Beauty in a Hard Place

Can you find the beauty in the cement? Not long ago I was at a Boathouse for the weekend for an event called Gathering of the 12. I never would’ve considered myself one for the outdoors, but I couldn’t get enough of sitting by the water. While I was admiring the water the Spirit of the Lord said, “Can you find the beauty in the cement? Beauty is everywhere, even in the hard places.” There I was sitting in front of the lake trying to press into the beauty of the hard place when I was there to escape the hard places. Truth is, it is the hard places that create the path to the next. The hard place is always the beginning of a thing because we cannot build without a hard place. It may seem like a place of abandonment but just like God remembered Noah, he remembers us because He remembers His Word. Do we remember His Word?

When I’m in a hard place I’m usually doing my best surrender to the will of God though it seems like things won’t ever change. Getting out of bed can seemed like the greatest accomplishment of the day. Things go from bad to worse back to bad and never better. It has been that time of getting excited about the relationship improving only to realize the good days were only manipulation to suck you back into the bad days. Got one medical issue resolved only to face another with another child. I have had the days of saying, “I’m done getting my hopes up.” Truth be told, sometimes I just want to turn my emotions off. If I didn’t have the emotions, I could be involved, maybe less invested, but definitely less affected. Because I have had the luxury of a lengthy stay in a hard place, I have wished I could turn my emotions off. Unfortunately, I would just be unresponsive to myself, those around me and most importantly God. The cure for the offense of our senses is trust in God. God wasn’t just looking for me to surrender in the physical. I had to surrender my heart, soul and all of my mind.

The hard place is a place of stability because it’s a place of new trust being established. In Exodus Chapter 17 the people Moses oversaw were grumbling against him because they were thirsty. God told Moses to strike the rock and water would come out so the people could drink, so he did, and the people drank. In Numbers chapter 20 God told Moses to speak to the rock so the people and their livestock could drink. Moses in his anger struck the rock twice and the people and their livestock drank. The people and the situation made Moses angry but in Numbers 20:12 God called it unbelief. The truth is when I want to kill off my emotions because I am tired of being angry and frustrated and hurt etc., I really just want to kill my unbelief. I have truly seen the beauty in the hard places when I removed the stone of unbelief and allowed belief to get into the dead places. I look myself in the mirror daily and tell myself who God is. I sit with God daily to hear what he is saying today. I don’t want to be like Moses where an immediate need is met but I forfeit the promise.