Gospel Transformation
As I think over the past 5 years, I am swept off my feet with amazement for my Savior, Jesus Christ! He is changing me from a person who was completely living life for myself and my dreams and goals, to a person who is, by God's grace, learning to live every day to please my Lord and Loving Master, Jesus Christ! I don't say this proudly - because I had nothing to do with my spiritual heart transplant that occurred five years ago. And there is no perfection in my daily life – I still need the gospel of Jesus Christ every day in battling my sinful self – but there is definitely a changed purpose, and a passion for loving God that I never had prior to that time.
Is
Our Suffering Wasted?
Five years ago, I was
literally at the end of my physical and emotional endurance. I had battled a
neurological disease called Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) or as it used
to be called Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD) for 10 years. It had developed
into an all-encompassing disease that affected my autonomic nervous system, my
central nervous system, and my muscles. It caused my blood pressure to be
constantly sky-rocketing, caused my legs, face, and neck to turn splotchy red
and fiery hot intermittently, caused me to be racked with burning nerve pain if
I was exposed to noise, flashing lights, weather changes, or even if I read a
book for too long. I experienced regular bouts of nausea and vomiting that
lasted for three to five days at a time that rendered me incapable of even
lifting my head off the bed. I got so that I could not walk much of the time
and was in a wheelchair. I would sometimes have such touchy reflexes that my
legs would start bouncing if my foot barely touched something unexpected on the
floor, and I would go sprawling. I could not plan anything, was on so much
medication that I could not stay awake, and had no continuity with my children
for many, many years. Our children were 3, 5, and 7 when I first started
experiencing symptoms of CRPS, and so you can imagine what our home was like
for those 11 years.
By the end of year 10 of this, I was lying in bed, unable to think, pray, or read; vomiting endlessly, unable-to-lift-my-head-off-the-bed sick. My body, from my neck down was on fire constantly, I could not be touched or bumped. I was lying in bed, my walker over the top of me to keep the sheets from touching my bare skin and sending me into scalding hot bouts of pain. If anyone even bumped the end of the bed, it would send me into muscle spasms and jerking and I would lie on the bed, jerking and bouncing until the pain subsided. I could not get up to go to the bathroom, could not take a shower, and the loneliness was overwhelming and suffocating. I would sleep all day sometimes, and then be awake at night, or I'd sleep for days on end, then be awake for days and days. Did I mention isolation and loneliness? The feeling of hopelessness and fear and purposelessness was over-the-top overwhelming. Trips to the emergency room and hospital were routine - about every two weeks at times, and although the staff were usually compassionate, they had no idea how to help my pain and suffering. I had gotten past the point of wanting to live, praying to die, and having no will to rehabilitate, again, for the twentieth time. I also knew that my children and husband were suffering because of me, and that made me feel even worse, and there was nothing physically I could do about it.
I have not mentioned God yet in all this, because, while I had “asked Jesus into my heart” when I was four years old, I only thought of Him as a condemning, angry God, who was up there ready to pound me for not "doing" the things I should have been doing. I derived no comfort from who He was to me in a relational way. I read my Bible, prayed, talked about Jesus, tried to "do" all the things Christians are supposed to "do", tried to say all the things Christians are supposed to say. But I was full to overflowing with the heart idols of selfishness, pride, and self-righteousness; my attempts at knowing God were all controlled by self-fulfillment, human usefulness, wanting to look good, and wanting to feel good. As a result, you can imagine how I dealt with my husband and our three children, especially when those idols were not being obtained. I knew nothing of the love and grace of God. However, Jesus Christ was about to change all that, and in a way that gave all the glory to Himself! By this time, I was exceedingly angry with God - I knew better than to shake my fist at Him, but I had just about had it with Him. He had not given me what I wanted in life - not the circumstances, or the health, or the ability to care for my family and husband, or the church, or the family, that I thought I needed or deserved. My life was not the one I had pictured myself enjoying at the age of 46, and my smoldering anger towards God burned hotter and hotter inside me, though it took me a long time to admit it. He had reduced me from the stereo-typical "home-school mom" who had well-behaved children, did cloth diapers, baked bread, made everything from scratch, kept a clean house, etc., to a person with seemingly no value - not to me or to my family or to others. I lay in bed and slept and moaned and cried much of the time. And even when I was feeling better in between flare-ups, I was always trying to “make up for” lost time, putting myself back into relapses by my frenetic activity much of the time, and had no rest in God.
