bible – Page 12 – thelifeididntchoose

Something to Hold On To When You Feel Like Letting Go

I have to talk to myself all the time.

Literally.

There are some mornings I open my eyes and would do just about anything to be able to stay in bed, hide under the covers and wish the day away.

But I can’t.

So I recite truth until my heart can hear it. I speak courage to my own spirit.

If you are feeling weak and weary today, may I share a few of my favorites?

I don’t have to arrive at the finish line cute and perky, I only have to complete the course even if I’m barely crawling or dragging myself the last few feet.

Endurance IS the victory and perseverance IS faith.

God’s grace is enough. Sometimes I don’t believe it but that doesn’t make it untrue. God promises to provide the strength I need when I need it. When I am weak, He is strong.

Even the very WORST day of my life only lasted 24 hours. All I have to do is live this moment, this hour and this day. Every morning is a new beginning with new mercy and sufficient grace. Every sunrise is a reminder that God is still on the throne and still in control.

What a precious promise that the King of the Universe, the Creator of all things, the God of Heaven is keeping track of MY tears! Not a single drop hits the ground but that He scoops it up and saves it. One day every one will be redeemed.

God isn’t finished with me yet. He is working in and through me to conform me to the likeness of Christ. That work is often painful. But He is going to use even this most awful, heartbreaking thing.

When all else fails and a day is full of tears and sorrow, I remember that there will be a Day-a glorious Day!-when every single tear will be wiped away and, in the words of the Jesus Storybook Bible, “Every bad thing will come untrue.”

Hallelujah!

Amen!

Is God Punishing Me? Theology Matters.

Even though I knew better, one of my first thoughts after I got the news that Dominic had run ahead to heaven was, “Is God punishing me?”

Because when something THIS awful happens, it seems logical to assume it is in response to a massive cosmic imbalance.

As a matter of fact, even though it sounds counter-intuitive, it’s almost more comforting to believe there is a discernible reason behind my son’s death than to swallow the truth I may have to live the rest of my years not knowing.

I combed through my life-searching every nook and cranny-for what I did that deserved this kind of retribution.

And while I, like all of us, have a closet full of sin, I could not find a single transgression that rose to the ranks of demanding my son’s life in payment.

But then I realized that any of my sins-whether I counted them big or small-DID demand payment.

And God sent HIS Son to pay for them.

To us, the greatest demonstration of God’s love for us has been his sending his only Son into the world to give us life through him. We see real love, not in that fact that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to make personal atonement for our sins.

I John 4:10 PHILLIPS

They HAVE been paid for. All of them. Every single one.

There is no sin debt outstanding.

That’s an important concept to grasp. It is absolutely critical that bereaved parents (and others who suffer horrible tragedies) get this theological point right.

God is not out to extract payment for sin.

Now, He may well allow us to suffer the natural consequences of our sinful actions. There may be things we must endure because of sinful choices we make.

But that is very different than suggesting God is visiting sickness or death or ill fortune on a heart because of unconfessed sin.

As a matter of fact, that was precisely the charge God Himself laid against Job’s friends when they simply would not let go of the idea that Job must have done something to justify his suffering.

After the Lord had spoken these words to Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. ⁸Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves. And my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly. For you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” ⁹So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did what the Lord had told them, and the Lord accepted Job’s prayer.

Job 42:7-9 ESV

Even Job wanted God to explain Himself.

While the Lord showed up, He never did give Job an answer.

Instead HE asked the questions.

We like to think we can figure God out, dig up the reasons why this happens or that doesn’t.

Truth is, we’d do better to follow Job’s example once he encountered the Living God:

Oh, I am so small. How can I reply to You?
        I’ll cover my mouth with my hand, for I’ve already said too much. (Job 40:4)

Before I knew only what I had heard of You,
        but now I have seen You.
  Therefore I realize the truth:
        I disavow and mourn all I have said
        and repent in dust and ash.

Job 40:4 ; Job 42:5,6 VOICE

God’s thoughts are not my thoughts, His ways are not my ways.

But He is perfect.

He is SO perfect that He has provided the once and for all sacrifice that satisfies the price of sin by the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ.

I may not understand (DO not understand!) why He has allowed my son’s death. But is was NOT punishment. God does not lie.

I can rest satisfied in that truth.

What If I’m Angry* With God?

God’s grace meets us where we are, not where we pretend to be.
~Esther Fleece, No More Faking Fine

Yes, I know, the commonly touted wisdom in church circles is not to ask, “Why?”

It’s also bad form to admit that you might actually be angry* with God.

