Month: April 2016

“Why me?”

Tears flowing from unblinking eyes, she looked at me for the answer.  All other eyes in the room also seemed focused in my direction as I looked back at my crying sister, reached for her hand, and with all the love in my heart, simply said, “Why not you?”

Her lament that night was concerning an issue that she had been dealing with for many years.  It was burdensome, it was embarrassing, and it often caused her schedule to be interrupted with little notice.  Much like Paul, she had begged God to take it from her.  And also like Paul, He had not.  That night she spoke to me, but she was really crying out to God, asking Him, “Why do I have to do this?”

But she was asking the wrong question.  The real question is, “Why do I get to do this?”

James tells us in his first few verses to consider it joy when we face trials. And it’s often the go-to scripture when someone else is struggling through something.  But it’s one thing to read it.  It’s one thing to say it.  It’s a whole other thing to do it.  Joy?  Joy when you are laid off from your job?  Joy when your son is living on the streets, slipping further and further into the depths of the drug world? Joy when your marriage is all but over?  Where is the joy in any of this?

You won’t find it if you look to your circumstance, for joy is not found there; it is found in the Lord.  And it is only when we put our full trust in Him that despite the tears and despite the pain, there is hope.  Hope that even when we cannot see it, cannot even fathom how it could possibly be used for good, God will use our circumstance for His glory.

In his Gospel, John tells us of a man who had been born blind.  Just before Jesus healed him, the disciples had asked why this man was suffering from his affliction—had his parents sinned? Had he sinned? Whose fault was it?

Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him—John 9:3

This man was blind so that others could see the glory of God?  I’m sure as he had sat begging at the road’s edge and being dismissed and ridiculed, that he did not think his condition was fair.  I’m sure he asked on many occasions, “Why me?”

But then Jesus healed him.  And thousands of years later, we are still talking about that man.  Not because of him, but because of what Jesus did through him.

Most often our trials are not even about us.

How can that be?  How can our suffering help someone else?  Because people are watching.  They see us sporting the Jesus T-shirts and fish bumper stickers and the cross pendants. They see us smiling and raising our hands on the mountain top.  But what do they see when the trial comes?

In the book of Daniel we hear about three men that faced a fiery trial. Literally. Because they refused to bow down to the King and worship his gods, he was furious. He ordered them to be thrown into the fire and asked them, “What god will be able to rescue you now?”  Daniel 3:19-23 describe that in the king’s fury he demanded that the heat be turned up.

 He ordered the furnace heated seven times hotter than usual and commanded some of the strongest soldiers in his army to tie up Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and throw them into the blazing furnace…The king’s command was so urgent and the furnace so hot that the flames of the fire killed the soldiers who took up [the men], and these three men, firmly tied, fell into the blazing furnace.

We read that passage in less than a minute, but think about what was happening in real time.  These men stood there as they were being tied up.  And not just loosely wrapped, but tied carefully by skillful soldiers.  The soldiers were accustomed to men kicking and flailing before being forced into the fire, so they would have used unbreakable ropes and tied their knots meticulously.

And so the three men stood there, bound by the ropes of their circumstance, and watched as the fire got hotter.  This took time. There was no thermostat on a wall that the king could ordered turned up. No, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego stood, and watched as coal was heaped upon coal, and chunks of wood were thrown in one at a time.

They stood.  Bound.  As the fire intensified.

Did their faith waver?  Would yours?  Did their resolve begin to melt as the beads of sweat ran down their brow?  No, they stood.  And they waited.  As the furnace got hotter, and the flames grew higher.

And when it was time, they moved forward.  The fire was so hot that at the entrance to the furnace, the soldiers escorting them burst into flames.  That’s some intense heat!  There they stood on the threshold of the furnace, no longer guarded, no longer being forced into the flames.  They could have taken this opportunity to run.  Well, maybe not run, but at the very least, bunny-hopped around the side.  Yes, they would have avoided the flames.

But they still would have been bound.

In verse 17, they had stated to the king that “our God is able.”  It does not matter the intensity of the flame, our God IS able.  And knowing this, the three men willingly fell into the fire.

And you know what? In the middle of the smoke and the ash and the flame, people were watching.  When the king looked into the furnace, he was astonished, because although they had put three men in, he could see four walking around. Unbound. And unharmed.

God had not saved them FROM the fire; He saved them IN the fire.

Are you bound by your circumstances and side-stepping the furnace?  Or are you moving forward boldly into the flames, knowing that God will meet you there? If these men had avoided the fire, they would have also missed a personal encounter with God.

And as is often the case, this encounter was not only for them. When they emerged from the fire, verse 27 tells us that there was a crowd gathered, and everyone witnessed that “the fire had not harmed their bodies, nor was a hair of their heads singed; their robes were not scorched, and there was no smell of fire on them.”

