Blest Assurance

"...Though trials should come, let this blest assurance control..."

I have begun a practice of asking my Facebook friends if they have prayer requests and being really intentional about praying for each person. While praying this second time, the above words came into my spirit. These words come from a well-known and often very comforting hymn called, "It is Well with My Soul."

This song begins with the words: "When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll." These are two opposite concepts, "peace" and "sorrows". But they are both in the same space in the same song. But the conclusion is somehow still "it is well".

The words that got stuck in my head and spirit when praying were "blest assurance". And the notion of saying "it is well", feeling the same level of 'wellness', in the face of both overwhelming peace and overwhelming sorrow takes a high level of faith.

While I was praying God showed me that the people that were asking for prayer were also people who in positions of leadership in their churches, who had dedicated their lives to ministry, lay leaders and ordained clergy alike, mostly women. God show me that the people who have dedicated their lives to serving God's people and helping other people find peace, faith and wellness often find themselves having their "wellness" challenged on a regular basis. They often find that they are able to care for others much better than they know how to care for themselves. They are about to bring peace to the personal struggles of others. But it's harder to take care of their own. It's a hard thing to face taking care of others knowing that when you go home you are facing something about yourself that you have no clue how to care for. Yet somehow we keep doing what we do.

But somehow that's where the "blest assurance" comes in. It's where that "it is well" comes in. Being able to say "it is well" in peace and sorrow in one of the gifts we have as ordained and lay faith leaders. The struggle is bring that "wellness", that "blessed assurance" we've mastered in our vocational lives into our personal lives. The hope and prayer is that we can be intentional about bringing that "peace that passes all understanding" from our sermon or our Bible study lesson or counseling session or whatever we do into our own lives lives.

My prayer is that we as faith leaders (lay and ordained) can find ways to bring that blessed assurance and wellness we have when you come before God's people into the our own lives and proclaim that it "it is well".

Love,

PurpleRev.