In quietness and trust is your strength.

Isaiah 30:15. …”in quietness and trust is your strength”….

I have been holding onto this verse for a while now.  In different seasons of my life.  But as I was drawing this picture on my iPad, it reminded me of the house break in when I was alone at home at age 16 in South Africa.

First, I would like to dig into the meaning of the words in this verse.

In quietness, it is an inner quietness.  It is a settled calm in which hostile forces have been subdued.  The fear within has been silenced.

Trust is a God centered posture of life that yields inner stability and outward obedience, especially in a crisis.

My strength comes from God because I trust Him, it is a strength that equips, and delivers.  It directs attention away from self-confidence towards confidence in God.

Now the story of the robbery.  It happened around 12pm in the afternoon when my siblings were at school and my mom at work.  Just like a teenager, I slept until around 11am in the morning and decided to take a nice long bath before my mom would come home. 

I just got into the steaming hot bath when I heard and explosion noise from within the house.  I jumped out the bath, got dressed without drying myself to go see what the noise was about, when I heard people speaking in the house.  This was before the day of cellphones, and at this point it was too late to phone anyone.

As I turned around to get away from the voices, I realized there is no way out of the house as there were security bars in front of all the windows as well as the door, it would take too long to try and unlock a door to try and get out of the house.  (As for the explosion noise, it was the robbers breaking the security bars in front of the window, the window they used to get into the house.)

As I turned around to get away from the men in the house, I realized there was nowhere for me to go. At that point I asked God to show me where to go hide.  I had the thought of hiding under a bed, but I heard a soft voice saying, they will find you there.  For whatever reason I went back into the bathroom, took the laundry basket out of the shower and put it right in front of the shower, (that is where we stored the laundry basket when no one was using the shower).  I got into the shower closed the shower curtain, and sat in the shower with my knees pulled up to my chest and my head resting on my knees.  And I started praying and pleading with God that the robbers would not find me. 

At one point one of the 3 men were in the bathroom going through the laundry basket and taking the clothing he liked for himself.  He did not notice the wet floor, or the steaming bath water in the bathtub.  He was not in the bathroom for long, as one of the other men called him when they found my mom’s gun. 

They were in the house for 3 hours.   At some point I heard footsteps on the roof of the house.  Then the house went quiet.  I did not leave the shower until I heard my mom calling my name.  I have no idea how long that silence lasted.  One of the robbers went onto the roof as a lookout point to see if my mom was on her way home.  These 3 men watched our house for a while to get to know my mom’s schedule of coming and going.

Once the Police officer arrived, they asked me 3 times if that was my hiding spot, and I hid in that corner and not that one in the shower.  The police officer said to me, it is a miracle they did not find you.  The shower curtain was not very thick.

I believe my inner quietness and calm came from God in those 3 hours by focusing on Him rather than the chaos that was going on in the house.

I know it was God who directed me back into the bathroom.  It is the laundry basket in front of the shower that distracted the robber from all the signs in the bathroom that there was someone in the house.

This verse is applicable to all life’s ups and downs.  If we focus on God, and have a God centered posture, then He gives us strength to survive.  This is what confidence in God looks like, rather than self-confidence. We can fail ourselves, but God will never leave nor forsake us. (Hebrews 13:5)