On the Wrong Side of the Fence
Since God took me on this incredibly challenging faith journey more than 6 years ago, we have always been blessed with a comfortable place to rest one way or another.
There were nights when we stayed in low-rate hotels and there were times when God put us up on the nicest Hilton hotels. There were times when God even put us in lavish city apartments that were like a resort and a castle apartment that made me feel like I was living in a fairy tale.
He promises to be our “Home” never failed. However, there was one night when I was not given an average seeming “room” and it was so that God could teach me the spiritual laws that border between faith and fear.
Before I get into that story, I want to give you a background of where I had fear. There was one moment while we have been on our new journey in an unfamiliar state when I left my hotel room in the morning to get something out of my car.
When I got to the parking lot, I was so confused because I couldn’t find my car anywhere. I thought it had been stolen, but after one call to the police, I found out that it was repossessed for a few missed payments from going on this journey with Jesus.
Thankfully, God sent me what I needed to get my car back, but it was the scariest time of my life. I was so afraid because the hotel was booking out and if we had to leave our room, there would have been no way to go. We would have been stuck and stranded on the side of a road.
That memory became a place where fear grew and festered like an infected wound. Because I have had to trust Jesus for every drop of what we need in very uncommon ways, there were times when things were paid in unusual ways and at undesirable times.
I had to trust God’s plan, and that sometimes was the hardest thing of my life to do. There was one night that was the worst of all. It was my lowest low….ever. I had to learn an unforgettable lesson about trust. It was a night unlike anything I have ever known in all these years of writing about depending on God’s promise for this journey.
When God asked me to “follow Him through the Aspen trees” of promise, I missed a massive key that I needed to survive, and that was trust. There is this little phrase that God always says to me, and that is,
“If you continue to make choices by fear, then you will continue to be controlled by doubt”
For weeks after losing my car, I had been really fearful about losing my car like I did before. My fear became such a powerful force that I started to follow fear instead of faith. I had been making choices out of fear, instead of trusting God. It was like a cancer that kept spreading and getting worse.
God has given me a very detailed promise about my car and how the situation would go. However, I let myself get carried away with the fear of losing it again to the point that I was being paranoid and making super “fearful” choices every day about my car.
There were so many devastating things that could happen if I did lose the vehicle considering our situation, and I surrendered to those fears in my mind through little choices at a time. Those individual drops of fear-led choices added up to be like a strong current, and they dragged me out into the stormy waters like a rip tide.
Instead of denying my fears and putting the vows that Jesus gave me as the King of my life, I ended up playing in very dangerous waters. One morning I sat in my car for two hours in a parking lot, just to try to protect it, instead of trusting God’s personal promise about that situation.
God showed me that there was an invisible fence in the spiritual realm that was protecting us from getting hit by the ocean waves of this huge storm against us right now. He showed me that because I was making choices by fear, instead of trust, that I had gotten myself on the wrong side of the fence.
I was no longer on the side of the fence that kept out the waves. Because I had allowed my fears to lead me to the “unprotected” side of the fence, I got hit with the waves of the storm.
And wow, did I get hit… that day I had been in the car for 15 hours in a constant battle of being double minded between fear and faith. I was joyful with faith in what God promised us for a while, and then sobbing gut-wrenching tears of fear and agony as I looked at the size of our troubles.
Even through the chaos of my fears, God kept showing me “RV’s”….so I was beginning to understand that we would have a vehicle type of bed for a little while.
It wasn’t until 1 a.m. that I gave up, and I drove to a travel gas station where they allowed drivers to rest for the night. I was so lost and in such shocking disappointment at that moment. I had never known a promise to fail….and I have seen so many become fulfilled over these several years.
I slept a few hours on and off, very uncomfortably and in constant alert, in the car. It was my rock bottom moment. I thought I was over with, and I hid my face as I wept deeply onto my shirt sleeve until my heart felt crushed beyond repair.
There was very little space between the cars, so it was awkward to say the least. I felt like I got hit with an enormous wave of shock because I have never seen God fail me in all these years.
I was in unspeakable disbelief, and I was beyond heart broken. My faith was shattered, and I fell asleep in the car with tears still pouring down my cheeks. As soon as I fell asleep, God revealed to me what happened, and He said that I was depending on fear and not on Him. That is when He showed me the fence vision.
The promises of God do not prosper with mixed with unbelief and fear causes a blockage from us being able to receive. I finally understood that I had allowed my fearful thinking to drag me over to the wrong side of the fence, where I was no longer protected.
As soon as I understood my error, I repented for putting my faith in fear and not in God’s promise to protect us, the blockage was instantly cleared. I mean, it was minutes, and I got a donation that allowed me to get us into a very cute little room for tonight.
God comforted me from my pain with $1000 to cover our room and food for a week without having to walk through the pressures and pain that I had before. My faith has never been pressed like this before and every last fear has been being pushed out.
When that relief came in, it was the greatest comfort in my life to be able to stretch out on a bed and take a hot shower. In the city where God has taken us, every single place is expensive, and the room deposits are everywhere, and they are often the same cost of the room…or more.
Surviving this has never looked more impossible, and yet just when I think that I am not going to last another day, God sweeps in like a raven to deliver us support to cover our needs. Sometimes He has me step out of my comfort zone in different ways….such as sharing these moments with you, but the rewards are always far more than the cost it took me to swallow my pride.
Having a bed or a meal is more precious to me than gold now and because I have walked through this low valley, I am much more empathetic to those who are also walking through misery.
Those are things that I never realized I would appreciate so much. After I learned my lesson, I made sure to change the way that I would think and make choices. I had to practice putting every fear to death and choosing to trust God’s promises no matter how hard or impossible it looks.
The moment when God sent us the relief to get a hotel room was like a huge ton of bricks fell off of my shoulders. Letting go of my fears is the most pain-relieving thing I have ever encountered. Trust gives us comfort. I no longer had to watch my back and live in fear of bad things that could happen. Instead, I was able to rest in the very details that God promised regarding our home and car.
It is the best feeling to let go and let God’s power keep His promise. I was keeping that power from protecting us by my own fearful resistance, and I hope to never find myself on the wrong side of the fence again.
Thank you for reading, another story from what God is writing in this next book.
Hugs 💙
Dannette