Organizing Happiness

There were many years where I was on the outside looking in. My husband had a disability and was not able to work to earn a living to support our family. I was envious of moms who had the priviledge of staying home with their children. God heard the cries of my heart all those years. To make a long story short, my husband is no longer disabled and six months ago I came home full time to be a homemaker and raise our children. The transition, however, has not been an easy one. I in no way want to re-enter the workforce. I thought I would experience more joy than I have.

I realized recently that part of my frustration is that I am feeling a little lost as to how to organize my life, what routines to have, and most importantly I realized I was not having the time alone with the Lord that I needed. All of these issues are addressed in e-book Organizing Happiness by Lorrie Flem. In this book Lorrie talks about preparing the night before-- which was quite timely as I am preparing for our first family vacation in eight years. She also talks about setting priorities and saying no to those things that are out of line with those priorities. I am terrible about this because I see all the things that I want to do, all the the things I need to do, and then want to do them all right now. I often times say yes too often when I would likely be happier if I said no more often. Then as I read Lorrie talked about taking things one step at a time and reminded me that slow and steady wins the race. As I read these things I have been challenged and am working to implement these practices into my life. I am only a week into these changes and I already see a difference. I am happier and so are my children.

Another valuable point Lorrie makes in this book is the priority of time with the Lord. I made some changes in this area a couple of months ago. I started training my children to stay in their rooms and read or play for an extra hour in the morning to give me that time. I tell them it is Mommy's Special Time with Jesus. I believe this time with the Lord is vital so I want to emphasize this in my review. If we give the Lord time he can will give us all we need. I realized these last few weeks that I had forgotten how to enter into the Lord's rest. It is in this rest that we find peace and healing. I am glad Lorrie encouraged me to keep this time a priority.

I recieved Organizing Happiness from Eternal Encouragement, http://www.eternalencouragement.com/ a ministry to encourage mothers in their high calling as homemakers, wives, and mothers. You too can recieve Organizing Happiness for free when you sign up for Lorrie's newslwtter at http://www.eternalencouragement.com/theshop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=4_26&products_id=106

Disclaimer: I received Organizing Happiness from Eternal Encouragement. I received it free of charge in exchange for my honest review.

God Does Hear

The last couple of days I have been talking to the Lord about the fact that I have been discouraged for so long and that I have not been able to shake it. Nothing seemed to break through. I shared this with my husband last night as well. Then this morning during my devotion time I asked the Lord to please break through my discouragement and to give me hope and joy. I was tired of trying to think positive, think about good things, throw off negative thinking, and the struggle was wearing on me. So I simply told the Lord about it. I found it to be amazing that the very same morning the visiting pastor spoke on the exact answer to request I had asked of the Lord 3 hours earlier.

God does hear our prayers. He does care. It had been a long time since I have been able to believe that without having to work hard to make myself believe it. I remember at the darkest time in my life being told by church leaders that the Lord did not care about me because I did not follow the exact set of rules that this man was telling me. He had no idea what damage he did to my spirit that day. I was already saying I was struggling to find God in my situation, I was struggling to know what to do and my prayers did not seem to go any higher than the ceiling. I needed to be reminded that God loves me, that he cares, but instead I was told that I was not acceptable to the Lord. This put a block between the Lord and I. I no longer was able to enter into rest or peace with the Lord. I doubted my ability to know what the Holy Spirit was telling me. It left room for discouragement to grow into a big ugly monster. I have been healing and the Lord has been breaking through these walls. He does care. He does hear our prayers, our thoughts, our questions, and he does answer them. So if you are discouraged like I have been remember that God does hear and he does care. He promises us never to leave us or forsake us. So hold onto that promise and let the Lord unfold the answers in front of you.