Oh yes, people are watching.  When someone peeks inside your furnace, what do they see?  Are you crumpled up in a heap screaming from the heat?  Or do they see you standing amidst the flames, walking with God?  Our faith needs be non-flammable. When we walk through the flames of our trials with complete and utter trust in God, it brings Him glory.

And it has a lasting impact on other people.  The king who before had been mocking God ended up praising Him and ordering others to give Him due respect. All because he was watching when someone else faced a fiery trial.

These three men. The blind man.  People saw them walking through the flames and stumbling in the darkness. And then they saw the miracle of God’s divine intervention, and their lives were changed for eternity. What an honor and a privilege to be a part of God’s miracle.

So maybe my friend was asking the right question after all.  Except instead of standing and angrily shaking a fist while we shout it, we should be on our knees, face down on the floor and whispering.

Why me?

Reclined back in my chair fully satiated, I watched while the server walked around our table of eight and collected the little silver trays with varying amounts of cash placed upon them.  “No change,” said the friend on my right.  “I don’t want change,” said the one next to her. “Me neither,” interjected the next one as he quickly returned to his conversation.  And so it went, all the way around the table one by one my friends lifted their voices, declining the offer of change.

And as listened, I heard  the voices of so many today screaming out for things to stay just the way they are. “No change…I don’t want any change… Keep the change.”  Of course, these voices are not speaking about money–they are begging for their circumstances to remain status quo. A chorus of  “I’m perfectly OK where I’m at.”  So what is it about change that causes us to resist at all cost?

Change hurts. It makes us uncomfortable. It takes effort. Even when the change is for our good, we often will linger in our present situation simply because it is familiar.

About a year ago, I had to get a new computer.  I had needed one for at least two years, but I kept putting off the purchase.  Not only would a new computer cost me money, it would cost me time and effort.  A lot of effort, because since they no longer sell computers loaded with Windows XP (yes, you read that correctly) I would have to learn an entirely new operating system, file management, and figure out where they’d moved the cut and the paste buttons. Not to mention I would have to physically disassemble my current computer, deal with the dust and debris that exists in places you never go, and spend days transferring files and re-loading programs.  Ugh. It was just too much to think about.

So I spent the better part of a year dealing with slow connection and programs that opened more slowly than Grandma at Christmas.  It was inefficient, it was frustrating, but it was what I knew.

And then came the inevitable crash.  The one from which there was no recovery. And I was forced to walk through all those dreaded steps to discard the old, and bring in the new.  It was physically demanding—after all the new system has two hard drives, both about 17 terabytes (so that I won’t have to change computers anytime soon). I don’t know what terabytes are, but I know they weigh a lot.  The new tower was much larger than the old, so furniture had to be moved and rearranged in order to accommodate it. And then I started to load all my programs onto the new system.  I’m just OCD enough to have all the original program CDs, so one by one I began load them.  Only, some of them would not load; it seems that some things that worked on Windows XP were not compatible with the change,  This was rather disconcerting, because these are things I worked with on a daily basis, and how was I now supposed to accomplish my everyday tasks?  After lamenting the loss, I realized I had to leave some things behind in order to continue with the new system.

I really, really missed my old system.  For about a minute.  Just long enough to see the speed and efficiency with which this new computer responded.  I was beyond amazed.  My old computer would burn a DVD, but I had to start the process as I retired for the night and let it work for several hours. It was usually done by the time I awoke the next morning.

But this new computer?  Oh my goodness.  I began the burn process and then started to bed, only to get curious about 10 minutes later, so I  walked over to check the progress.  It was done. Done! I had not even realized the possibility for such speed even existed. And so, in my reluctance to make the effort necessary for change, I had settled.

And so often it is with change–on the other side of it, it was all worth it.  But the process is like an uphill climb.  And most of us spend the climb looking back down toward the valley, wishing we were back there in the comfort of the familiar.  So what if it’s a dead-end job?  The climb is too steep.  Who cares if the boyfriend doesn’t always treat me with respect?  At least I know my way around the valley.

For those of us walking with God, change is inevitable.  For without change, there is no growth. God is much more concerned with your character than with your comfort and so He will direct you and challenge you with things you never imagined yourself doing.  But see, God knows what’s on the other side of that peak–while we are making the climb, He is just leading us to a higher elevation. The higher we go, the more our perspective changes.

The Israelites were following God as they made their exodus out of Egypt.  He provided a cloud by day, and pillar of fire by night.  Wherever the cloud set down, they set up camp and stayed there until the cloud moved again.  It didn’t matter if they had become comfortable in their current place, when God said it was time to change, they moved.