But I can pretty much guarantee that over half of any congregation sitting in the pews on a given Sunday has had at least one moment when, with raised eyes they screamed, “Why?????” to the sky aimed at a God they didn’t understand but believed in anyway.

I know I have.

David did.

Paul did.

Job did.

So what does a heart do if it’s upset with God? Stuff it? Reason it away? Shame it to silence? Hope it fades on its own?

I think the only thing a heart can do with that anger and doubt and disappointment is take it straight to the Throne of Grace where we are promised to find help in an hour of need.

That’s what I did.

I wrote hundreds of pages of journals with my Bible beside me. When the Holy Spirit brought a scripture to mind as I was writing, I looked it up, read it and usually copied it into my journal right alongside my questions and rambling.

Sometimes I would write the letters large and decorate them or look up the meaning of words in a concordance or dictionary and write the definitions or synonyms out to help me deepen my understanding.

In the end, my heart was finally able to accept the truth of Who God is-my loving, omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent Heavenly Father-even when I do not like what He is doing.

Reaching a place of accepting His will while still acknowledging the pain it brings me (like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane) has given me a measure of peace.

It has freed me to walk on in this life and to take the good, the bad, the painful and the wonderful in stride.

Do I still have moments (days!) when I want to scream?

Absolutely. But I am submitted to God and bow my heart to His.

It took a long time.

The more I read and studied Scripture, the more I found evidence of anguish, tears, and the messiness of human emotion. When we are in pain, the pain we are facing is temporary, even though it never feels temporary. Pain can linger, and it will always be with us, but for the believer in Jesus Christ, pain is never the final destination.

~Esther Fleece, No More Faking Fine, p. 134

*I am lumping a lot of strong (often considered “negative”) emotions in with the one word “angry”-for me, it was actually disappointment-God did not live up to my expectations (which is not to say He should or that my expectations were accurate). For others it might be distrust and for some it might be doubt (does God love me?). I’m most certainly NOT suggesting that Jesus was angry with God in the garden but it is plainly stated in Scripture that He begged God for another, less painful way that would still accomplish the Father’s plan.

When I Don’t Know What to Pray: Praying the Names of God

The Bible says that “The Name of the LORD is a strong tower, the righteous run to it and are saved.” (Proverbs 18:10)

Clearly that does NOT mean that every person who calls on the Name of the LORD will be kept physically whole.

Many, many believers have suffered and died while the name of Christ is on their lips.

But I do believe that in a very real, very meaningful way, calling on the Name of the LORD has saved me.

It saved me first from my sin and guarantees that I will meet my son in eternity.

And it continues to save me when I am at the end of my own resources and need to appropriate the strength of my Heavenly Father to hold onto hope.

Over twenty-five years ago I was introduced to a wonderful book by Sylvia Gunter called PRAYER PORTIONS. My copy is battered, dog-eared, torn and treasured.

It is full, full, full of wonderful teaching about prayer and, more importantly, of biblical prayers to actually PRAY.

While my prayer life post child loss is not at all what it used to be, I still rely on her list of the names and attributes of God to help my heart make it through tough days.

Here is one Alphabet of the Names and Attributes of God

Abba Father – Gal. 4:6

Balm of Gilead – Jer. 8:22

Comforter – 2 Cor. 1:3

Deliverer – Ps. 18:2

Everlasting God – Isa. 40:28

Father of Mercy – 2 Cor. 1:3

Good Shepherd – John 10:11-15

Holy One – Pro. 9:10

Intercessor – Heb. 7:25

Judge of the living and thedead – 1 Peter 4:5

King Eternal – 1 Tim. 1:17

Light of revelation – Luke 2:32

Man of sorrows – Isa. 53:5

Never-failing One – Heb. 13:5

Offering for sin – Heb 10:14

Potter – Isa. 64:8

Quieting Love – Zeph. 3:17

Righteous – 1 Cor. 1:30-31

Santification – 1 Cor. 1:30-31

Teacher – John 14:26

Upholder of all things – Isa. 41:13

Very present help – Ps. 46:1

The Way – John 14:6

Exalted – Psa. 148:13

Your glory and lifter of your head – Ps. 3:3

Zealous – John 2:17

From PRAYER PORTIONS by Sylvia Gunter

I pray that it helps your heart as much and as often as it helps mine.

Did God Take My Child?

This is a question that comes up all the time in bereaved parents’ groups: Did God take my child?

Trust me, I’ve asked it myself.

How you answer this question can mean the difference between giving up or going on, between turning away or trusting.

So this is MY answer. The one I’ve worked out through study, prayer and many, many tears. You may disagree. That’s just fine. I only offer it because it might be helpful to some struggling and sorrowful soul.

