Biblical teaching and instruction

Signs That the Soul Is Going Through an Inner Transition - A Christian Reflection

Introduction
Scripture reminds us that “God has set eternity in the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). At certain seasons, the believer experiences an inner turning—not away from life, but toward God. This is not an ending, but spiritual surrender and maturity.

1) Release from material attachment
Earthly things lose their grip. Simplicity and generosity grow.
Matthew 6:19–21

2) Desire for silence
Stillness and prayer become essential, not lonely.
Psalm 46:10

3) Forgiveness and completion
The heart seeks peace through reconciliation.
Colossians 3:13

4) Longing for true home
A quiet awareness that our citizenship is with God.
Philippians 3:20

5) Peaceful rest
Sleep and rest are entrusted to the Lord.
Psalm 4:8

6) Fear gives way to trust
Life is placed fully in God’s hands.
John 14:1

7) Love deepens
Presence becomes ministry; love speaks louder than words.
1 Corinthians 16:14
Closing
These signs do not diminish life—they deepen faith.
“Whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.”
(Romans 14:8)

Reading the Bible on a Chariot

There was once an Ethiopian who was reading a book in a chariot. His story is told in Acts 8.

He was an important man in his home country: “A eu**ch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians” (8:27). We know from Greco-Roman literature that “Candace” was not so much a name as a dynastic title of the queen of Ethiopia. Since this man was “in charge of all her treasure,” he was a significant figure, evidenced also by his chariot, which only the well-to-do would employ as transportation.

What was he doing so far from home? Luke tells us that he “had come to Jerusalem to worship” (8:27). Somehow, the message of the Hebrew Scriptures had reached even Ethiopia! He was presumably one of many first-century Gentile worshippers of the God of Israel.

Since ancient times almost all reading was done aloud, even when reading to oneself, Philip overheard the Ethiopian reading from Isaiah 53. He asked him, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I unless someone guides me?” (8:30-31). So, invited into the chariot, Philip climbed aboard and “beginning with this Scripture [Isaiah 53] he told him the good news about Jesus” (8:35). Shortly afterwards, they made a pitstop near a source of water, Philip baptized the eu**ch, and this new Christian “went on his way rejoicing” (8:39).

Though the history of Christianity in Ethiopia is usually dated to the 4th century, I wonder (don’t you?), if it all began much earlier, when a man in a chariot got home from Jerusalem with a scroll of Isaiah in his hand, a smile on his lips, and a story of the best news imaginable.

The closing verse of Job is this: “And Job died, an old man, and full of days.” But if had God given Job what he wanted, that never would have happened.

Job had wanted to die. To die soon. To die immediately. He wondered, “Why did I not die at birth?” (3:11). He would have chosen “strangling and death” over the misery in which he found himself (7:15).

But what Job did not know, but God did, is that this dark night of the soul would eventually end with the rays of hope peeking over the horizon.

I have wanted to die many times in my life. To end shame. To end grief. When you are submerged in the dark waters of despair, the oxygen of hope is hard to find.

But as God did for Job, as he did for me, as he has done for so many of us, he did not give us what we wanted; he gave us what he wanted for us.

What our Father wants for us is to believe that no matter how black the current darkness, “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18). Or as Teresa of Avila is credited with saying, “From heaven even the most miserable life will look like one bad night at an inconvenient hotel.”

For most of us, too, already in this life, after a season of turmoil and loss, our longing for death lessens and finally dissipates. Maybe we don’t laugh as much as we used to, but we learn that tears and smiles can coexist.

A heart full of fractures need not lead to a life choked with despair.

We learn that God is good. No matter what. We who are, as Job says, but “dust and ashes” (42:6; 30:19), are nonetheless his beloved children.