At the command of the LORD they camped, and at the command of the LORD they set out – Num 9:23

If you are walking with God and the scene never changes, then you are on a treadmill; you might burn some calories, but you aren’t moving forward. God loves you where you are, but He loves you too much to leave you there. He is constantly doing a new thing in us, but often we become so complacent in our surroundings that we don’t recognize Him in the situation. Or we are too busy murmuring and complaining about our discomfort to recognize the comfort of His outstretched arms.

See, I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?  I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland — Isaiah 43:19

God’s ways are always better than our own.He can open doors we never even saw and straighten paths that we have made crooked.

My new computer is so much more efficient, the downloads so fast and the response time so quick, that it took no time before I was saying how much I loved this new system, and asking myself why in the world I had waited so long to make the change. I couldn’t even tell you now the names of the programs that I had so fretted over the thought of leaving behind.

And so it is with God. Any time He asks you to put something down, it is only because He has something so much better of which He wants you to take hold.  When He asks you to leave something behind, it is because He has something better up ahead.

Trusting God is always worth the effort.

Perhaps you should try it for a change.

I was scrolling through Facebook this morning and saw a post from a friend of mine paying tribute to her father.  Today is his birthday, and she wrote how she could not put into words the love, admiration and honor she has for him; how he’d always been there for her, and that he was a heroic example of husband, father, grandfather and friend.  I know that when my friend hears that God is our Father, she has no trouble picturing Him as the loving presence that He is.

Not everyone has so easy a time doing that.

Our culture has drifted such that an intact wholesome family is more the exception than the norm.   And the tragedy of that is that so many children are growing up with a skewed perspective of what a father is.  No wonder, if theirs only sees them sporadically, or has abandoned them altogether.

My “dad” abandoned me. Or maybe he never even knew I existed.  You see, he was a 16 year old kid who impregnated his even younger girlfriend.  At least that’s what I’ve been told.  All I know is that she was staying in a facility for unwed mothers until I was born, and then they walked away.

And so, I am an adopted child.  I stayed in the orphanage for about three months, until my parents took me home.  And while I always knew I was adopted, it was never an issue. My mom was my mom and my dad was my dad.  My dad provided for me, guided me, taught me and disciplined me just as if I were carrying his DNA.  As a child, he was my hero, and I was definitely a Daddy’s girl.  He taught me the love of the outdoors, how to ride and care for a horse, how to take a fall, and how to get back in the saddle after I had done so. He taught me how to drive and how to hold a door open for someone; how to be generous and how a stranger was just a friend to whom you hadn’t yet spoken.  There was nothing my father couldn’t do.  There was nothing he couldn’t fix.  He was not perfect, for he was but a man, but I never doubted his great love for me.  And when he died a little over a year ago, everything he had was mine.  I was his heir—what he owned, I owned.  The fact that I was his adopted daughter meant nothing; it’s as if the adjective didn’t even exist—I WAS His daughter.

So not only do I have a great example of a father, I have an inside track on what it means to be an adopted child.  I wasn’t just handed to my father, he chose me. He sought me out, and picked me.

Me.

God does too.  The Bible tells us that God has adopted us as His very own offspring.

He chose us in him before the foundation of the world…. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will —Ephesians 1:4-5

What does it mean to adopt? To take by choice into a relationship, especially to take voluntarily; to choose or take as one’s own–make one’s own by selection or assent.  And what does assent mean? To agree to something, especially after thoughtful consideration.

Thoughtful consideration.  Adopting us was not God’s plan B—it was His intent from the beginning.

He predestined. The Message version says that “Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind.”

How comforting it is to know that even though an earthly father can abandon us and leave us feeling worthless and unwanted, that the Creator of the Universe planned us. Planned ME. Desired ME and He knit me together in my mother’s young womb. Those kids may not have wanted me, but HE did. And He did so with purpose.  Ephesians goes on to say in the second chapter that we are “God’s handiwork” and that were created to do good works, “which God prepared in advance for us to do.”  In advance.  We are not an afterthought.

My birth parents did not plan me.  To them I was a mistake.  But to God, I am His beautiful creation, hand-made for the purpose of His glory.  Makes it a little hard to feel worthless under those circumstances.

As God’s adopted child—just as with my earthly adoptive dad—everything that is His is mine.  The difference is that I don’t have to wait for death to take possession of it.  Everything God is, everything He has to offer—His grace, His mercy, His love, patience, goodness and peace—it’s all mine.  Right now.  It is mine because I am His.

As the song says, He is a good, good Father.  Anyone who has trouble reconciling God as their father may not have had the best example of one here on earth.  But we cannot form our opinion of a perfect God based on the actions of an imperfect man. Men are flawed.

Our God is not.

If you have a child, think of how you felt when you first held him.  That indescribable joy. The overwhelming emotion.  The realization that you didn’t even know that such love existed—remember that feeling?  That’s how God feels about YOU. And so much more.  All the time.  YOU are His child.

And He is a good, good Father.