Tag: trust

Words of Hope for a Baby Born Blind

Anophthalmia–the condition of being born with no eye tissue–affects about 30 out of 100,000 babies, leaving them irrevocably blind. This is the letter that a pastor wrote to a Christian couple confronted with this tragic reality.

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 Dear John and Diane,baby-with-no-eyes

Last night, as I prayed with Noel, you were heavy on my mind. I said, “Lord, O Lord, please let me be a pastor who preaches and leads and loves in a way that makes the impossibilities of life possible for your people by a miracle of sustaining grace. Help me to know the weight and pain of this life and not to be breezy when the mountains have fallen into the sea. Help me to have the aroma of Christ’s sufferings about me. Prevent shallowness and callousness to pain. O Lord make me and my people a burden bearing people.”

O John and Diane, I am so heavy with your child’s sightlessness! God is visiting Bethlehem Church with such pain these days in the birth of broken children. Randy and Ann Erickson with their baby’s broken heart; Jan and Rob Barrett with their baby’s liver outside the body; and your precious little one! Is the Lord saying, “I have a gift for your community.” This is not one or two or three couples’ burden. This is a gift and call to the whole church.

This is a word concerning the brokenness of this fallen age of futility.

This is an invitation for you all to believe that “here we have no lasting city” (Hebrews 13:14). This is an invitation for you to “count every gain as loss for the sake of Christ” (Philippians 3:7). This is a shocking test to see if you will “lose heart” when in fact God’s purpose is to show that his grace is sufficient to renew our inner person every day to deal with the “slight momentary affliction which is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18).

O Lord, open our eyes to your love in this pain. Open our eyes.

“Then Elisha prayed, and said, ‘O Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes that he may see.’ So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha” (2 Kings 6:17).

John and Diane, the mountains surrounding your lives are filled with the horses and chariots of God. Only to the eyes of unbelief does the devil have the upper hand here. God is at work in ways and for years and generations and millions of people that we cannot now imagine. This is ours to believe and to bear, no matter the cost. This is ours for this short life.

It seems to me that this life is a proving ground for the kingdom to come. Some are asked to devote forty or fifty years to caring for a handicapped child instead of breezing through life without pain. Others are asked to be blind all their lives…

But only in this life – ONLY in this life.

I want to be the kind of person who makes that “ONLY” what it really is – very short. Prelude to the infinity of joy, joy, joy. But not yet. Not entirely.

How will we ever cope with the burdens of this life if we believe this is all there is, or even the main act in this drama of reality? O Lord, give us your view of things.

May God fill you with anticipated joy.

“I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

I love you,

Pastor John

Source: http://theworksofgod.com/2009/09/24/helpful-things-pastors-who-love-their-people/

Pastor John Piper site:  http://www.desiringgod.org/

My Enemy is at the Door

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“And he said, “Listen, all Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem and King Jehoshaphat: Thus says the Lord to you, ‘Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s.”

2 Chronicles 20:15, ESV

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We certainly don’t face a human army, yet the spiritual battle is just as consuming. Satan and his hordes are working 24/7 to capture our hearts and minds. He wants to enslave our spirits, and to assimilate us into his rebellion against God. For the broken believer, we know where we are weakest. Satanic influence can be fierce. However we are not alone.

Jehoshaphat’s own situation was precarious. Vastly out numbered, his own troops were about to be slaughtered and Jerusalem captured. Jehoshaphat responds by praying. He acknowledges God, and asks for divine help. We find him desperate, and that is how humility grows.

‘Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s.”

When God intervenes, we can only watch (and trust) His deliverance. King Jehoshaphat arranged for his army to be led by singers. There is a confidence here. Praise and worship is the way the enemy is defeated. “The battle belongs to God.” A great victory is won.

Make God your general. Infuse the atmosphere with prayer and praise. Impossible things are about to happen. Victory can be yours if you can only ‘get out of the way.’ This is the wisest and the safest course. (My worst defeats have come when I try my hardest to battle on my own.) When the enemy is pounding at the door, ask Jesus to answer it. He alone will bring you the victory.

P.S. Find a psalm– and then hide yourself in it.

 

Has God Given Up on You?

