REFUGE
I remember when I first sought refuge in the church. My life was completely unmanageable and I really didn’t care if I lived or died. It seemed as though everything I had tried to do had failed.
When I first accepted Jesus as my Saviour, I didn’t find life easy. Whilst the church and my new found Christian friends were giving me help and encouragement. I still continued to hang on to the past. I still found myself being influenced by my past reputation and by my old friends and I felt I was becoming two people, each eager to be a people pleaser.
I prayed often, but always in secret. I was afraid that my old friends would not understand and might even laugh at me. For a long time I found that even going out was a problem. If I was out walking with Christian friends I was afraid I might bump into my non-Christian friends and vice-versa.
I prayed and kept asking God why after all the pain I’d experienced in the past, life was still as complicated. Many of my old friends said I was just using the church as a crutch, because I couldn’t cope with the real world.
I knew God was speaking to me If only I would stop long enough to listen to what He had to say. I stopped and took time out and waited, read my Bible prayerfully and listened and prayed - it was then that I began to understand. I was not running away from the pressures of the real world, but from a life lived without God. I realised a life without God, Is not a life at all.
When I read about Noah I believe I can now understand what God wants us all to do. Like Noah, we are all to come out of the desert and get on board. The old life will be taken from us and we will be trained in the ways that are of God. When the time is right we will emerge as a new creation and just like Noah - to a new beginning.
We all have to enter the ark of the people of God.
Genesis 7:11-16 and 1 Peter 3:20
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