But
God...!
Can you imagine my
overwhelming joy then, when into the midst of this darkness Jesus Christ
intersected my life with the sunshine of His love?! I cannot tell you the exact
moment that my heart was changed. The Lord did not appear to me in a
blinding light like when He appeared to Saul; not as a King on a throne, high
and lifted up, like with Isaiah; not in a burning bush as with Moses. But just
as surely as He appeared to each of those real people long ago, He appeared to
me, in a still, small voice, through Scriptures I knew. He said, "I love
you - I really do! I know you have tried for your entire life to please me in
your own way, and it’s time now for you to lay it down and trust me –
completely. I love you, not because you can do anything for
me, not because you're an over-comer; not because you've done things to try to
please Me, or because you want to do what’s right sometimes; not because you’re smart or clever - I
love you because of Jesus, My Son, who came to earth to live and die so that
you could have life!" I was the picture of the beginning of Isaiah 58,
where Israel
I weep with joy still
as I tell you five years later that I felt waterfalls of God's grace and love
being poured into me. As I just believed by faith what He had told me in His
Word for years and years, I literally felt the weight of my sins rolling off my
back, and the sunshine of God's grace and love washing over me in overwhelming
measure! He came to me and showed me how very much He loved me because of Jesus
Christ! He had done it all already, and there was nothing else for me to
do but believe and receive His love. Over the course of a few days, God gave me
the supernatural strength to stay awake and read His Word ravenously for hours
on end. I was filled with a joy and peace that I had never known. I knew I had
never known Jesus like this before, and wondered with amazement at what had
happened to me! It was my sister who had helped me much throughout all my years
of pain and sickness who helped me to sort through what was happening, from a
biblical perspective. That I had become a child of God, by faith in what Jesus
Christ had already done for me! That was amazing to me - because I had
"prayed the prayer" when I was 4 and thought I was already a
Christian!
Over the ensuing five years since that time, I am coming to understand the gospel more and more as I learn more about Jesus in His Word, and have never lost my awe and wonder at what Christ has done for me. Ephesians 2:1-3 details my life before Christ - pretty depressing stuff. Yet, the sweetest words to me in all the Scripture are found in Ephesians 2:4-10:
"But God, being rich in mercy,
because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our
trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been
saved[!!]—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly
places in Christ Jesus, so
that in the coming ages he
might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ
Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own
doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God
prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."
Salvation
For The Purpose of God's Glory!
As I read the
Scriptures, the Holy Spirit began by His grace to open my eyes to areas
where I needed immediate and thorough repentance – an acknowledging of my sin
and sinful habits both to God and to those I had hurt. The Holy Spirit
began to reveal to me that I possessed and loved other gods, such as
self-righteousness; "rightness"; selfish motivations; fear of man,
loving the praise of man more than the praise of God, and loving what God could
do for me or what I could do for Him, more than I loved
God Himself. The Holy Spirit gave me the grace and motivation to begin
turning away from those heart idols and sinful habits, and begin learning how
to develop habits that were pleasing to God. I began to realize that not only
did Christ die to save me from the penalty of sin (hell), but that He had also
saved me from the power of sin for the even greater purpose of
bringing Him glory in this life by the way I live my life. That meant that even
my pain and disability were given to me by God in order to bring Him glory, and
it gave me no excuse to sin. That revolutionized by life! There was a
purpose in my suffering - a royal, King-centered purpose! There was a loving,
completely sovereign God who had orchestrated the whole thing, and who was
loving enough and powerful enough, and who had enough grace to make glory rise
from the ash heap of suffering when I placed my faith and trust in Him.
The purpose of the gospel is to make dead souls live; to give life to
those who recognize they have no hope of life in themselves; to take us from
the path of destruction and set us on the path of life; to turn our life from
heading our own way to heading His way. When Jesus Saves us, it is a
total tranforming work that He begins, and He will not be finished working in
us until we awake with His likeness in eternity!
