Eye of the storm – revealing God’s presence

By joannsblog2016 on March 28, 2019 • ( 0 )

“You have been with me from birth; from my mother’s womb you have cared for me.” Psalm 71:6

Have you seen the hands of God throughout your life? Have you seen Him carrying you in a moment, in a circumstance, through your lifetime? Have you ever sat down and written your spiritual biography, spiritual journey, from childhood? From the moment you first remembered God?

Perhaps it’s a good exercise. And you may uncover moments that God was there and at the time you just didn’t see Him or feel Him. Many of us don’t open up to an awareness of God until later in our lives. If you really sit down and review your life, I’m sure He will reveal Himself to you in a moment when you needed Him but you didn’t realize that He was right beside you – catching your tears, embracing you with a hug, removing you from a situation that wasn’t healthy or was dangerous, or just paving a path for the successes in your life by guiding your choices in accordance with His will.

I once read a testimony written by a lady and the image she described of God’s presence is one I can relate to living in the south near the Gulf of Mexico and in my own testimony. She painted the picture of a storm, a hurricane to be exact. If you know much about hurricanes, you know that one side is very windy, one side is very wet and rainy and the center is calm – no wind and no rain.

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Pexels.com

Life is kind of like the hurricane, it can get very windy and rainy. The storm will rage but in the center, God is there waiting for us. He never leaves the storm, never steps away from our life. He’s there in the calm, in the center of it all. The outer realms of the hurricane doesn’t necessarily have to be a trial or struggle your going through, it could just be the craziness of life. God is right in the center waiting for you to meet Him there.

When I think about this center, I think about the core of my being. Deep within me is where God is waiting for me. This center is where His will and my will align, where my heart and His love align, where the graces are poured out upon my life, where the strength is renewed and refreshed, where my joy radiates. There is no room for fear there, no room for anger, unforgiveness, anxiety, selfishness. Those are on the outer realms. They are the windy, rainy layers of my being. The more I go to this center, the more in touch of who I truly am, who I was truly created to be before I was “formed in my mother’s womb.”

There are so many things that go on in our outer circles of us that influence where we are in a moment in time. These environmental affects involve people, events, circumstances. Sometimes they can really influence the winds and the rain of our being. They can really stir up the storm. These are the moments I think we don’t see God in our life. It isn’t until we go to that “eye of the storm,” the core of our soul that we see God and what He has done in our life or is doing in our life.

I recently had to look back on my life and uncover a place that I never want to go back to. Although it was painful, it strengthened my faith and my trust in God. Looking back I could see that it was only through the grace of God, His strength present in the center of my storm, the center of my being, that brought me out of this place to a place of love and joy.

One of the things I notice when I go back to my past is that it isn’t until I was open to seeing God that I went into the center and allowed Him to align my path to the journey He had prepared for me. Although He was there, as long as I stayed in the circumstance of the storm, the outer layers, I didn’t see Him. It was when I was ready to go deeper within me that I became aware of God’s presence and allowed Him to pull me to a place that aligned with His will for me. I think this is where our faith grows to a deeper level in our relationship with God. It is this realization that opens us up to surrender and trust in God in our life. This reality proves that He is and always has been with us and cared for us.