Once, I lived in a student house. It was interesting, in the way that only student houses can be, complete with the seemingly inground aroma of old takeaways, with battered furniture that never would have passed the Ikea durability standards, and bedecked with curtains fashioned from creatively cut dustbin bags. It fit all the stereotypes.
It wasn’t, perhaps, the most salubrious place I’d ever stayed in my life. Especially as it was summer and the student types who inhabited number 58, Colwyn Road with me had long since departed, back to mothers who would do their washing and feed them more than the obligatory supernoodles. I was lonely and frightened.
It was in this house that I learned that falling down cellar stairs will always hurt, that adventurous wasps will always swim in open cartons of apple juice, that, unfortunately, yoghurt will not always stay fresh (and importantly, connected to this, one should always look in the pot before eating a spoonful). I do, however, have one lasting good memory from that house.
Sleeping was hard those days. In fact life, in general, was not a bundle of joy and excitement. One evening, when my youth leader drove me ‘home’, he gave me a tape of music. It was a recording of the latest Hillsongs album. When I got in, I put it straight into my cassette player, in an attempt to drown out the fact that I was rattling around in a (slightly mouldy) empty house, and the fact that this freaked me out a little.
That tape got so much play that summer. I found that, if I played it at night, I could drift off to sleep peacefully, with the worship sinking into my subconscious and calming my anxious thoughts. Looking back I wonder if it was what helped me make it through those days.
One of the songs stuck in my head especially, and even now, six years later, I am still reminded of God’s presence and faithfulness back then, every time I hear it. I am reminded how He kept promises I wasn’t even aware He had made me, and how He really did make me glad, even through a path of pain and suffering. The lyrics are as follows:
I will bless the Lord forever
And I will trust Him at all times
He has delivered me from all fear
And he has set my feet upon a rock
And I will not be moved
And I’ll say of the Lord….
You are my shield
My strength
My portion
Deliverer
My shelter
Strong tower
My very present help in time of need
Whom have I in Heaven but you?
There’s none I desire beside you
You have made me glad
And I’ll say of the Lord….
(Darlene Zschech – Hillsongs Music)
The thing that sticks in my mind most was that, during that time, I was unable to fight for myself. I knew hardly anything about prayer or spiritual warfare, I wasn’t even that certain that God was in the situation with me. Even from that place, something in me reached out to Him through the words of the songs. Something in my spirit responded to His touch through the truths contained in them. I was carried, soothed, comforted, and shielded by Him, though I hardly recognised it at the time.
My life today is so different to what it was back then. My house may still smell of supernoodles regularly (ick), but the darkness of those days has long since dissipated.
My circumstances may have changed, but the God I love and serve hasn’t. And His call to me is the same: Sometimes, it is right to battle, to employ the weapons he has given me and be militant in my praying. Sometimes, I am surrounded by the noise of conflict, making daring raids on enemy camps, defying what is in the way of what God has promised and fighting hard. Often, this comes more naturally to me.
Sometimes, though, it is right to let God do the battling. To fall into Him and find that His strength is more than enough and so much more powerful then I could ever be. To trust that He knows what needs doing, and that the battle on will rage on without me, while I rest in the safety of His healing presence. In those moments, I find Him in a fresh way. I find Him as my portion, deliver, shelter, strong tower, my ever-present help in times of need.
It is when I let Him carry me, that I am reminded I should do this more often.
It is when I let go and let Him fight for me, that I truly find rest and peace.
It is when I surrender, that I find that this is not failure, but a journey deeper into adoration and intimacy with my Father God.