That realization became the impetus of radical "cutting off hands and feet, and plucking out eyes" transformation in my life. I had heard Romans 8:28 my whole life, usually when things were going very badly in life, and so thought that verse meant that we were supposed to just trust that somehow God was doing something good in the bad circumstances, even though it didn't look good. It was like I had used it as a pill - "Take one Romans
“All discipline for the moment seems not to
be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards
it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.”
Fruitfulness
As a Result of Suffering
If we allow God to do
the work He has intended through suffering, we are promised the “peaceable
fruit of righteousness”. This means we can have a thankful heart to God in the
midst of our suffering – not an outwardly glib or stoic acceptance of our pain,
but a hopeful, expectant awaiting of what God is doing through it, knowing that
He is with us all the way. God is being exceedingly gracious to us when He
tells us that He has a plan and a purpose in our suffering; and not only that,
but that He causes all things to work together for good to those who love God.
Those verses follow on the heels of God's explanation of suffering and trials,
and how sometimes we don't even know how to pray as we should, so the Spirit of
God is interceding for us with "groanings too deep for words",
according to the will of God. As I have come to understand more His sovereignty
and love, I realize this means that because God loves me through the go-between
of Jesus, and because He always gets what He prays for because He is is completely sovereign and because He always prays
according to the will of God, that His will to grow me in Christlikeness is
being worked out in the daily trials of my life! It is His prayer and love that keeps me and
brings meaning and purpose from the circumstances of my life, and not my own prayers or working! Verse
31 tells us that God is for us, and that if the God of the
universe is for us, who could possibly be against us?! Then, the remainder of
Romans 8 explains why this is so - because of the great and overwhelming love
of God! He tells us in no uncertain terms, using every argument we could
possibly throw against God's love for us, that His love is deeper, wider,
broader, and stronger than anything that could ever endeavor to take it away
from us or diminish it - why? Because of Jesus Christ, who came to earth to
live a life that perfectly pleased God the Father so that He could die in our
place - not only so we could be forgiven of our sins, but also so that we could
be given the righteousness of Christ through faith in Jesus' sacrifice for us.
Colossians 2:13-15 is a beautiful description of what God has done for us in
Jesus Christ:
"And you, who were dead in your
trespasses and your sinful, carnal nature, God made alive together with him,
having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that
stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the
cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by
triumphing over them in him."
Jesus
Paid My Debt
Because of Jesus
Christ's sacrificial life and death for me, the enormously thick book of my
sins has been nailed to the cross of Jesus, and the legal penalty for my sin
(death, see Romans 6:23 ) has been canceled!
Not because God feels sorry for me, or even because I asked to be forgiven, or
because He loves me on my own merits! No!! God can forgive me only because I
have placed my trust in Jesus who
already paid my debt, legally. And when God raised Jesus from the dead, He was
saying, "The sacrifice of my Son was enough to forgive the sins of the
whole world". (Isaiah 53:10-11)
Praise the Lord we have a Redeemer who was willing to live a life of suffering and shame, who was willing to be maligned, persecuted, misunderstood, mocked, minimized, and tempted! Praise God we have a Savior who was tested in every way that we are, yet He did not sin in the process - so that we have One to whom we can run for help in our time of need, as well as One who lived life perfectly in our place! (Hebrews 4:14-16)
Praise the Lord we have a Redeemer who was willing to live a life of suffering and shame, who was willing to be maligned, persecuted, misunderstood, mocked, minimized, and tempted! Praise God we have a Savior who was tested in every way that we are, yet He did not sin in the process - so that we have One to whom we can run for help in our time of need, as well as One who lived life perfectly in our place! (Hebrews 4:14-16)
I believe that the angst of suffering is reduced exponentially according to our understanding of who God is. The more we understand his character and nature, the more we will be able to rest in what He's doing in our lives and in the lives of those around us. The more we understand that He has a plan and a purpose in our suffering - not just an arbitrary plan because He's God and gets what He wants - but because He's a God who intimately loves me and cares for me, and because His plan is that my life will bring glory and honor to Himself - the more we will be able to rest in whatever circumstances He gives us today.
