It is so like God, that the realization came only as I responded to a fellow believer who was sharing from a personal place of trial and struggle. He spoke of how the enemy temps us to simply “circle the wagons and stop sharing things”…to just draw those we love close together and “deal with it” privately.
I shared with my friend, not out of what I knew…but from what God was trying to teach me! Oddly, I could see the spiritual dynamic more clearly from the outside looking into another’s situation…while that same Kingdom perspective was missing from my own personal field of vision! As I shared with another what God was showing me, I saw what I myself had been missing! The “rest of the story”, so to speak…with regards to learning to “hold all thoughts captive to the Word of truth”, choosing to “speak life” , and “walking by faith not by sight”…without isolating.
I am learning, first hand, that when the enemy succeeds at isolating us he gets the glory he desires, by robbing God of HIS! He whispers lies to try to make us believe our “openness”... our willingness to be “real” and “vulnerable”... are somehow catalysts to our testing. It’s all part of the enemy’s economy …of “one”--to try to keep us too proud to ask others for help. The enemy loves Lone Rangers!
The story of King Jehoshaphat came alive to me personally as God showed me that, although he was the King of all Judah, he wasn’t so self-sufficient that he wouldn’t admit his army paled in comparison to the three forces united against him. He sought diving intervention AND called upon all his Kingdom for prayerful support (through a fast).
Making your requests known to God AND those He has put in your life is God’s economy! He never meant us to go it alone. How freeing it is to really grasp that.
Thank you Lord, for your ever-present, gentle guidance that leads me into ALL the Truth.