by Patsy Grubb
I am constantly amazed at the innate ability creation has to adapt to changing surroundings and circumstances. God in His infinite wisdom has caused His creation to be as resilient and flexible as it is diverse.
There are creatures who live in water and yet in times of drought bury themselves deep in the earth to survive until the next wet season arrives. Camels who like to drink once a week, however, survive for much longer periods without water. Trees that require fire in order to reseed. Animals who shed their skins or lose or lessen their coats through malting, depending on their needs. Lizards and reptiles that drop their tails in order to escape predators. Animals that have the ability to blend perfectly with their surroundings through colour change. Everywhere we look in nature we can see amazing examples of adaptation, often due to extreme circumstances and of course due to the natural cycles of life.
We as humans seem to be in many ways less willing to adapt to our surroundings and /or circumstances, preferring instead to control our environments very carefully in order to minimise it’s impact upon us. We take every opportunity to control every aspect of our lives to ensure our safety and security lies within our own hands. We invent and reinvent ……….. surroundings, gadgets, relationships, communities and entire lives.
Rarely do we embrace that which will strengthen, discipline and develop us, but rather we search out that which will comfort, appease and pleasure us; often to our great detriment. Regardless of our need or desire we will always control from a base of fear. Fear will always be at the heart of control regardless of our consciousness of it.
Just as we seek to control in the natural, we also attempt to control in the realm of the soul. In order to feel safe and secure we distance ourselves from our negative experiences and the resulting emotions and begin to create an environment or false reality that enables us to feel less threatened and less hurt. Pain is an alarm system that warns us that something is not right, out of balance or order. It is a powerful indicator. However we tend to mask pain to gain temporary relief rather than investigating the origin /source of it. We begin to erect barriers and structures around us that enable us to better deal with the situation/experience and the pain thereof. We deal with our pain and discomfort and for a time are satisfied, however, because the source has not been found and treated it is only a matter of time before the pain and discomfort returns often in a greater measure and so the need for greater control arises. For many this process is repeated time and time again until they are surrounded by mechanisms that allow them to cope ,to exist, but have robbed them of any quality of life.
When we receive the revelation that we must deal with our pain at the source, in order to be free of it, we then find ourselves with the unenviable task of having to dismantle the very structures we have erected for our self protection, in order to get to that original source.
By nature we take that which God has made simple for our sake, and inadvertently complicate it until we become almost lost in its complexities. Our pain and grief along with the structures we have put in place to deal with them become like a giant spider web which entangles us. The more we struggle to escape the more entangled we become until the very fear we have been seeking to avoid paralysis us and causes us to become devoid of life.
Our only true escape from fear is to surrender to the love of God.
John 4:18 tells us, “there is no fear in love: but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.”
In order to be free from fear and the subsequent need to control every factor of our lives and the lives of others, we must allow ourselves to be filled and perfected by the love of God. Only then can we be truly free to be all that we were created to be. Just as God Himself ensures the rising and the setting of the sun, the ebb and flow of the tides, the phases of the moon, He Himself has orchestrated a perfect plan for our life.
In order to truly live we must draw what we need from the source of our existence, not try to manufacture for ourselves that which we believe we need.
The perfect love of God is the only true source of total security and it is freely available to everyone through Jesus Christ.
My prayer would be that we swiftly find freedom in surrender.