Life After
Suffering
So, where is my life
five years after Christ saved me? God allowed me to suffer agonizing pain for
another year or so after He transformed my life by His grace. And in that year,
I realized that I had a perfect mission field and a perfect platform from which
to minister, and that God had been preparing me for ministry long before He
saved me! I was able to take the love and grace of God into places that rarely
hear that message, into the hospitals and doctors offices that I frequented, as
well as within my own home. By God's sovereign design and plan, He has chosen
for the time-being to heal me of my physical pain, and I thank and praise Him
for that every day. Yet, it is not the physical healing that I am the most
thankful for - it is that He has
"delivered my soul from death, yes, my
feet from falling, so that I may walk before God in the light of life."
Psalm 56:13
I still have some
intermittent physical challenges, but those challenges are no longer the focus
of my life. Rather, they are a means of helping me connect with others
who are suffering, with whom I can share the love and grace of God. The
Lord leads me to many people who are suffering in one form or another - either
with old-age infirmities, or with painful physical ailments, or women who live
with unsaved spouses, or people who are suffering to one degree or another due
to the effects of our sin-cursed natures and world. It is a joy to be able to
serve my own husband and children and to be able to love them with Christ's
love every day. Every day that I'm up on my feet is a blessed gift from the
hand of a loving God who has a purpose for my being on my feet and healthy,
just as He had for my being incapacitated for 11 years. The Lord is giving me
some of His "reward for those who diligently seek Him" by allowing me
the overwhelming privilege of serving in His fields for \this time. I minister
in nursing homes, have done Bible studies with hospice patients, disciple many
women on a daily basis, and am being trained and am preparing to become a biblical
counselor. That training has been a wonderful experience as I've gotten
to know the Lord more through intensive Bible study, as well as being involved
in training with others who love the Lord and are further along in their growth
than I am. I am learning that there is no problem of life that God's Word
does not address, and that I can confidently take myself and others to the
source of that help - Jesus Christ. That training has brought out many of
the remaining sin issues of my own heart, and I'm so thankful that I continue
to have a Savior who promises to forgive and cleanse me from my sin when I
confess, repent, and turn and walk in the other direction (1 John 1:9).
I am simply over-awed
by the love and grace of God as shown to us through the person and work of
Jesus Christ. He has transformed my life, and He can do the same for you. There
is nothing mystical or magical about placing our faith in Jesus Christ alone to
save us. It requires a supernatural work of the Spirit of God to give us life
so that we may believe. Maybe you're like I was; maybe you thought you believed
in Jesus to save you, but you have never seen fruit of that choice in your life
in the form of increasing love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness, and
self-control. Maybe your life is characterized by bitterness about the people
or circumstances in your life; maybe you have never experienced a love for
God's Word, or a passion for loving God alone. Maybe you never think about God
unless you need something from Him, and then when you pray and He doesn't give
you what you want, you doubt that He even exists. I would challenge you to pray
and ask God to reveal Himself to you, to give you faith to believe Him and His
Word. He tells us in His Word that He is not a God made of "gold or silver
or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man." (Acts 1:29 ) He is not a God who will conform to our image, but a God
to whose image we must conform. And if we are to find this God of love and
mercy, we must look in the one place He can be found - the Bible. It is there
that He reveals Himself in all His glory and majesty, with His fierce wrath
towards sin, and where His character is plainly revealed. If we are to know
this God intimately, we must know what He says. But we must never come to God's
Word with the thought that if we can just learn all the "rules" and
"master" all the "do's and don't" contained in it, and that
by doing so we can please God and make Him happy with us. That is the opposite
of what God has done for us through Jesus Christ. Jesus came and obeyed all the
rules and was the master of pleasing God in all things, so that we, who are
sinful and hopelessly deserving of death, can have life, if we simply place all
our trust in Jesus Christ and take our trust out of our own doings. (Ephesians
2:8-9) That's the grace of God!
Preaching The Gospel To Myself Every Day
Even as children of
God, there is still nothing we can do to make God happy with us apart from the
person and work of Jesus Christ. He has done it all, and there is nothing else
to be done. We were completely saved when He gave us a new heart and identity,
placing us into Christ (the new birth - past). He then tells us that at that
point, in His eyes, we were also completely changed into Christ-likeness
positionally (sanctified - present), and given assurance of eternal life in
heaven (glorification - future), because of Jesus. (Colossians 2:10)
However, we live in the present tension of what has already taken place in our heart through faith in Jesus Christ (justification), and the future promise and hope of heaven (glorification), and although we are completely changed, sanctified, in God's eyes, the fact of the matter is, in the actual practice of our lives day by day, we are not yet perfect. We still sin every day. So, what are we to do in order to change our sinful desires into Christlike desires? Paul's letter to the Philippians, chapter 2, verses 12 and 13 tells us:
"Work out your own salvation with fear
and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his
good pleasure."
