I have been talking in previous posts about fight, flight, and freeze and how these defensive responses protect us. Our minds are always scanning the environment for threats. When it perceives a threat, it starts sending warning signals to us. But as I’ve been talking about, I grew up being taught to push past those warning signals and instead to use that “I think I can” energy. My mind/body was trying to protect me by sending those warning signals, so when I did not pay attention to them, my mind/body amplified them. So by the time I got the message, the pain was very intense.

I’ve also been talking in previous posts about how we are learning to see Jesus as our shepherd, guiding us along the pathway to heaven. We are learning to follow Him…to listen to His voice. When I was meditating this week with that imagery of following on the path, I realized how much I have been guided by pain. And also how those pain signals have to be really intense for me to be able to get the message. I would see myself walking along, then the pain signal would start out slowly. And then as I kept walking or even started running to try to push past them, I would eventually hit a wall of intense pain that would put me into a shutdown. It made me think…what if instead of going until I felt pain, I really learn to listen for God’s still, small, voice….listen for it all the time. Listen for the early warnings from Him. You could envision either walking off the pathway a little bit, and then hearing Jesus whisper to you…and you return to Him sooner before you begin to feel pain. Practice with that because that will be a continual process throughout life. Every day, you will continue to take some steps off the pathway. But we can work on improving the process of returning to Him faster…and not feeling so much pain before we do. It’s also important to remember that pain is involved when you are on the pathway also…not just when you walk off of it. During those times of pain, look to Jesus for relief and comfort. Start listening for His voice at the first sign of discomfort, rather than trying to outrun the pain. Talk to Jesus continually…letting Him guide you all the time. When I did that, I started making progress with being able to feel a soothing, healing energy.

So, those defensive systems are there to protect us and can be very helpful to us. But if they have been firing off too much for too long of a period of time without ever resolving into a calmer state, your system gets overwrought. So again…in working with that imagery. I thought through how I used to process my environment, which was that I would push myself and push through situations until I felt intense stress or pain. If I’m thinking of it in terms of walking on that pathway, I see how much I was walking without looking to my guide. But if I envisions stopping and looking to Jesus as I’m walking on that pathway, and hearing words of guidance and comfort from Him…the stress signals do not get so amplified. I hope this is making sense with me typing this because my throat is still hurting so I can’t whisper a voice note right now. Basically, when I envisioned being guided by pain as I walked on the pathway, there were a lot of jolts of energy or electricity and there was more pain and stress. The jolts of energy would get my attention and let me know I needed to make a change. But when I envisioned being guided by Jesus on the pathway, I saw more cooling colors. There were times where I stopped to talk to Him, and His words of comfort were soothing to me. I was led by His gentle words and whispers. And it prevented those stress signals from getting so amped up and so intense.

While I was meditating on that, God was reminding me of how it says in the Bible that God draws us with cords of love. In Hosea 11:4 God says, “I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love. To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek, and I bent down to feed them.” In this verse we see the imagery of a loving shepherd tenderly caring for His sheep. It made me think of 2 hymns I have posted on here that talk about this: “Close, Close to Thee” by Fanny Crosby – Learning to Live by Faith and “I Hear a Loving Voice” by Fanny Crosby – Learning to Live by Faith. And Hannah Whitall Smith talks about this a lot in her book “God of All Comfort”…she talks about the importance of seeing God as a loving father and Jesus as our Good Shepherd. He really does love us and will gently guide us on the pathway. So envision walking along and hearing Jesus’ loving voice. Feel those cords of love drawing you closer to Him and keeping you on that pathway. Learn to be guided lovingly rather than only being guided by pain.

I wrote in a recent post about imagery from Song of Solomon where we are riding with Christ in His royal carriage through the dark wilderness of this world. I drew this diagram of the carriage when I was reading through a Spurgeon sermon that I will have to try to find another time.

This diagram shows the symbolism of the carriage. Remember, we ride inside this carriage with Jesus. The top of it is purple and represents Christ’s atonement…we are covered by Christ’s atonement. The 4 silver pillars represent God’s justice, power, love, and immutability (God’s attribute of being unchanging). The bottom of the chariot is made of gold and represents God’s eternal purposes…we are trusting in God’s promises to us. There is a cushion of love that we sit on. It represents both our love to Christ and His love to us. We rest in His love. I will find that sermon sometime soon hopefully and we can go over the imagery more. But this gives you an idea of what to meditate on. Here is a link with images of palanquins so you can see what one would look like: Human Powered Sedans – The Story of Palanquins — Google Arts & Culture. The carriage that I drew a diagram of would look something like the carriages that are covered and would have posts that people would carry it by. You will see those when you scroll down on the page in the link.

So those are some images of being guided by love that you can use. In “Close, Close to Thee” by Fanny Crosby – Learning to Live by Faith we call out to God and ask Him to draw us to Him. You can envision Him using those cords of love. And “I Hear a Loving Voice” by Fanny Crosby – Learning to Live by Faith talks about hearing God’s loving voice. You can envision hearing that loving voice as you walk on the pathway. And the image of resting on that cushion of Christ’s love to you and being covered by His atonement as you ride with Him in that carriage is helpful as well. Again, we are trying to learn how to live by faith…how to be motivated by our love to God…and to be guided by His love for us…as we travel through this world eagerly awaiting our reward: getting to see Jesus face to face and live with Him forever in heaven.