Tuesday 29 October 2019

I see that you are tired!

“I see that you are tired!”- is the first line of a song I love to play and listen to*. It is Jesus speaking to a person in great distress, and the next line is not really comforting: “but I cannot walk all the steps for you – have to walk them yourself”. If it had stopped there, it would have been very sad, however, the song continues: “But I will walk with you”.

The next verses of the song deal with pain and Jesus crying with the person and when he still wants to give up Jesus says that he cannot live his life, but live with him and even turn death to life for him.
The song gives a true picture of how I see God in Jesus – a God who is with us in our sufferings. Even Isaiah saw that many years before God revealed himself in Jesus, he wrote:

I live in a high and holy place,
but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly
and to revive the heart of the contrite.

Isaiah 57:15
I have seen God doing miracles. I have seen people being healed, and I have also seen people who have not experienced healing even though they themselves and people around them have been praying for healing for years. However, among those living with pain and suffering I also find people who can testify that God is present and suffering with them.

Twenty-seven years ago a man arrived to a prayer-chapel just I was going to start the meeting. I noticed that he didn’t walk very well and he had brought a soft chair which he sat in. After the meeting I spoke with him. He told that he had suffered with Multiple Sclerosis and had been in a wheel-chair, but was convinced that God would heal him. “He has started the process”, he said, “and when I asked him where his angels were this evening, I saw one behind you!” – “It will happen, you see!”. His favourite verse was: 

“For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways”. 
Psalm 91:11 
I only met this man once.
In an interview with him several years later, I read his story. He was now living a normal life and running the family farm. He shared his testimony. As a young man, he wanted his own carrier, and was not realizing that in doing so, he also drifted away from God. When the sickness struck him, it brought him back to the foundation of his life. His life in Christ. Jesus was with him in the suffering. When he felt that he could not go out on the field and did not have strength to lift the stone, Jesus said he would walk with him, and stone by stone ‘together with Jesus’ he also regained health.

Very often it is in the hardship, and not in the miracles, we realize the value of God being with us. 
I have experienced remarkable healing in my own life and family. However, in a long depression I was not ready to admit the fact that I was depressed, because God’s presence was just as strong as in the good days. I am grateful for this ‘hard-time’ experience in the same way as I am grateful for experiencing God’s presence when I was injured in a suicide-bombing in Istanbul in 2016.

I know that God sees YOU when you are tired, when you weep, when you want to give up – I pray that you will see him as well, because he is there beside you!

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Published in the Russian War Cry #4 2019 p 8
Link to Sissel Kyrkjebø's version
Link to the song - with English text 

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