We work because God
works in us, both to give us the will and the power to obey God. That's where
His grace is shown to us every day in our present lives. His grace is given to
us in abundance to help us obey Him and live lives that are pleasing to Him.
Titus 2:11-14 tells us:
"For the grace of God has appeared,
bringing salvation for all people, training us to say 'no' to ungodliness and
worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the
present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our
great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from
all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who
are zealous for good works."
Grace
That Trains
Grace teaches or
trains us to combat and fight with all our might against the desires that rule
our hearts that are contrary to God's desires ("work out your own
salvation with fear and trembling, for
it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good
pleasure. Phil. 2:13). So, what about those times that we slip back into
our old ways, when we forget to seek God, when we have no desire for spiritual
things, and when we fail to live lives that are totally pleasing to God? What
happens when we suddenly snap at our children, become impatient with delays in
traffic or life, when people delay us or make us miss our appointments?
That's where the beautiful message of the gospel is needed in our lives every single day - Jesus Christ already lived perfectly
in my place, and when I trust Him as my righteousness, His record of
righteousness in my place will never fade away or tarnish or become spotted or
wrinkled (Ephesians 5:25). I can trust that my record is clean, in spite
of my sin, because Jesus Christ bore my sin until there was not one drop of sin
left to be paid for, and then gave up His life into the hands of His Father,
who had turned His back on His own dear Son because He could not look upon sin.
That is the greatest, most grace-filled, merciful exchange of all time,
that Jesus took sin, became sin for us, so that we who believe in His name
might have the righteousness of Christ credited, or imputed, to our account (2
Cor. 5:21)
That's the message of
the gospel. "Jesus Christ died for sinners, among whom I am the foremost
of all." (1 Timothy 1:15) As believers in Jesus Christ, we strive for
obedience every day because we love God, not because we're afraid of Him or
because He has a stick over our heads and is going to beat us every time we
sin. "We love Him because He first loved us." (1 John 4:19) As
believers, we serve a risen Savior, who loves us and gives us everything we
need in order to be pleasing to Him in our desires and actions. He is for us, not against us - He's on our side!
And that's the gracious gift of God to every believer – that motivation and power to live our lives in a way that fulfills our creation - to the glory and praise of God - all because of the grace of God towards those who will believe in the person and work of Jesus Christ on our behalf.
And that's the gracious gift of God to every believer – that motivation and power to live our lives in a way that fulfills our creation - to the glory and praise of God - all because of the grace of God towards those who will believe in the person and work of Jesus Christ on our behalf.
What Next?...
So, five years later, what is life like? Well, one year after Christ found and saved me, I had the worse relapse I've ever had and it was at that time that they diagnosed my condition as CRPS (up to that point, they didn't know what I had). The Dr. held out no hope of my recovery and we began to add onto our house, making it handicap accessible through the help of our church at that time. I rehabbed in an inpatient rehab facility for 2 weeks after having been in the hospital for 2 weeks, and as I was in there, the Lord began to speak to me about the temple of my body - that my body belongs to the Lord, and that I must take care of it for His glory, and not just so I'd feel better. He directed me to a low-inflammation diet, and I began to do water aerobics in warm water twice a week faithfully. The Lord used those two things, along with a heart that wanted to be a good steward of my body that belonged to the Lord now, to give me a good long remission - 3 years to be exact!
During those three years, the Lord has given me more ministry opportunities than I could possibly have imagined. At first, I jumped in wherever I was needed - Good News Club, AWANA, VBS, and one on one mentoring. As time progressed, the Lord led me to begin a girls club called "Little Gems" at our house for 3rd through 6th grade girls, and we went through a chronological study of Scripture, going from Genesis through the gospels in one school year. It was a blessing, and one little girl in particular seemed to benefit spiritually from that year. A friend began to help me with this, and she has grown be leaps and bounds since that time. At this time, I also began visiting a dear friend in a nursing facility, and on the same day, we both asked each other if we could begin a Bible study in that facility! We began that nearly 3 years ago, and it is still going strong today. We have added quite a few ladies, and two in particular are really growing! It's been such an encouraging ministry for me, and I try to always take another lady with me so they can also be using their gifts and find joy in serving as I have.