I believe that God is the Author of life and the arbiter of death. What that means (to me) is that He is ultimately in control of everything and could (if He chose) intervene and stop the death of any person if He wanted to.

Nothing and no one is stronger nor more powerful than God.

However, we live in a fallen world where sin has tainted the original creation God declared “good”. So there are natural disease processes, genetic malformations, undetected birth defects (that may go unknown until well into adulthood like heart defects) that lead to death.

God does not intervene each time-but He could.

People make sinful and foolish choices that have natural consequences. My son was going way too fast in a curve on his motorcycle. God did not override my son’s free will (just as He does not override our free will all day every day) and my son ran off the road.

There are universal physical and biological laws that most of us are thankful for each day that then took over in my son’s case and doomed his motorcycle to certain paths and his body to certain death when it impacted the ground.

God didn’t intervene but He could have.

Job was ultimately protected by the fences God placed around his person. I believe each of us are too.

Yet God is weaving a bigger tapestry, writing a bigger story than only the part that includes me and my family. So my son’s death and the changes it has wrought in me, in others that knew and loved him and even further out into the world are part of God’s big story.

I have made peace with the fact that I do not understand nor like what God has done in my life by allowing my son to die, but I will trust His loving character and wait to see how it will be redeemed in eternity.

No, God did not TAKE my son. But He allowed his death.

I gain more comfort in a God Who could have saved my son but chose not to, than a God Who does not have that power.

His word declares that He keeps my tears in His bottle.

I believe it.

And I believe that one day He will redeem every one and restore what my heart has lost.

Repost: Feet of Clay

It’s not just my feet that are made of clay! I am clay from top to bottom and I am reminded of that fact every day. I try and fail. I strive but make no progress. I want to do better, but I don’t.

God is not surprised. I do not have to live up to some impossible standard in order for Him to love me. He made me, He knows me and He loves me. Covered by the blood of Christ I am free to live in that love, to love others from that love.

God is not offended by my human frailty. He isn’t looking down from Heaven, shaking His head at my halting steps forward on this long, hard road.

He understands my fear, my sadness, my longing for wholeness.

But sometimes it’s hard for me to remember that.

Read the rest here: Feet of Clay

Flying Lessons

My dad is a pilot and flight instructor.

He’s flown everything from a single engine private plane to a fighter jet in all kinds of weather-good and bad.

When I was a little girl, he’d take me with him sometimes while he gave a flight lesson. If he was teaching instrument flying, the student would wear a hood that restricted his vision to just the plane’s instrument panel.

No external visual cues allowed.

The test came when the student’s senses told him something different than the instruments were telling him-would he give in to what he thought was true but couldn’t validate OR would he rely on the trusty instruments that had proven faithful?

Some students just could not let go of their feelings and never did gain their instrument flight rating.

Some learned (even when it went against everything they were feeling) to lean on the absolutely reliable instruments to guide them safely to their destination.

These years since Dominic ran ahead to heaven feel like instrument flying.

I’m in the clouds.

The landmarks I’ve used for navigation all my life are obscured and sometimes I can’t even tell if I’m upside down or right side up. I don’t know if I’m going fast enough to stay in the air or if I’m about to stall. I’m tempted to use my feelings to determine true north and to decide on a course of action.

But I know if I do, I’m likely to crash.

If I ignore the trustworthy and unchangeable truth of God’s Word, I will find myself headed exactly opposite of where I want to go.

If I refuse to listen to good counsel-people I can depend on and who are in a position to see my blind spots-then I cannot correct my path.

When a student decided not to pay attention to the instruments, my dad was right there to take over and get them safely back on the ground.

But for this flight I’m on my own. If I decide to trust my untrustworthy feelings, there’s no one to rescue me.

I have to make a choice.

I have to learn to acknowledge but not trust the feelings that would send me spiraling downward and reach for the truth that can help me steady my flight.

I have got to plot my course based on absolute, reliable Truth.

The pilots that learn to fly in heavy clouds often still feel frightened. They sometimes still feel confused and disoriented.

But they have learned that it’s possible to feel those things and not act on them.

I am learning that too.

To Him Who Overcomes: Promises I Can Count On

Some days I wake up and question EVERYTHING.

Have I allowed myself to be tricked into believing a fairy tale in hopes that it will ease my earthly pain?

Is God Who He says He is? Will He do what He says He will do? How can I be certain?

And then I turn again to the Truth.

