Good Saturday morning! Hoo boy, huge earthquake, tsunami, fires, destruction, and a nuclear plant. If your prayer list has been short for any reason, you certainly have much to pray over now. The news from Japan is full of tragedy and sorrow after all of that. The aftershocks continue even as help is rushing to the scene. Do you feel powerless in events such at this? If you don't, you have a real ego problem, and someone might ask why you didn't stop the quake. We can't stop earthquakes, and there is never enough warning when a big earthquake occurs. However, unlike the miserable and hopeless world, we know someone who can stop earthquakes, create the Sun and Moon, and even heal a broken heart. What we don't always know is the timing of God's work. We can pray and pray, but will God act on our request? If there is no further earthquakes for the next twenty years does that mean that God acted or that the pressure that caused the first one had been released? Many questions in this little lifetime of ours will go unanswered. That leads me into the next question.
Yesterday, you will recall that I wrote about not giving up from Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 4:1. The question came: How do we know the difference between a trial sent to refine our faith and a roadblock that God has sent to turn us around? In other words, in the first case, we want to be like Paul and never give up, enduring our trials patiently while calling upon God's strength to help us persevere. In the second case, we obviously want to get turned around because God has sent the message that we are going the wrong way. The problem is of course: How do we know?
I could write things like: each situation is between you and God, or, you need to pray more, but that kind of answer doesn't really help. Each person's situation is indeed unique, but the reason we call out to each other for help is that in order to refine our faith, each situation is not perfectly clear and easily discerned. We'll use me as an example since I'm writing this. (Makes a dumb sort of sense, eh?) You know that my employer decided that it didn't need me anymore about 2 1/2 years ago. Since then I have been working on two novels. Not because I want to show off by writing two at once, but because my attention span is such that I get bored with one and turn to the other to break up the lack of mystery. Reading a good novel that another writer has produced is full of surprises and plot twists. Reading your own work kind of eliminates all the surprises and plot twists. The point is that since neither of the novels is completed, reviewed and ready for publication, I haven't earned a dime in that span of time. If money alone were our measure of God's will, as some of those televangelists might lead one to believe, I might be tempted to say that I am on the wrong path and that God has set up a roadblock to stop me.
Do I have doubts about being on the right path? Absolutely! And like the Christian on the falling airplane, I like to remind God of his promise to care for me on a regular and even fervent basis. In a time of doubt such as that, God may send you a message. A few years ago, I had an idea that I wrote in a spiral notebook and then lost. I remember writing down the idea, and even used it in my Toledo Ted novel, but where was that piece of paper? Just a few months ago, I was cleaning up some old notebooks and saving ideas that I had not used yet. In an unexpected place, I found that idea. Now since, I had already re-written the idea and even changed which character was involved, the idea was pretty much useless. However, down at the bottom of the page, I had written a message that I had received from God.
"Bucky,
The time will come for you to let go of the security of Cabela's, and then you will need to trust in Me!
God"
One way that I found to help ease the doubts was to listen for God's voice and write down what I heard. Sometimes the messages are set aside for God's perfect timing. God knew a long time ago that the steady paycheck and the 401k funds would not be there for me to depend on. My trust would need to be on God alone. Coincidence? An advertisement to "shop the world's foremost outfitter" is showing on a web page underneath the one I am writing on - reminding me of that old message. I cannot read the logo on the ad, but I know where that copyrighted phrase comes from, I only saw it for years and years. I didn't notice the advert until I had dug up the message from my pile of papers. The idea for writing down these messages did not come from me. You can get some help in this by reading, Into Abba's Arms by Sandra D. Wilson. If you are a visual person, you might find a print of Prince of Peace by Akiane and place it on a chair in front of you. This idea comes from the appendices in that same book. If you are a verbal person, go pester your pastor with questions or seek out a Christian mentor. As a bookish person, I tend to reach for a book to help answer my doubts and questions. Whatever way God has placed in you is perfectly fine, God answers our doubts in His own way, but He can listen on any wavelength. Of course, the best source is the source, God's own Word. Certainly it helps to have some direction in God's Word as the Bible is a wealth of reading material. Prayer can help direct us to the specific verses in the Bible we need, and prayer can direct us to the right person as well. One thing we often don't consider enough is the direct answer to prayer. If we will learn to listen, God may have something to say to you directly.
You may not have realized it, but the Tuesday - Thursday devotionals required a great amount of struggle and rewriting. That was a trial, and what I heard when I brought my doubts to God was not "stop" but, "endure!" This is important because we can easily mistake a trial for a roadblock. Bring your doubts to God in prayer, pour them out before Him. God is not afraid of our doubts. Jesus didn't send Thomas away because of his doubts. Jesus said, "blessed are those who do not see, and still believe." Yes, there is a bit of an implied rebuke in that to Thomas, but Jesus pointed out a better way - faith.
Do you doubt that God will take care of you? I read in two books of God's miraculous provision. The first is So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore: An Unexpected Journey by Wayne Jacobsen and Dave Coleman, the other is making the rounds in these parts by excited word of mouth, "Hey, did you read...!". Heaven is for Real, by Todd Burpo tells of a short trip to Heaven taken by a little boy from a town not that far away from here. Both books tell of God providing financially as well as spiritually. In this world of lost jobs, climbing prices, and vanishing savings, we want to hear about our financial state and God's provision. We want to hear that God can erase a huge debt from medical bills or other situations. We have doubts and we want to know that God can and will answer.
What if it seems that you have reached only obstacle after obstacle and still don't know that you are on the right path? Three years ago this month, I graduated from college and started thinking about writing. Obstacle after obstacle has fallen in my way, but I still believe that this is not my way, but God's way. Many is the tale of authors collecting piles of rejection slips for their first work. The time has come for me to make the leap. Soon the first and, not long after, the second manuscripts will be ready. What will happen? Only God knows for sure. However, I'll share another message with you - this one is so old that the sunlight has faded the writing where I posted it on my bulletin board years ago.
Write! I have cleared a path for you. I want you to have all the good things I have in store for you. Some of these things cost money. Write. I am the Lord and I have prepared a path for you my son!
It isn't often that you get to read two of my personal messages from God, but there you have it. I suppose the answer to the question is that we may never know without the slightest doubt. Think of how many sermons about the surety of salvation would have to be scrapped if all those doubts stopped. Think of how many prayers would never be spoken because we didn't reach out to the Lord to bring our doubts to Him.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Bucky
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