The Lord then led us to begin attending a different church, where we remained for about a year, and during that time, I did some counseling of a few ladies there and met some dear friends. The Lord began to impress on my heart that I needed to get certified in Biblical Counseling so I would be better equipped to share the Lord with women, and I longed to know the Lord through His Word in a more practical way so I could give myself full time to ministry to women. The Lord has been clarifying a niche, I believe at this time, to counsel women who are suffering physical ailments and who suffer with chronic illnesses. My husband and I are praying about a larger home closer to church where we can take in women who are needing short term residential counseling to get them stabilized spiritually so they can become joyful, functioning members of local churches and become disciple makers themselves. The Lord tells those of us who are stronger to come alongside those who are weaker, to help them use their gifts, so all will be encouraged and all will be edified. That is what I am attempting to do.
A little under a year ago, the Lord led us to a church that is on-fire for biblical counseling, where the whole church is founded upon biblical counseling, where everything that comes from the pulpit, teaching times, and private conversations with leadership is biblical counseling, and where I got much help with my test, both from the corporate ministry of the Word, and through the loving shepherding of our pastor as he reviewed and corrected all my writing (all 112 pages!). The Lord has led us to a very green oasis of refreshment to our souls as a family. I worked on my written ACBC (formerly NANC) written test for about a year, and the Lord deemed fit to let me pass on the first round of grading this past March, and how I praise Him for His faithfulness to me in this. I'm so thankful for the patience of my family who had to pitch in quite a bit so I could spend time studying and writing.
All the sitting I did (probably greater than 400 hours total!) and the fact that the warm pool where we did water aerobics shut down about a year and a half ago did a number on my neck and shoulders, and I began to have a lot of fatigue again. I tried to ignore this for a long time, but it began to interfere with ministry quite a bit, so I went to the chiropractor and got to feeling quite a bit better; until he had me stand on this vibrator thing which seems to have set off the CRPS again, and within days, I was again unable to move my legs or walk and was having bad muscle spasms and nerve pain again. I ended up back in the hospital for a week, an am writing this blog post from a rehab facility where I am learning to walk again.
I must confess that this has been a very, very difficult period of time for me in many ways. I thought the Lord had healed me and that because He was calling me to serve Him and I was following along, doing what I could to accomplish that and trusting God for His part in it, that things would be smooth sailing! Wrong!! It is often when we are in exactly that position of moving ahead, carefully building our house on the Rock, carefully putting away sin and living a life of repentant humility before the Lord, that our faith is tried to new heights, so we will be better able to serve those whom the Lord will bring across our path. This will slow up my supervised counseling phase quite a bit, and ACBC has been very gracious to extend my time until I am able to get back into the swing of things. I have had expanded horizons of ministry while in the hospital and here at the rehab facility, to share Christ with all sorts of people, some of whom are captive audiences for a few minutes! My heart has not been squeaky clean throughout this entire ordeal, and I've had to repent of wanting ease, comfort, to be out of pain, to not have the hindrance of not being able to walk, to be worried about the present and the future; and I've been challenged to walk by faith and not by sight, and remember that the battle is the Lord's and He will win with many or with few, and He doesn't need me in order to do His work. Trusting the Lord in the times of waiting, of preparation, of just plain not feeling well and feeling like I can't prepare at all - all that is in the hands of my loving heavenly Father who always knows what's best for me. I have been meditating on two passages these weeks - Hebrews 12, and Isaiah 58. I have no need to fear or fret (that is sin) and I don't need to chafe against the discipline and correction of the Lord, because He's doing this so I can share in His holiness - what a reward! And He also promises that if I will fast from self, fast from selfish desires, fast from self-righteousness, fast from self-sufficiency, fast from leaving God out of my activity - then He will bless with His presence, and He will say, "Here I am!" What wonderful hope, and I am experiencing that hope even during this ordeal and trial of faith. He is here. He has brought so many friends and family to lift me up, so many people who are praying for our family. And the Lord is doing a work in our family, some things I've prayed for for many years. So it is worth it, not only from the standpoint of what I can see, but from the standpoint that the Lord is up to something far bigger than my health situation or even than our family's spiritual growth. And I'm content with that.
