How Do I Get Back There?? (Part 2 of 4)

This place I am in… The crumbly cliff in a shifting, shadowy darkness that I am still stuck on… A place I can’t move. Merely trying to get my feet firmly on the ground… this place is not where I want to be. I never wanted to fall. I never meant to end up in a place so devoid of life and connection. This is not me at all.

Lord, how do I get out??

Agitation and frustration are first and foremost. They irk the soul and make the darkness worse with discontent and anxiousness at each shifty shadow. This place is not me. Not my home. Not my purpose. How do I leave when I don’t even really know why I am here? How do I get back where I was standing, safe, in control? How do I get back to where life was just honestly easier??

Return to God. Just like we must remember the last thing God spoke to our soul, we must return to the places he told us to dwell in. What was the last action he gave? I know for sure He told me “to seek my face and wait.” He told me to trust. So I return to a place of Trust and Wait. That’s the hard part though. Regardless of what falls around me, I have to return to Him and trust. Even on a cliff’s edge where all seems awful and I must contend with the fear and failure, I must return to the place he told me to be. Return to what he told you to do. Return and Seek Him and Trust Him.

In multiple Narnia stories, C.S. Lewis speaks of the theme of “return.” Shasta is a slave in a foreign land in The Horse and His Boy, returning to Narnia. Peter, Edmund, Susan and Lucy are called in a Return to Narnia by the horn when they are needed. For all the Narnia travelers’ efforts to return in The Last Battle, they returned only at Aslan’s will and timing.

Perhaps Jonah is a needed example with his willful refusal to go to Nineveh, and having to return to God’s will. Now just because one is stuck somewhere, doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve done wrong. Some strong-willed children may need to be on a cliff in order to learn what God is teaching them. Maybe some are Jonahs’ running from God and rock bottom is where they give up and return to him. Others are merely waiting for Aslan’s call to return them physically to where they’ve disciplined their heart to dwell while in the wilderness.

Return is our Father God’s heart.
Jeremiah 24:6-7 ~  My eyes will watch over them for their good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up and not tear them down; I will plant them and not uproot them. I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart.

2 Chronicles 30:8-9 ~  Do not be stiff-necked, as your ancestors were; submit to the Lord. Come to his sanctuary, which he has consecrated forever. Serve the Lord your God, so that his fierce anger will turn away from you.  If you return to the Lord, then your fellow Israelites and your children will be shown compassion by their captors and will return to this land, for the Lord your God is gracious and compassionate. He will not turn his face from you if you return to him.”

Return to God’s heart. That last place you were in his will may be the place you need to go literally, or perhaps it is the more difficult - a heart return to the Great Lion.

Remember and Return.