HE SPOKE TO ME AS A FRIEND

I was returning from a draining financial and legal appointment, weeping in my car because I had cried out to God that our creditor might be merciful, and instead, they had thrown the book at us…at me. My anger and frustration were as genuine as they had ever shown themselves to be in my life. Our predicament was indeed the result of our own careless and irrational decisions, yet in my efforts to make things right, I fully expected God to rescue me on that particular day. Why had he abandoned me?

I wept bitterly on that ride home from Rockford, my anger mixed with regret and remorse and hopelessness. The outlook was very grim. Financially, it looked grim and I knew that in my home that evening, the outlook was even grimmer.

My faith in God was not gone. My salvation began on a firm foundation and had been spent with unsurpassed support around me. My life up until that point had been one of an intimate walk with God, learning, loving, failing, getting up again, growing. That day, looking back, though I tottered, underneath me were “the everlasting arms.”

In my crushed condition, I reached for the knob on my radio…and for help. I think I wanted a hymn, but the announcer had already begun the introduction of the next song… “sometimes He calms the storm.” Inwardly and aloud, I scoffed. “Contemporary Christian music! God always calms the storm!” The song began. I heard the next line, “and sometimes He calms His child.”

I heard none of the song after that. My sobs shook my body and spirit for I knew that this was one of those times when the storm would not be calmed in the near future. I seized the sermon. God would calm His child.

Almost immediately, I was sufficiently calmed to hear what God wanted to say. Drained and clinging to the hope that God was holding out to me, I drank in the next song: A Mighty Fortress Is our God. Powerfully, I was reminded to “let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also, the body they may kill, God’s truth abideth still, His kingdom is forever.” In one stroke, everything was in perspective.

For many years after that day, I did not hear again the song about God calming His child, (which in itself is interesting), but etched on my heart is the truth that God in His desire to be intimate with me, unmistakably spoke to me in the time of trouble. There is no sense trying to talk me into thinking that this was all a coincidence. It has happened too many time for that to be so.

I have always loved how the Bible says that God spoke with Moses as a man speaking with His friend. I have beseeched God, “I want to be like that.” It’s not unthinkable to me at all anymore that God wishes to be intimate with me. “The Lord takes pleasure in those that fear Him, in those that hope in His mercy.” I fear Him. I hope in His mercy. He takes pleasure in me!