SUN.....STAND STILL...

At the recommendation from Ruth I am reading this book....

Sun...Stand Still by Steven Furtick

I have it on my Kindle and have been reading it whilst at the gym....doing my mile on treadmill...2 miles on the bike is boring but since discovering my Kindle fits the handy ledge on the controls it has been so much more bearable. I tell myself I am getting fitter physically and also spiritually too.!!

Usually I swim after my 40 mins in gym and it gives me time to ponder the chapter or two I have read so its been a great way to get this book into my system and it really has caught me ...more so than any other Christian book in a long time.

The main theme of the book is all about FAITH....and he uses the phrase...AUDACIOUS FAITH....and it is extremely challenging in may ways . The chapter I read this morning at the gym has been echo-ing around my mind all day and perhaps writing about it will help me to process it more.

Just to give you a brief explanation ...it is based on Joshua Chapter 10..when God causes the sun to stand still and delay going down.....Joshua prayed and God answered. Its a bit of a simplistic explanation but if you read the context you will know what kind of audacious prayer this was....and how God answered with a miracle.

In Chapter 13 of the book Steven writes about "When the sun goes down"....what do we do when the sun doesn't stand still for us

and talks about what happens when we pray ...in faith...but God doesn't give us a miracle. This chapter should be compulsory reading for us all...how to keep on...press on..keep believing...keep praying...keep hoping...keep having faith...even when the sun goes down on our prayer.!!

But what caught me even more in this chapter is ..he talks about the 40 years Joshua spent in the wilderness along with the rest of that generation...yes he had the privilege of leading the charge into the promised land but he still had to endure the wilderness...not his fault...nor was it his lack of faith....so Joshua didn't get to inherit the promise for a very long...long ...long time. Steven uses the phrase...


"Joshua spent a large part of his life living in the shadow of a setback "

He then asks the reader ....

"Maybe you are living in a similar shadow ....maybe you thought you would be closer to completing your life's goals by now...maybe you have done your part ...but something snuck up from behind and knocked you cold.....these seasons of setback can be fatal to your faith...its easy to lose your faith when the sun goes down and you can easily slip into a deep spiritual sleep in an attempt to escape the pain !


I think the words...living in the shadows....is what leaped out at me and has been resonating with me all day...the title of my blog is .."The Shadow of Victory" and has been all about living the life of faith whilst still not knowing complete freedom and healing and in a recent blog I shared that in one or two areas I have believed that I have begun to step out of the shadow and search for the sun. I know for sure that debt is a thing of the past and know that God certainly made the sun stand still for us when we were able to pay off our IVA...the sun stood still yet again when Chris was made redundant and very soon after he was able to semi retire and work two days per week at the church...for him this was most definitely a sun stand still miracle....I saw another sun stand still moment on the day Elisha was born...after such a long hard journey Cat and Nick experienced their own
sun stand still moment and we get to share in this every day.!

Finally...I am still experiencing a sun stand still moment....or season...in my own life with regards to the Gastric Bypass I had earlier this year. Similar to Joshua who had 40 years of desert wanderings...I have also struggled in the whole area of weight for almost 40 years and I can assure you it has been a desert of immense proportions. It wasn't the easiest of decisions to have the surgery and it certainly isn't the easy way out...it has been a hard slog over the last few months to get to grips with the new way of eating and how it affects my life in every way but I am getting there...the sun most definitely stood still for me and after decades of living under the shadow I am slowly but surely stepping into the sunlight and feeling the warmth of the sunrise. It feels good...it feels right...it feels strong...it feels like a miracle.! My very own sun stand still miracle .

Going back to the title of the chapter..." When The Sun Goes Down"...for me I thought that the sun had gone down on these areas of my life...I thought we would always be in debt ...I thought I would always struggle with my weight...I thought that the shadow was as good as I was going to get...and in some ways I settled for it....yet still...every now and then I would cry out to God...help me....help me...help me...I used to take certain verses from the bible about "persevering" and "pressing on" and use them as reasons to keep going. I deeply identify with the words that Steven uses about a "deep spiritual depression that is used to escape the pain"... only those who have known the shame of crippling debt and those who have known suicidal thoughts that decades of struggling with my weight can truly know how much I believed that the "sun had already gone down " The older I got the more I thought that it was too late ...and yet here I am ...today knowing without any doubt ...that

God caused the Sun to Stand Still long enough for me to step out of the shadow...