Have you ever dreaded something that appears to be inevitable? The doctor comes in and says that you have cancer and its inoperable, the accountant says that your business cannot continue to operate, your boss comes in and tells you that your job is being terminated or your spouse comes in and tells you that he/she has found someone else and is leaving you. You don't know what to do.
Pressure builds within you. You cry and cry out. Where is God? Why isn't He here to save you? What about all those stories in the Bible where God rescued His people? Will He rescue you now? It seems unlikely. Hope spills out of your life like the grains of sand in an hourglass. Soon there is nothing left. Despair, desperation and depression begin to grip your life. You can't sleep because your dreams have been consumed in nightmares.
Each day you arise to face a doomed future. You prepare for death; you shut down the business; you apply for unemployment; you get a lawyer. The truth is that you would like for it all to end. You imagine that death wouldn't be as tough as what you are going through. You feel like you are disappointng so many people. You may not notice that you have disappointed yourself. You feel like a failure even if all that has happened has nothing to do with your efforts.
Is there any cause for hope? No, not without faith for you will have to come to God like you have never come to Him before and receive the faith and strength that He will give you. You are already trying to cope with this on your own. You have nothing to lose in coming to Him.
Now, I know this sounds like so many of those people who get in trouble and claim they have turned everything over to the Lord. They say things that they want to be true but don't really believe they are true. They say that they are in God's hands but as soon as they are out of trouble act like they don't even know who God is. They are like those who make jailhouse commitments to the Lord. These commitments only last as long as they are in the jailhouse. Why should God come to the rescue of those who pretend to commit themselves to Him?
No, your commitment to the Lord must last beyond the problem at hand. It has to accept whatever God has for you to do. It has to be genuine. Maybe this is why the Lord waits so long before He rescues people. Maybe its because the genuine people are the only ones who will hang on to Him for so long. The others fall away as soon as the problem appears to diminish.
So, you turn to the Lord completely. Prayer becomes a large part of your day. You ask, you confess your own part of the problem and you commit yourself totally to the Lord. You listen with all that is within you to know what you must do. The Bible is read, spiritual people are contacted and you return to prayer. You cry and cry out and keep crying and crying out until you hear from the Lord. Then, you praise Him for His answer. He may indeed have you walk through the burning coals that you were trying so hard to avoid but He has promised to be with you in every step. He may remove the problem altogether. He may strengthen you with faith as He takes you home to be with Him in heaven. He may bring the spouse back or give you the strength to forgive so that your life no longer has the dismal future you once thought it did.
There is a backside to every problem. They are like the hills that I used to climb when I rode my bicycle (there were hills in Nashville, there aren't many hills in Virginia Beach). The hill was tough but the downhill was always a time of praise.
So cry out to the Lord today. Tomorrow, get up and cry out to the Lord again. Keep crying out. He will hear you and deliver you. That's not just something that God does. It is who He is.
Deuteronomy 20:4 (ESV)
4 for
the LORD your God is he who goes
with you to fight for you against your enemies, to give you the victory.’
1 comment:
So well articulated, only goes to show either you have had your fair share of such times of afflictions or have ministered to many with such painful episodes, or both.
For a short write-up, I cannot add anything to your already very good post. Only want to share a little concerning the sentence you put in, saying "He may strengthen you with faith as He takes you home to be with Him in heaven."
At times, we are not taken out of the trouble that we have found ourselves in. We still go through the rough patch all the way. One such rough patch, which can be quick common among us all, at some point in our lives, is what I called "frailty unto death", and for many, it comes in the form of sickness.
I pray for the sick, minister to them, and follow up with them until death, if they do not recover. People with cancer died on me, and there have been a few, now. Question: why do I do this thing - minister to the sick, especially the badly sick or terminally sick?
Because, among others, I believe these two things: one, I believe God does heal, and two, I believe God does that which is said in the sentence I have lifted from your post - He wants to see us going to Him in and with faith.
Ministering to the sick is not a ministry many can find it comfortable to be engaged in, yet I believe because God wants us to go to Him in Heaven with faith, some can be used by Him to do just that, helping the desperate ones to persevere in the faith to the very end.
What about victory? Victory for the dying ones? Is it they have no victory? No, it is never about living forever, in this mortal body, and so, victory needs to be viewed divinely; and in such cases, dying in and with faith, is victory; and I know I am being privileged when The Lord uses me as such, to minister to the sick.
For those you are not, not in such afflictions of life (or not yet) why not go along side another, in their fight. The afflicted ones may lament, "Where is God?"
Where is God? God can be seen in you. Doctors' care or professional counsellor's care can be, it is their job; but when you and I care, it is God, the ministee sees, caring.
Anthony Chia, high.expressions
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