The Lord has been impressing on my heart for some time that I need to be in warm water therapy for the rest of my life, and it's been impossible to find a warm water pool what isn't at least 30 minutes away. So, we have purchased a therapy pool for the basement, and we're trusting God for the finances for that, as well as the leg strength to get down and back up the steps. My kids suggested putting in a slide - which would help going down, but not so much coming back up. HA! It's a portable pool, the cheapest one we could find, and we're trusting the Lord to hold it together, and if we end up moving closer to our church, which is our desire, then we can easily take it with us.
Our dream as a couple is to be able to serve the church as full time as possible. Dave is still working, but I am free to be full time. I love serving people, the Lord is my reward and He is enough. Dave has worked hard all these years so I haven't had to work, and the Lord has helped us live within our means and has provided us with very, very good insurance through Dave's work. We are hoping to upsize our living situation while downsizing our mortgage or getting out of debt completely, and that is a miracle only the Lord can pull off! So we are waiting on His time and His way, and in the meantime, we wait and grow and minister to those around us right where we live.
Life is a joy with Christ! It is such a privilege to be workers together in His vineyard, and to know that someday in eternity, we will receive the rewards for that labor. We may never receive any monetary rewards in this life for serving the Lord - it may actually cause us to be quite poor in material goods. Yet, the blessing of the Lord makes us rich, and we cannot be sorry about that, can we?!
We would greatly appreciate your prayers for our family as we go through this ordeal together. It affects each of us differently, and in very real ways, and the Lord has been faithful to provide the people around us to encourage each of us where and when we need it. He is such a great Savior, and what else should we long for but His presence?
During those three years, the Lord has given me more ministry opportunities than I could possibly have imagined. At first, I jumped in wherever I was needed - Good News Club, AWANA, VBS, and one on one mentoring. As time progressed, the Lord led me to begin a girls club called "Little Gems" at our house for 3rd through 6th grade girls, and we went through a chronological study of Scripture, going from Genesis through the gospels in one school year. It was a blessing, and one little girl in particular seemed to benefit spiritually from that year. A friend began to help me with this, and she has grown be leaps and bounds since that time. At this time, I also began visiting a dear friend in a nursing facility, and on the same day, we both asked each other if we could begin a Bible study in that facility! We began that nearly 3 years ago, and it is still going strong today. We have added quite a few ladies, and two in particular are really growing! It's been such an encouraging ministry for me, and I try to always take another lady with me so they can also be using their gifts and find joy in serving as I have.
The Lord then led us to begin attending a different church, where we remained for about a year, and during that time, I did some counseling of a few ladies there and met some dear friends. The Lord began to impress on my heart that I needed to get certified in Biblical Counseling so I would be better equipped to share the Lord with women, and I longed to know the Lord through His Word in a more practical way so I could give myself full time to ministry to women. The Lord has been clarifying a niche, I believe at this time, to counsel women who are suffering physical ailments and who suffer with chronic illnesses. My husband and I are praying about a larger home closer to church where we can take in women who are needing short term residential counseling to get them stabilized spiritually so they can become joyful, functioning members of local churches and become disciple makers themselves. The Lord tells those of us who are stronger to come alongside those who are weaker, to help them use their gifts, so all will be encouraged and all will be edified. That is what I am attempting to do.
A little under a year ago, the Lord led us to a church that is on-fire for biblical counseling, where the whole church is founded upon biblical counseling, where everything that comes from the pulpit, teaching times, and private conversations with leadership is biblical counseling, and where I got much help with my test, both from the corporate ministry of the Word, and through the loving shepherding of our pastor as he reviewed and corrected all my writing (all 112 pages!). The Lord has led us to a very green oasis of refreshment to our souls as a family. I worked on my written ACBC (formerly NANC) written test for about a year, and the Lord deemed fit to let me pass on the first round of grading this past March, and how I praise Him for His faithfulness to me in this. I'm so thankful for the patience of my family who had to pitch in quite a bit so I could spend time studying and writing.
