In your Lodebar

There may come a time in your walk with Jesus in which He sets you in a place of isolation just waiting for His grace to rescue you.   Just as we read in 2 Samuel 9  
Mephibosheth, the once heir apparent of all Israel was regulated by God to a place of Lodebar [1]. When God has put you in a spiritual Lodebar, it is a place in which all past experiences are of no value, your education, and your contacts, even your resources can not pull you from this desolation.  It is a time of such stillness where God does not even speak to you. It is as if there is a wall around you, fending off any good that may come your way.  

No new opportunities – 
No positive way for escape–
Even your prayers seem overlooked by God. 
Yet, you are faithful.
Though God seems to have put your needs on the back burner,
you remain faithful.  

You see the prosperity of everyone around you, sinners and saints alike, even those in their own foolishness prosper and attain worldly gain.
Yet nothing comes to you.

You know this affliction is only for a season.  
You know God has not forsaken you; 
He is dredging you through the heat of the furnace that He might skim all the impurities of your past. 

He has shut every door, and made impotent every resource; He as broken your hopes of rescue from this affliction, and you know for sure that none can save you but Him.  

Yet, this is not a test, tests are tools of men; 
His intent is godly. Like a potter, the artist of the universe is massaging you to His desired shape, and fashioning you to His presupposed image.  

But the work of the potter is painful to the clay.  

Excruciatingly, the will of God painfully shapes and reshapes the image of you that has brought you so much success up to this point. 
Dissecting you like a high school science project, God reveals the hidden parts of your essence, slicing away at your ego, and pride, and self-worth,  even to the dividing of your soul and spirit, cutting joints from marrow; He judges the thoughts and attitudes of your heart. 

Deeper and deeper you moan with guttural prayers too intense for words;  not even realizing that your faith is strengthening in your own weakness. Yet the pain which should have ended you
quickens your mortal body. 

While each night in tearful prayer you present your arguments before the Judge of the universe; trying to proselytize God of your immediate needs for emancipation from these painful and dreadful circumstances. 

You cry out from the deepest recesses of your soul 
"Help me God! Do something anything my God!  Rescue me, I need You right away!" And His quiet still voice whispers;

"Be still and know that I am God"

He has not rescued you, because He already has you; 
He has not fixed your heart (problem), because He is replacing it with a new one. Though you are exhausted and worn out, God is fueling you with His Spirit. And the person that you once were, is only a shell of the new person He is creating you to be. 

Yet you suffer on still trying to know God by His hand, all the while God is trying to show you His face!

...and the quiet still voice whispers once again, reminding you of the confidence you should have already had...

"BE STILL AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD"

Your Brother in Christ 
T.charves Pearsall

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[1] The meaning of Lodebar is not pasture or no communication

This post was inspired by Os Hilman (The Place of Nothingness) I change some words of it to suit my style but it is the anointing of God on him that wrote this not me.