A VERY WEIRD SONG FROM GOD

Not always was my downcast soul due to financial problems. Sometimes it was just me working my way through things. I’m generally hard on myself and too, since relationships are so important to me, they often placed me up against a brick wall. In these instances, my woe was private. I looked okay. I sounded okay. Yet, especially at night, in the dark, my face in the pillow, everyone else asleep, the real condition of Sharon Heldman showed itself. I mostly think it was healthy and the very process that helped me make it through, because it was then that I could even be transparent with God.

I remember vividly one night sort of creeping into bed, in a near fetal position before I even hit the mattress. Such weariness, yet, my heart turned immediately to crying out to God. From way down deep somewhere I whispered a request… “Please give me a song or a verse or something to help.”

Nothing happened and I just laid there, glad to be horizontal. I needed God to touch me and He knew it…”He knows those who take refuge in Him.” I asked Him again if He would not just give me a song or a verse. I wanted it to come from Him. I’m good at conjuring up stuff and I don’t like when I do.

Then a song came. “Drink to me only with thine eyes and I will pledge thee mine.” A popular old English love song from the 1600s!  I was disgusted. “Oh, brother,” I thought. “Great song…big help.” Still laying on my side and rolled up in a little ball, I again prayed intently, “Lord, I need to hear from You.” The ridiculous song came again. I rejected it fully and proceeded towards going to sleep.

Probably five to ten minutes later, as sleep began to come, the light dawned. God had given me the right song…I was singing the wrong words. A song that I had not thought of for a very long time stirred within me and I started to sing inside of me the words that a Christian had put to that old love song written in the 1600s. “I heard the voice of Jesus say, ‘Come unto Me and rest. Lay down thou weary one, lay down thy head upon My breast. I came to Jesus as I was…weary and worn and sad, I found in Him my resting place and He has made me glad.” God had reached down and responded to me, His child!

Think of the truth of this story! Almighty God who opened the Red Sea for Moses and stopped the sun and moon for Joshua and created the inchworm and the universe, knows me personally and interacts with me personally. The longer I live, the more I am convinced that He will be intimate with and powerful with those who wish it to be so.

The Lord knows those who take refuge in Him. The Lord knows those who hope in His mercy. The Lord knows those who fear Him. The secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him. Those are all statements from His Word. When we cling to Him and hope in Him and seek Him, He will be found. It is one of His promises.

My friends all know...and God knows...my great love for Matthew 11:28 and how I quote in out loud whenever I see that the digital clock shows 11:28: Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. I find it gripping to know He purposefully made sure I heard His voice in my moment of longing for Him. “Come to Me and rest,” Jesus said.  I did. I rested. I grew.

July 2006