All the sitting I did (probably greater than 400 hours total!) and the fact that the warm pool where we did water aerobics shut down about a year and a half ago did a number on my neck and shoulders, and I began to have a lot of fatigue again. I tried to ignore this for a long time, but it began to interfere with ministry quite a bit, so I went to the chiropractor and got to feeling quite a bit better; until he had me stand on this vibrator thing which seems to have set off the CRPS again, and within days, I was again unable to move my legs or walk and was having bad muscle spasms and nerve pain again. I ended up back in the hospital for a week, an am writing this blog post from a rehab facility where I am learning to walk again.
I must confess that this has been a very, very difficult period of time for me in many ways. I thought the Lord had healed me and that because He was calling me to serve Him and I was following along, doing what I could to accomplish that and trusting God for His part in it, that things would be smooth sailing! Wrong!! It is often when we are in exactly that position of moving ahead, carefully building our house on the Rock, carefully putting away sin and living a life of repentant humility before the Lord, that our faith is tried to new heights, so we will be better able to serve those whom the Lord will bring across our path. This will slow up my supervised counseling phase quite a bit, and ACBC has been very gracious to extend my time until I am able to get back into the swing of things. I have had expanded horizons of ministry while in the hospital and here at the rehab facility, to share Christ with all sorts of people, some of whom are captive audiences for a few minutes! My heart has not been squeaky clean throughout this entire ordeal, and I've had to repent of wanting ease, comfort, to be out of pain, to not have the hindrance of not being able to walk, to be worried about the present and the future; and I've been challenged to walk by faith and not by sight, and remember that the battle is the Lord's and He will win with many or with few, and He doesn't need me in order to do His work. Trusting the Lord in the times of waiting, of preparation, of just plain not feeling well and feeling like I can't prepare at all - all that is in the hands of my loving heavenly Father who always knows what's best for me. I have been meditating on two passages these weeks - Hebrews 12, and Isaiah 58. I have no need to fear or fret (that is sin) and I don't need to chafe against the discipline and correction of the Lord, because He's doing this so I can share in His holiness - what a reward! And He also promises that if I will fast from self, fast from selfish desires, fast from self-righteousness, fast from self-sufficiency, fast from leaving God out of my activity - then He will bless with His presence, and He will say, "Here I am!" What wonderful hope, and I am experiencing that hope even during this ordeal and trial of faith. He is here. He has brought so many friends and family to lift me up, so many people who are praying for our family. And the Lord is doing a work in our family, some things I've prayed for for many years. So it is worth it, not only from the standpoint of what I can see, but from the standpoint that the Lord is up to something far bigger than my health situation or even than our family's spiritual growth. And I'm content with that.
The Lord has been impressing on my heart for some time that I need to be in warm water therapy for the rest of my life, and it's been impossible to find a warm water pool what isn't at least 30 minutes away. So, we have purchased a therapy pool for the basement, and we're trusting God for the finances for that, as well as the leg strength to get down and back up the steps. My kids suggested putting in a slide - which would help going down, but not so much coming back up. HA! It's a portable pool, the cheapest one we could find, and we're trusting the Lord to hold it together, and if we end up moving closer to our church, which is our desire, then we can easily take it with us.
Our dream as a couple is to be able to serve the church as full time as possible. Dave is still working, but I am free to be full time. I love serving people, the Lord is my reward and He is enough. Dave has worked hard all these years so I haven't had to work, and the Lord has helped us live within our means and has provided us with very, very good insurance through Dave's work. We are hoping to upsize our living situation while downsizing our mortgage or getting out of debt completely, and that is a miracle only the Lord can pull off! So we are waiting on His time and His way, and in the meantime, we wait and grow and minister to those around us right where we live.
Life is a joy with Christ! It is such a privilege to be workers together in His vineyard, and to know that someday in eternity, we will receive the rewards for that labor. We may never receive any monetary rewards in this life for serving the Lord - it may actually cause us to be quite poor in material goods. Yet, the blessing of the Lord makes us rich, and we cannot be sorry about that, can we?!
We would greatly appreciate your prayers for our family as we go through this ordeal together. It affects each of us differently, and in very real ways, and the Lord has been faithful to provide the people around us to encourage each of us where and when we need it. He is such a great Savior, and what else should we long for but His presence?
Comments
Post a Comment