Have you ever noticed how focusing your mind on the Word quiets your spirit? In that peaceful silence, faith dissolves fear. God’s revelations about Himself in the Bible—namely, that He is good, sovereign, and our loving Father—have a way of sharpening our perception about whatever we’re facing We can see the true nature of a matter and it is not bigger than our God. As a result, we cast off the staggering weight of our burdens and instead grow a deep-rooted confidence in the goodness and sovereignty of God. My friends, that is the definition of courage.

– Charles Stanley

I take hold of the promises in Scripture. I recite the faithfulness of my Heavenly Father to myself and others in my family and countless generations before me.

I ask His Spirit to bear witness to mine that He can be trusted.

He does.

And then He strengthens me for the journey, giving me what I need to endure.

“The one who conquers through faithfulness even unto death will escape the second death.” ~Revelation 2:11b VOICE
“To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.” ~Revelation 2: 17b, c KJV
^“And he that overcomes, and he that keeps unto the end my works, to him will I give authority over the nations, and he shall shepherd them with an iron rod; as vessels of pottery are they broken in pieces, as I also have received from my Father; and I will give to him the morning star.” ~Revelation 2: 26-28 DARBY
“He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.” `Revelation 3:5 NASB
“He that overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go out no more, and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God which is the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from and with my God, and I will write upon him my new name.”~Revelation 3:12 JUB
“He who overcomes [the world through believing that Jesus is the Son of God], I will grant to him [the privilege] to sit beside Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down beside My Father on His throne.” ~Revelation 3:21 AMP

“Don’t let this throw you. You trust God, don’t you? Trust me. There is plenty of room for you in my Father’s home. If that weren’t so, would I have told you that I’m on my way to get a room ready for you? And if I’m on my way to get your room ready, I’ll come back and get you so you can live where I live. And you already know the road I’m taking.”

~ Jesus (John 14:1-4 MSG)

“See, I come quickly! I carry my reward with me, and repay every man according to his deeds. I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the Beginning and the End. Happy are those who wash their robes, for they have the right to the tree of life and the freedom of the gates of the city.”

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!”

Let everyone who hears this also say, “Come!”

Let the thirsty man come, and let everyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

He, who is witness to all this, says, “Yes, I am coming very quickly!”

“Amen, come Lord Jesus!”

Revelation 22: 12-14, 17, 20 PHILLIPS

Repost: Eye on the Prize

I’ve strived and struggled for many things in my life-most of which have little eternal value.

I am striving now for the only prize that really matters, to enter the Presence of my Saviour and to hear, “Well, done, good and faithful servant”.

When the days are long and the nights are longer, I try to remember that.

“To win the contest you must deny yourselves many things that would keep you from doing your best. An athlete goes to all this trouble just to win a blue ribbon or a silver cup, but we do it for a heavenly reward that never disappears.” [emphasis added]

~ I Corinthians 9:25 TLB

I remember one particularly grueling semester in college. I had foolishly stacked five upper level political science classes on top of one another thinking that taking them together would be easier.

That was a dumb idea.

Read the rest here: Eye On The Prize

Practice Makes Permanent

The first time I heard him say it I thought I had misunderstood.

“Practice makes permanent.”

Yep, that’s exactly what he said.

As I watched the Tae Kwon Do instructor work with the young boys striving to copy his perfect form I began to understand. Some students worked hard to make their movements precise and as close to perfect as possible. Some were just going through the motions.

Either way, they were creating muscle memory and training their bodies to recall the moves just as they practiced them.

Practice makes permanent.

Perfect practice makes perfect.

It’s much the same with our thoughts.

In Romans Paul says:

Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity.

Romans 12:2 PHILLIPS

What I think about, dwell on and mull over becomes permanent.

I have to guard the gates of my mind so that I don’t fill it with untruth.

I have to practice recalling the goodness, faithfulness and lovingkindness of God so that I don’t feel abandoned.

I must saturate my thoughts with Scripture if I don’t want to drown in doubt.

I’m thankful for the years and years of Bible study I had under my belt when Dominic ran ahead to heaven. Otherwise, I’m not sure I would have been strong enough or willing to do the deep digging necessary to feed my soul if it was not already my practice to turn to Scripture in times of great trial.

Even when my heart was shattered and my faith strained, my mind fell readily into the ruts that practice had put there.

Practice makes permanent.

Yes, yes it does.

God’s comfort does not usually smooth the road we travel, nor does it make us jubilantly happy. But it does make us strong for our trials. God’s comfort is not good feelings but worthy deeds. The heart that exults in God’s comfort is like that of a champion who confidently runs his course, though with pain. It is not like the ease of one who indulges his appetite. ‘The joy of the Lord is your strength,’ not your ease (Nehemiah 8:10).

~James Means, A Tearful Celebration, p. 73

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