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| Comfort to my Spirit by Cadi Nobles |
| Recently, I began to struggle with a trial of confusion. Several things in my life were changing at once and I seemed to be torn in a thousand different directions. Slowly, time became more and more divided. Five minutes here, thirty minutes there, do this, don’t forget that. I quickly reached the point where my mind became so clouded that going through the day was a challenge. By far the most troubling aspect of this new situation was my walk with the Lord. Of course, I would still find time to pray and read the Bible, but things just weren’t the same. I wasn’t feeling that daily spiritual renewal that is so important in our walk with Christ. My prayers contained the same religious vocabulary but I felt they lacked real spiritual impact. Reading the Bible was still enjoyable, but I wasn’t really comprehending much of what I read. This sudden shift brought even more confusion. Had I stepped out of the will of God? Was this just a “dry spell?", a “trying of the saints?"? With true conviction, I prayed and asked the Lord why my spiritual life had changed so much. Why wasn’t I receiving His Word like I once had? As I finished my prayer, every part of me stood at attention to receive His answer. Like so many times before, the room I was praying in set totally silent. No angel trumpeting God’s word of encouragement, no miraculous events to comfort and console. Nothing. Just me and my Bible. The answer, I reasoned, must lay within its pages. “. . . seek, and ye shall find . . .” (Matt. 7:7) was the line that popped into my head. The next thing I knew, I found myself shuffling through the pages until I arrived at the book of James. Oh, how I love James! Such simple, clear instructions. The “Do’s and Don’t’s” of Christianity. It’s few chapters contain much of the “. . . simplicity that is in Christ.” (II Cor. 11:3) that Paul escorted the Corinthians to remember. Something so plain seemed to be just the balm that my wounded soul needed. I started reading the first chapter. By the time I had read the first eight verses, the answer was as obvious as if God had sent that trumpeting angel. “A double minded man is unstable in all of his ways.” (James 1:8) “. . . let not that man think he shall receive anything of the Lord.” (James 1:7). I had, for quite sometime, been double-minded. By God’s own Word, I could not receive anything from Him. It wasn’t the answer that I hoped for, but it was the truth. It was time to straighten up. As I prayed for guidance, I felt very deeply that the first order of business would be to reestablish my priorities. Priority #1: Is God! “Squeezing in” a little Bible study before bedtime would no longer be acceptable. Priority #2: Is family! To do things for myself or others without first taking my family into consideration would be an obvious breech. The rest of the lesser priorities then began to fall into place. In the days and weeks that followed, God began to reveal more and more scriptures that would encourage me in the way. Slowly, my daily prayer and Bible reading regained their fulfilling knowledge that “. . . God is not the author of confusion . . . ” (I Cor. 14:33). This experience also reminded me of a simple truth that we, as Christians, often fail to take into consideration. Sometimes the answer to a prayer is much closer than we believe. Usually, a great thundering voice does not need to sound from heaven, or flaming letters written across the sky. Very, very often we find that our answer was written in the Bible two thousand years before we faced the trial. |
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