How I Learned To Take God At His Word
“Do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth;
Shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”
Isaiah 43:18-19 NKJV
I think most of us would agree that new things are great as long as we don’t have to endure any discomfort to attain them. That’s what lost-in-my-mind, twenty-year-old me would have told you if you’d met her. That young woman, though she’d weathered a couple of crises before, had no idea what the next few years would bring, bless her heart.
In those days, I focused on a few things: making the Dean’s List, juggling my almost-certainly-too-many leadership positions, meeting writing goals, getting a “great” internship so I could get a “great” job and all the other things. Keep it all together and achieve the things and I can’t fail and once in a while, remember to talk to my Father and maybe get His thoughts on a thing or two. I was an achiever, steady as time. I built my identity on the things I did. I think back on it now and chuckle a little at the image of my tired arms juggling it all.
“I was an achiever, steady as time. I built my identity on the things I did.”
It’s a jarring thing to go through hardship. Most times it’ll come at you like bricks from the sky and knock all breath out of your lungs. For my family and I, it was like a constant rain of bricks, hard and unexpected. I still reel from the force of it sometimes - the sting of loss and the loudness of the sudden silence. Some days, it’s all you can do to peel yourself out of bed; despair coats your tongue and fear stands strong on your chest and anger curls your stomach into a fist in your body. The disappearance of money, jobs, goodwill and all the other grounds I placed my feet on sent me on a freefall to emotional rock-bottom. The desert is bone dry, barren and where is the space for rivers of any kind?
My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience — James 1: 2-3 NKJV
The desert is also where my eyes started to see clearly. Mixed in with all the sand was the reminder to count it all joy and my body instinctively rejected it because what joy was there to find in suffering? There is something to the saying that hardship makes us stronger because I started to see each sunset as a victory; another day survived. When the ground that once held you up crumbles under your feet, you find something else to stand on. And when each day didn’t bring an answer to the prayers I’ve been breathing, I looked forward to the next day and its possibilities. That’s the thing about taking a step even when your feet are shaking under you — you take another and another and you begin to collect the good moments as gifts from Heaven (there will always be some) like treasures to cushion your body on the harder days (there will be those, too). I didn’t just start to believe God and His promise that He will do a new thing; I started to look for it, because heaven forbid I miss it; not after all that I had seen.
“When the ground that once held you up crumbles under your feet, you find something else to stand on. ”
What a wild thing it is to begin to take your Father at His word. You see, when you start to believe what He says about one thing, it’s pretty easy to believe His promises about other things too — including what He says about who you are and where your worth lies. For me, I know now that it cannot be in things that so easily entice and vanish like glitter. My worth is in Love; this ever-present, just-for-me, faithful whisper-shout that is the Rock I stand on. It’s in grace; the all-encompassing, steady Goodness by which I make every move, take every breath. It’s in The Word, older than time yet young as today, a love letter breathed out to me and you. I choose these, no matter how the earth under us may shift. All of this I learned and re-learned in the stillness and the quiet doesn’t seem so loud.
“I didn’t just start to believe God and His promise that He will do a new thing; I started to look for it. Because heaven forbid I miss it; not after all that I had seen. ”
Over the years since, He’s done quite a few new things; some massive, others slight like a whisper. Good all the same. Always good, as sure as where you’re standing (or sitting). Sometimes it takes a forced silence to make us be still, to go back to the Place we’ve always belonged; back to Communion. You miss the things you don’t look out and listen for. All the promises that shift our focus, the whispers that turn our hearts inside out, remind us who we are, and keep our feet moving. It’s all in the stillness, dear friend. Maybe the discomfort isn’t such a bad thing after all.
Now when I look back at the darkness I see all the places the Light was.
Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth! — Psalm 46:10 NKJV
Guest writer: Chinonso Adanna
Chinonso is a Nigerian first daughter of four girls living in New York City. She just completed her master’s degree and is about to begin a technology career in finance. She writes about life and growth and other human things and definitely drinks too much tea.