Finding Shelter in the Promised Savior

How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
—Psalm 36:7

 

Can God restore what’s been broken?

Wearing a plaid jumper and scuffed Mary Jane shoes, at four years old, I stood rooted to a spot on the swirling green carpet as I watched my father walk out the front door of our apartment. I was sure everything good in my life was leaving with him.

Standing with my face pressed to the window as his form receded into the distance, I reasoned, If my father, who is supposed to love me leaves me, that must mean I’m not worth staying for.

The enemy of my soul lost no time leveraging this colossal rejection to his advantage. My young ears heard, “You’re nothing and no one.”

The words eviscerated me before I knew what eviscerated meant, emptying my heart of worth and identity. The Enemy’s lies sucked the life from my lungs. For years afterward, I felt like I couldn’t quite catch my breath.

Sensing his advantage—as all vile predators do—the Enemy pressed in: “And the best you can hope for is to fake everyone out. Build a life on the outside that looks good, and maybe someone will think you’re something after all.”

I grasped for the straw offered me—I would control others’ reaction to me by becoming perfectly unrejectable. In that moment my life shifted onto a foundation of fear based on my uneven performance. It was Eve’s dilemma at the fall. I fell for the lie that I had to do something, in order to have something, in order to be something.4 Can you relate?

Heartbroken and deceived, I made a life-altering, unholy vow: “I will never let anyone reject me again.” And God help me, I didn’t.

Trying to control my own life would cost my freedom as I focused every ounce of energy on performing, pleasing, and proving. It meant my true self would go into hiding from God and others for years. It meant living in constant fear of what would happen if I didn’t keep measuring up.

Sisters, that’s the price we pay for trying to be our own saviors.

Fortunately, God never stops pursuing us—even when we’ve gone into hiding. Eight years after my dad left, Jesus, the promised Savior, came for me. And when he did, my hiding days were numbered.

Sisters, that’s the price we pay for trying to be our own saviors.

I was twelve. My mother had remarried, and we were running a ski resort in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

One Sunday night, after all the weekend skiers had left, my mother and I were alone in the resort’s lobby watching Dr. Billy Graham, who was preaching about the Samaritan woman of John 4. First, Dr. Graham broke the bad news: I had a sin problem that separated me from a holy God.

As I sat there thinking about my offenses, I knew I had no means to make amends on my own. Even at twelve, I realized that though I could fool everyone else, God knew the state of my heart. And it wasn’t pretty.

But then the good news of the gospel broke over my heart like a wave of living water. That night I encountered a God who loved me enough to pursue me. I was surrounded with a growing sense of God’s love that called me—for the first time—out of hiding.

That night I encountered a God who loved me enough to pursue me.

Since my dad’s abandonment, I had lived in a place of fear, constantly expecting rejection. But on this night, in a life-altering encounter with the presence of God, I knew I was safe. The Holy Spirit gave me the ability to believe, for the first time, that there was something in me Jesus valued and loved. I knew that despite my inability to produce anything of lasting value on my own, he valued me as I am. Jesus died in my place because he loves me.

He had come for me, and as the Holy Spirit worked, I trusted that Jesus was my bridge from sin and shame into the Father’s arms of love and acceptance. With just-birthed faith, I stepped out of hiding and into the shelter of his arms.

Pursued Out of Hiding

What makes you feel like hiding right now? If this season of your life had a vocabulary list, you might be rehearsing words like frustration, betrayal, disappointment, disbelief, overwhelm, concern, anxiety. And underneath them all, fear. Not hard words to spell or define. But words that are hard to voice and even harder to swallow.

You may not be sure how you got here. You were the good girl, one of the church ladies or neighborhood “dependables,” going about your business (or was that busyness?). Doing all the things. Running VBS. Teaching Sunday school or children’s church or ESL classes for foreign refugees. Volunteering for the least appealing positions for the fundraising benefits. Serving the marginalized in your community. Homeschooling your kids. Giving generously. And now this? This is not what you expected after trying so hard to follow and please God.

The crisis you now face has left you feeling like a fawn trying to find her footing on an icy pond. Fear gnaws at your spirit, nibbling away unseen in the dark. What form has it taken? Fear of death or loss or destitution? Fear of rejection, of failure, or even of success? Fear of the future? Fear for your children’s future?

The incident (or incidences) has turned life upside down. Nothing is the same—schedules, routines, relationships. Amid the tumult, you may be questioning God, feeling like he has forgotten you as you stagger under the weight of this strange new reality.

Take heart, my sister. You’re not forgotten or alone.

Speaking to the exiles of Israel, God said these words through the prophet Isaiah: “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands” (Isaiah 49:15–16 NIV).

God’s care for us is even greater than that of a loving, faithful parent, deeper than that of a newborn’s mother. What if, in the pain of your crisis, God is offering you an unexpected gift? What if hidden under all the overwhelming bills and junk mail that have come with this season of suffering, he has sent an engraved invitation for you to encounter him as you never have before?

Where’s the evidence?

That’s what we’re here to talk about. And we can find it in the earliest pages of our sacred story.

Eve: Our Sister in Sacred Refuge

To discover how Jesus restores the abandoned, broken, and hopeless, let’s go back to the place where unholy fear was birthed and humanity’s battle began. Since the moment after the fall—when Eve and then Adam chose to listen to a voice other than God’s—we have experienced the consequences of trying to run our own lives. Eyes now wide open, we know we are in trouble. Fear descends, acidic, into our bowels.

It feels like hiding is our only recourse. Soon control, fear’s companion, sets up shop in our spirits, droning its unholy mantra: “It’s all up to you. It’s all up to you. It’s not safe to relinquish control of your life into God’s hands. He’s not good. He’s not trustworthy.”

Is there hope?

For those of us who know Jesus, there is great hope. He alone can answer our hearts’ cry from the vortex of crisis: “Can God really restore what’s been broken?”

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Order your copy of Sacred Refuge: Finding Unexpected Shelter in Your Crisis by Lynne Rienstra