It doesn’t matter

I wasn’t happy because I felt he wasn’t listening. At that moment more than anything else I wanted to moan, to lament, to wallow in some kind of unacknowledged self-pity, I wanted to be heard. Someone had to hear my discomfort, agree with me on how bad everything was.  I needed to cry a little -even -and then get up and raid the freezer – I needed to look for some Ben and Jerry’s ice cream to eat whilst sitting in bed, Bridget Jones style, with the phone on speaker just in case he actually managed to interrupt my rant and   say something….…and yet how could he when he wasn’t even listening? Despite the fact that I was convinced he wasn’t listening I still needed to talk, to let it all out , to say what I felt about it all and how I felt about it all, just in case by some stroke of sheer luck he was listening….albeit even  a tiny bit…

After what seemed like one hour of my rambling, my recounting details I had gone over probably a hundred times and things that I had probably told him before, the pastor came out with one simple and short statement.

‘It doesn’t matter’.

This was a confirmation to me that I had bored him in to shutting my ramblings out. After all, people occasionally go into a day dream when someone is going on and on.

For a split second I felt hurt. I thought at least my pastor would understand, would encourage me, and would comfort me. I thought pastors were supposed to listen.

And yet those words that seemed so cold, so distant and so aloof were the very words of understanding, encouragement and comfort that my soul needed. Those words spoke to the very essence of my mind-the seat of many battles.

I tried to make some sense out of the statement because initially I could not.

All I had been going on about mattered to me and my troubles matter to God. So how could it be that all of a sudden they didn’t?

I realised finally that things matter because we make them matter.

As we focus on the right things, everything else takes its proper place of significance.

Many times worries, troubles, discomforts and situations matter to us because we are focusing on them and not focusing on the word of God. Not focusing on the completeness and truth in His word, not focusing on what God says about it, what He says about us and forgetting that this is what really matters.

-If our faith lies entirely on what He has told us, what He has said in his word and we know that He cannot lie and He is true, then how can anything contrary to this matter?

‘For the Lord GOD will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed’. Isaiah 50 vs 7 (KJV)

-If we really believe He hears us when we pray and we believe we have received the things we have prayed for, then how can anything contrary to this matter?

‘And this is the confidence that we have in Him that, if we ask anything according to His will, he hears us: And if we know that He hears us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him’. 1 John 5 vs 14-15. (KJV).

-If we actually know He has seen the end of a matter from the beginning and He has told us the end for us is good, then how can anything contrary to this matter?

‘For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end’. (Jeremiah 29 vs 11). (KJV).

-If we understand who we really are, what we have, where we are going and what we can do in Christ then does anything contrary to this matter?

‘Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you’.  Luke 10 vs 19 (KJV).

If these home truths can sink it, we can see so many things in a whole different light.

One thing I later found out that day, however, was even though he had told me all I had been going on about didn’t matter……

He HAD been listening.

Be Encouraged.

Sisbee

xxx