This blog is for my friends (there are several of you) that are going through difficult trials and suffering at this very moment…you know who you are. J I do not know if you have ever read the book, Hinds Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard but if you have not you really must get it…especially if you are suffering. It is based on the scripture
Habakkuk 3:19 “The Lord God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and he will make me walk upon high places.”

 I am reading it again.  It is one of my favorite books to read when I am experiencing suffering and sorrow, so every time I go through difficult times I read it again.  It is a comfort because it shows the spiritual journey Jesus takes us on and why sorrow and suffering are “allowed” on the journey.

            In the preface of the book it says, “The Song of Songs expresses the desire implanted in every human heart, to be reunited with God himself, and to know perfect and unbroken union with him.  He has made us for himself, and our hearts can never know rest and perfect satisfaction until they find it in him.  But the high places of victory and union with Christ cannot be reached by any mental reckoning of ourselves to be dead to sin, or by seeking to devise some way or discipline by which the will can be crucified.  The only way is by learning to accept, day by day, the actual conditions and tests permitted by God; by a continually repeated laying down of our own will and acceptance of his as it is presented to us in the form of the people with whom we have to live and work, and in the things that happen to us.  Every  acceptance of his will becomes an altar of sacrifice, and every such surrender and abandonment of ourselves to his will is a means of furthering us on the way to the High Places to which he desires to bring every child of his while they are still living on Earth.  The lessons of accepting and triumphing over evil, of becoming acquainted with grief, and pain and ultimately of finding them transformed into something incomparably precious; of learning through constant glad surrender to know the Lord of Love himself in a new way and to experience unbroken union with him…these are the lessons of the allegory in this book.” 

I must say that I could not have written it better myself.  I know it sounds like a commercial for the book and I guess maybe it is, but it is also the truth as I know it.  Laying down the control of our lives through cancer or any other traumatic experience leads to our growth in him.  We become more united in Jesus’ sufferings and therefore more like him.  It is hard thing to do but it is worth it for the depth of relationship we gain with him.  The yearning we have to love and to be loved fully in return is a common thread throughout humanity.  If we can simply trust him that all he allows is for our transformation, the love we desire can be ours…if only we can surrender our control.  He glories in our every attempt, because he knows are hearts are afraid.  It takes faith, which is really just trusting in his love of us, to surrender the fear to him.  It is a journey…a daily journey to the high places of his love.