Grace Under Fire

Who or what do you think of when you hear this phrase? Usually we think of someone who is able to keep their cool through intense situations. Someone who has “ice in their veins.” We say this a lot about athletes who can compete at the highest level even when the game is on the line. We also think of more serious circumstances when someone can remain level-headed through very dangerous situations. We think of these people as almost non-human, having the ability to remain unaffected by the circumstances around them. A lot of times we idolize them as we watch them achieve great things. We praise this ability to force themselves to do something that most of us would run from. We praise their ability to dig deep into their own strength and win the battle of nerves or fear or death.

I recently heard the song “Another in the Fire,” by Hillsong United. I understand that people have different opinions on Hillsong and their songs but if you can just lay that down for a minute and look at these lyrics with me.

The song starts with, “There’s a grace when the heart is under fire.” The first time I heard this song I just about fell apart from line one. My heart has been under intense fire from the enemy for years now. There has been no peace or even a temporary cease fire called. It’s just been attack after onslaught after bombing, relentlessly. Not only has the enemy been out to destroy me and my family through circumstances and public opinion but he has also been attacking me by shaming me for struggling to get through it. Constantly telling me that I’m not capable of walking through this, that I’ve done it wrong, that I’m not trying hard enough. One day I’m not doing enough to get out of it and the next day I’m doing too much and not letting God take care of it. Constantly asking me, “how could you do that or think that or not trust him? some Christian you turned out to be!”

I wouldn’t have faired well with the first definition of grace under fire. I haven’t stayed calm in the face of hard and scary circumstances. I’ve cried and screamed and demanded answers. But the first line of this song reminds me that when my heart is under fire, when it is under attack, there is a grace given as the walls are closing in, that allows me to continue to survive this battle. There’s a Savior in heaven that is not unable to sympathize with both this battle I’m walking and my weakness. He knows my short comings and where I don’t measure up and He loves to pour out His grace on me as He fights the battle for me. Even when the battle I’m facing is simply to have the strength to keep going. He doesn’t get mad at me or simply try to encourage me to keep going. He picks me up and carries me, taking the hardest steps for me if He needs to, because He wants to, because He understands both how hard it is and how weak I am. There’s grace when my heart is under fire.

And more than that, I believe that when we face these incredibly difficult situations, He wants us to fall into His arms and let Him carry us instead of continuing to struggle.

When my husband and I were freshmen in college, there was a lake near by and one weekend a bunch of our friends were going to go cliff jumping. My family enjoys aquatic vacations so I have been a great swimmer most of my life. But my husbands family wasn’t the same and while he wasn’t going to drown in a deep end of a pool, he wasn’t the best swimmer. We had been jumping and climbing back up to jump many times so by the end of the day, we were all a little tired. Well, there was a little section of the water you had to swim across to get from the jumping cliff to where our cars were parked and we could get out of the water. This was early in our relationship and we didn’t have a lot of trust built. We were all swimming back to our exit point together when I noticed that my husband was having a harder time getting across to the shore than he had when we first arrived. He was getting quite distressed and I was getting more worried as his movements continued to get more frantic, thus less successful, and the situation all of a sudden turned very serious in my mind. I was a lot smaller than him but I was pretty good at floating and side swimming and knew that if he would just stop swimming, I could easily hook my arm around his chest and pull him over to the other side. He was past the point of rational thinking though so when I offered, he couldn’t say yes. All he could think about was getting to the other side. He could have relaxed and let me do the work but he was too overwhelmed. So I just slowly swam beside him to make sure he didn’t drown until we finally made it to the other side and the intense situation calmed.

There will be times in our life when we are completely overwhelmed by the circumstances in our lives and we think that surviving this depends on our ability to keep on swimming. But I think Jesus is there, right beside us, asking us to let Him do the swimming for us, especially when we are close to drowning.

We sang a song at church on Sunday that I hadn’t sung in a while. I think it’s called Run to the Father. It starts with, “I’ve carried a burden too long on my own. I wasn’t created to bear it alone. I hear Your invitation to let it all go….run to the Father, fall into grace…” We carry a lot of burdens we weren’t meant to carry on our own. Recently though, I’ve realized this burden to make it through really hard trials on my own or in my own strength is the biggest one I’ve been carrying. I don’t have to carry it. When something gets overwhelming and hard I can simply turn to Jesus and fall into His grace.

You see, there’s a grace when the heart is under fire. Let’s return to this first song. The chorus to this song says, “There was another in the fire, standing next to me, there was another in the water, holding back the sea.” Notice how Jesus is in the water and yet holding back the sea?

When I envision those words,I can see myself out swimming through a storm. The water is deep and the waves are up and I’m in a fight, but Jesus is right there within inches of me, in case He needs to pull me out. But He’s not just there watching me, He is actively holding back the sea so that it doesn’t overwhelm me. He is both giving me the strength I need to get through this storm, ready at any minute to rescue me, while at the same time only allowing the specific amount of trial and storm that’s needed to teach and train and produce what He brought me into this storm to accomplish in the first place.

When I trust that He is with me in every fire, in every storm, it allows me to find the joy in these trials as they are meant to strengthen me, bring me closer to Him, and produce righteous in me.

If you are there today, at a place where your heart is under intense fire from the enemy, know you don’t have to fight this battle. At any moment you can turn to Jesus, fall into His arms, and rest. You don’t have to carry this burden of being strong enough to survive. You don’t have to have ice in your veins. Give up, lay it down, hand it over and breathe. He is so close, and only there, wrapped in His arms is where true joy is found.

Your Fellow Traveler

Lacey