“If we are unfaithful,
    he remains faithful,
    for he cannot deny who he is.” 

2 Timothy 2:13

There are often times of great despair; when sin or sickness is definitely front and center. Losing hope is an easy response for mere mortals like us. There can be a place where the darkness won’t lift; and it’s at that point you realize that you’re simply in over your head.

I know that feeling quite well.

I have depressive disorder and because of that I tend to camp out at the margins where it seems like the grace of God evaporates. Whether it is my sin or circumstances, I occasionally feel pretty much abandoned, and it usually is something self-inflicted. (Or is it? I’m not always sure.)

We have this glaring tendency to put ourselves in where we should not have been. And condemnation means no comfort can get through to us.

We wonder if God has finally given up on us, throwing us in the trash heap of lost souls. We might feel that’s what we deserve. He simply gives up on us.

“Many are saying about me, “God won’t rescue him.” 

Psalm 3:2

In Psalm 3, David has come to the realization that his sins have “tainted” him. He talks of many enemies that have suddenly gathered, and they are claiming that David had now gone outside of God’s grace and favor. Forever.

The theology of this seemed logical. David had sinned greatly. And he had. David’s sin of adultery and murder was heinous and depraved. His enemies suggested that God would now abandon him. It seems logical, doesn’t it.

Our own sin may be excessive, but God’s faithfulness is to the uttermost.

”Lord, your love reaches to the heavens, your loyalty to the skies.’‘

Psalm 36:5

The grace of God is limitless. It is beyond human comprehension or reasoning. When He committed Himself it was for forever. King David understood this, and would survive the devastating fall-out from his sins. Indeed he would reap all that he sowed (Gal. 6:7-8). But God still loved him, no matter what.

You see, Jesus has taken every ounce of your sin upon Himself.  

That includes your faithlessness. He has done this astonishing thing out of the deep depths of His love and mercy. We don’t deserve it and we can’t pretend it is something else. A heart that’s been welded to His knows this. We are “saved by grace through faith.”

Do you still feel God has abandoned you forever?

Dear one, there is an unholy war on the saints that Satan is waging. He hates your simple trust in God and will shake it anyway he can. He blisters believers and hopes to discourage them. And he doesn’t ever fight fair.

“The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying:“I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.”

Jeremiah 31:3

Take a look at my other site: alaskabibleteacher.com. Thanks.

Testimony of the Scars

At the crucifixion, Jesus suffered incredible pain.

He was beaten, flogged, spat upon, and had a crown of thorns jammed into his brow. Then He was nailed to the cross through His feet and hands and then pierced in the side with a spear causing blood and water to flow from His body. He was covered in welts, bruises, and blood so that He was almost unrecognizable.

After His resurrection, He appeared to His disciples in the upper room.

The welts, bruises, and blood were gone. His body showed very little of the pain and suffering He had endured. He did not have scars on His face or across His back. He was once again beautiful. His resurrected body testified to the resurrection we will all one day know with new, healed bodies that are once again beautiful, even in our own eyes.

The exceptions to this miraculous healing of His body were the nail scars on His hands and feet, and the scar from where He was pierced with the spear.

“Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.’”

John 20:27 (NIV).

These scars testified to His death and suffering on the cross. They testified to the love and mercy we find there. They testify even now to the greatest gift God has ever offered mankind: the knowledge that He was one of us, faced death as we do, and came out on the other side victorious as we one day will be if we trust in Him.

We all experience suffering and injury.

We all bear scars, some physical, and others emotional or spiritual. We tend to hide our scars from the world, thinking we are the only ones who bear them. But that’s not exactly true.

Our own scars long to testify to the love and mercy of a God who saw us through our trials and helped us come out victorious on the other side. They long to testify that we were not defeated because God was on our side.

What if, instead of hiding our scars from the world, we shared them for all to see just as Jesus bid Thomas touch the scars on His palms and His side? What if we let our scars testify to the love and mercy of our God? What if we helped share the greatest gift God has ever given mankind, a gift that our scars testify to?

“An untold story never heals.”  -Mary Demuth

What victory do your scars testify to? Please dear one, share it with others. People are waiting to hear from you.

Take a look at my own website. You’ll be blessed I think–anotherfearlessyear.net.