I Won’t Let Go

Today begins my third week of living in Wake Forest. So far I have had many good experiences. Everyone that I’ve met seems welcoming and friendly, and I’ve had good times hanging out with them and getting to know them. However, there have been several lonely moments in the past two weeks. Now, I know that building a close group of friends takes time, and I know that once I get settled in a Church, and a job, and when school starts, friendships and community will come a lot more naturally. So, I came into this experience knowing that this wouldn’t be easy, and wanting to use this time to grow closer to God, and rely more on Him.

With all of that as a preface, today has been one of those not easy days. Sometimes I feel like a fish that has been forced to live on dry land, and is only given water to moisten her gills every other day. Oh how refreshing the cool water of potential friendships is right now! While I was thinking about ways to shake off this funk I’ve been in today, I remembered the song “I Won’t Let Go” by Rascal Flatts (see video below). A couple weeks after graduation, Andy (see my previous post), told me that whenever I heard that song, I could pretend that he was saying those words to me.

Something I realized this afternoon is that these lyrics can also be thought of as coming from God. In fact, He really is the only one who can tell us that He won’t let go. Our friends and family may tell us the same thing, and mean it, but ultimately God is the only one who can hold us forever. Life happens.  We live in a broken world where people and things get torn away from us temporarily or permanently for reasons that are completely out of our control. Instead of first turning to people for help, we need to turn first to God as our comfort and help. If we rely anyone or anything else as our primary source of comfort, we will eventually end up in a pit of depression, anger, sadness, pride, or [insert your sin here]. One day that person or that thing won’t provide the comfort that it used to and you’ll be left empty and broken, which is how you (by you and I mean, me, us, humanity) started out in the first place but didn’t realize it.

I have really been struggling with this recently (if you couldn’t already tell). It seems so much easier to turn to a human who I can see, hear, and feel rather than a God who seems far away, or trapped in the pages of a book. However, those thoughts are just lies that my sinful nature wants me to believe. I need to turn to God first. He needs to be my primary source of help. Otherwise, I will never be able to bring Him the glory that He deserves. He rescued us from the pit of death! He deserves our everything. To remind myself of these thoughts while I am working through my present “not easy”/lonely days, I am going to try to focus on the following quote and chapter of scripture. I hope they can be of some help to you too.

Your day will come. In the meantime, don’t short-circuit His plans and purposes by taking shortcuts. God is setting you up. He is making divine appointments. But the bigger the opportunity, the longer it takes. The reason we get frustrated is because we think big without thinking long. That is a recipe for disappointment. Reevaluate your timeline. That simply means that God wants to do something immeasurably more than all you can ask or imagine.
—Mark Batterson

Psalm 121 (NIV)

¹ I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
where does my help come from?
² My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth.

³ He will not let your foot slip—
he who watches over you will not slumber;
⁴ indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.

⁵ The LORD watches over you—
the LORD is your shade at your right hand;
⁶ the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.

⁷ The LORD will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;
⁸ the LORD will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.

Much Love,
Sarah

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[Update 7/23/11 9:15pm] After receiving feedback I have decided just to use the WordPress subscription service. You can still access it on the sidebar. Please let me know if there are any problems with it.