– 1 Samuel 1:10
Un-Crush Your Soul
Has the weight of life ever pressed down on you so hard that you feel as if your very soul has been crushed? Have people hurt you and talked about you and the tauntings of misunderstood circumstances jumped on your back like a 300 lb. maniacal wrestler? Have you tried and tried and no matter how hard or how many times you've tried nothing seems to change the situation and the crush keeps crushing, and the jabs keep jabbing, and the pain keeps wringing your heart like a ragged dishcloth? Unfair? Unwarranted? Unjust? Unbearable? Understandable.
As long as apple cores and fig leaves have been used to illustrate the frailty of human resolve, disappointment and cruel injustices have set out to slowly, methodically, and systematically destroy the happy-happy joy-joy expectations we have for our lives. The enemy hates us, and he has figured out that the creative cruelty of other human beings is the best and most painful way to deflate, defeat, and destroy us, and by doing so, effectively taking our focus off of the power of the Cross to overcome any injustice and heal every wound inflicted by the ultimate defeated and crushed creature of all time . . . the father of lies.
Hannah took her pain to God. She prayed a passionate prayer of desperation, but her prayer wasn't to make the hurting stop. It was to change her situation. Through her painful, inconsolable struggle to un-crush her soul, Hannah petitioned God to allow her to have a child which in turn, she would give back to Him. As a result, Samuel was born, and Samuel grew up with God and served God as one of the Bible's great prophets. Hannah only wanted to be healed from the emotional torture that she was subjected to for most of her adult life, and God, in honoring her heartfelt cries of desperation, changed the lives of a nation.
Does your soul need un-crushing? Are you desperate for a change – in your circumstances, in your self-esteem, in your life? Pour your heart out before God. Get alone with Him and get real. Hold nothing back because you've got nothing to lose and besides, God is already planning your change – He's making the necessary arrangements in response to what you ask (see 1 Samuel 1:19B). He's just waiting for the right attitude, the moment when the crush of your soul gets you before Him with an inconsolable attitude – an attitude that lets Him know that you know, that you believe, that you finally understand . . . that He is your God, the god who knows you! The God who has your change already planned. The God who (by the way), loves you so very much! He has your back, and HE, will un-crush your soul.
Prayer
Father, thank You that You have our change already in the works. Help us to understand that You are the answer so that we don't waste so much time feeling sorry for ourselves. Forgive us for forgetting whoYou are and for trying to find comfort in man and man-made things. We offer up our inconsolable pain and ask for Your plan to be unfolded in and through our lives.
Have a blessed day everyone!
– Richard
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