Sitting With God
Do you remember when the Apostle Paul had an issue that needed to be fixed? He kept asking God for the fix; and the answer that he received was, “My Grace is sufficient for you.” Or another way of saying it is: “Paul, I will sit with you.”
And while that might not seem like much consolation to some, Paul got it. The light turned on inside him. We can see that his cry for help turned into excitement, peace and a comfort that seemed to be more than enough. He boldly declared with this reality that his insufficiencies no longer mattered because God was there. In whatever weakness he felt or distressful situation he was facing, he was empowered with the knowledge that God was with him. That he and God could sit in this trouble together. And all would be well.
The bible speaks of this reality many times and in many ways. The Lord’s very name, Emanuel, is “God with us” or you could say, “God sits with us.” He said “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” That means whenever there is trouble or hardship, He will be right there, sitting with us. He said, “Lo, I am with you always. I haven’t left and I’m not leaving. I will sit here with you. And you will be fine.”
In my life, I’ve had a lot of situations that needed to be fixed, just like you have or anybody else has. But the thing that has brought the lasting peace that becomes a part of our personality, is a real awareness that God is with us. We feel strength when we remember that we are not in this alone, that the One who holds all things together is right here with us.
I (Judi) had an experience much like what Rick is describing. I was in a deep depression after a big breakup. I was desperate to get out of it and was trying to do more volunteer work in order to keep busy. As I was leaving to go sign up for the work, I remember I felt that the Lord was telling me to “sit down.” My heart sank. It was as if God was putting me on the bench. I wasn’t even well enough to volunteer. I told Him, “But if I sit down, I will just become a couch potato, sitting and watching TV.” (What a waste, was my thought.) And then I heard these sweet words: “I’ll sit with you.”
Instead of fixing me, the Lord joined me in the depression. He sat with me, encouraged me and slowly weaved his ways into me. After some time, I started to sing and I realized that something really was shifting inside of me. Life was swallowing up death. His Life was on the inside of me, and that Life was strong enough to drown out the lies of death (depression). I was amazed. He sat with me. His grace was absolutely sufficient. It wasn’t the quick fix I had been looking for, it was something much better and longer lasting. When you sit down with someone, you can learn their ways, their thoughts, their personality. You can listen and you can heal.
Rick here again. When we are in a difficult time, God can often make no sense to us. His thoughts are not our thoughts. And while we desperately want our situation to be fixed, He often offers to sit with us. This is good because in those times, when we can’t see the light, God will just sit with us in our darkness. What we eventually find is, though we could see (or even feel) no changes, we realize that God was doing something wonderful all along. He was loving us, caring for us, and Life was slowly swallowing up death.
This is where people fall in love with God. It is because of these times that we joyfully tell the stories of our hopeless situations and how we eventually sang again. We find that it really wasn’t the situation that needed to be fixed, as much as we needed a season of just letting God sit with us. Maybe you’re dealing with with some difficulty in your life now. Maybe its a good time to know that God is sitting with you. And something better than you asked for is happening. Perhaps that is why the Bible says that He made us to sit together with Him in heavenly places. Sometimes the dark circumstance can actually be a heavenly place with Jesus.