was Mary blessed by that. If she had given into the thoughts of “what might happen” she might not have gone. But here she was and Mary received two messages. One was a confirmation of what God had been showing her, that Mary had been hiding and that despite what she did to protect herself by hiding if a flood came it wouldn’t matter if Mary was hiding! She would have to trust God! The other message was tied to this and it was taken from Psalm 91. It was clear to Mary was she was not to be afraid but focus on who God was and had always been in her life – her refuge and strength! God was and would always be her refuge and strength. Looking back would be an important thing for Mary to do; not to look at what she had done wrong but what God had done right. Yes, Mary would have to do this as Mary had recently surrendered the whole past and all its pain to God, released it to Him and sewn it as a seed. To receive a harvest Mary knew maybe, just maybe, she needed to look back and see all the good God had done. Yes, yes, yes, Mary repeated to herself, she would do this, yes she would.