Redemption Through Suffering

We focused in a previous entry on the first half of John 16:33 “In this world you will have trouble but take heart, I have over come the world.” Jesus overcame the world on the cross. He paid our sin debts and frees us to live out the dreams God has for us. God will take the sufferings we go through and redeem them—turning them into some of the greatest, most beautiful things in our lives. When I graduated from high school the day after the graduation ceremony a tornado went through town and devastated a whole subdivision. That was back in 1990. Last week my husband and I drove through that little subdivision and you would never have guessed that it had been destroyed. In fact it is better today then it was before the storm. That is what God does with our lives when we have gone through suffering. He rebuilds our lives so that we are better when we are built back up then before we suffered.
Consider the vision of Ezekiel in Ezekiel 37:1-14. In this vision the Lord has Ezekiel standing in the middle of a valley that is filled with dried up, dead corpse—in fact they are so dead that they are only dried skeletons. Then the Lord asks Ezekiel “can these bones live?” Notice what Ezekiel says “O Sovereign Lord, you alone know.” Look at how big Ezekiel concept of God’s sovereignty was in that statement. I can imagine if God ever asked me if a dried up, old dead skeleton could live my answer would most likely be, “No, you must think I am crazy to think a pile of bones could live again.” That is not what Ezekiel did—his faith was big and he knew he served a big God. So he acknowledged God’s sovereignty and realized that God has the ability to bring a pile of dried up bones to life. Then God does something else that seems even more absurd. He told Ezekiel to tell the bones to come to life. Ezekiel in total obedience obeyed God. Can you imagine how he must have felt? What would anyone who heard him tell dead bones to live again think? Have you ever had a time in your life where the Lord was asking you to do something that seemed outlandish and put you at risk of looking foolish?
I remember my senior year at Greenville College I had such a situation. I had a break between classes and my roommate did not so I would have my devotions at that time. Well, during my devotions I was praying and I sensed the Holy Spirit telling me to give a specific cassette tape of praise and worship music to one of my classmates who led the music during chapel services whose name was Jonathon. I asked the Lord to have Jonathon talk to me after the next class we had together. Since Jonathon and I did not spend time together outside of class this would have been an unusual occurrence. Jonathon stopped me after class and said, “Charity, we have not talked in a while. We really need to sometime, but I have to go right now.” Then he left. The exchange was so quick that I had not even had a chance to pull the tape out of my backpack. So I left a message for him to call me when he got home. So he did. I went over feeling certain of the humiliation coming. I wonder if that might be how Moses felt when he was to go before the Pharaoh. The humiliation never came. You see, Jonathon had been visiting a church service and the song “Awesome in This Place” had been used in worship and Jonathon had sensed the Holy Spirit telling him to use it in the next Christian Life week. So he had started looking for it. He searched for a while, but had never been able to find it. When I handed him the tape—the title was “Awesome in This Place” . The Title song was the very song he had been searching for, but not been able to find. The song was used the very next week in our Christian Life week during chapel services.
Ezekiel obeyed God even when it seemed silly and God brought those bones back to life—just like he encouraged my faith and Jonathon’s faith that day. Those bones were hopeless, but God brought hope to the hopeless situation. Jonathon had lost hope too. He had lost hope that he would find the song to use. Then his hope was restored when it was handed too him.
When we are in the midst of suffering sometimes it can really look hopeless. We can feel like the bones in that valley, but God is the God of the impossible of the hopeless. We need to look at his sovereignty and realize that he is bigger than we could ever imagine. We need to let go of the limits we put on God—it is only then that we give him permission to invade our hopelessness and he can bring new life to dead parts of our lives that appear to be the end. Until we let him into our disappointments, hurts, and sorrows he will never be able to bring us to the good things he wants to bring into our lives through those circumstances.
There are so many different things those bones can represent in our lives. I think the dearest are our dreams. So many times we see our hopes and dreams crash, leaving us full of pain and disappointment. I believe God wants us to give our dreams to him. He will at that point turn those dreams into what he plans them to be. Then he brings them back to life. Breathing new life into something that was once dead. So we need to give our whole life with all our hopes, dreams, disappointments, pain, and heartache all over to the Lord and watch him do miraculous things with our lives.

Building us back better than ever before
I remember a time during some my family’s darkest times, I was driving when I heard a line from a song that described how I was feelings. “Life can be so cruel when you know that you have given all you’ve got but it’s not enough.” That is exactly how I was feeling as I sat at that stoplight. I was working two jobs—I worked between 90 and 95 hours per week at the time, but it was not enough. My husband was not getting better and we were still bankrupt even though we were gaining in a couple of areas. Caleb was acting out in his need to be with his mommy sometimes. Simeon was under a year old and I missed him terribly. I was giving everything I had, but it was not enough. The emotional pain that my family was going through at that time was very real. There were in fact times when I wondered if things would ever get better or if they would always be this way. That was not my deepest fear though—my deepest fear was that things would get worse (I would have rather died than have them get worse). As the Lord has been delivering us from this situation I am learning some of his principles in a new way.
In the book of Joel chapter 1 verse 4 describes how Victor and I were feeling. “What the locust swarm has left the great locusts have eaten; what the great locusts have left the young locusts have eaten; what the young locust have left other locusts have eaten.” Victor and I had lost our friends, our home, our car, our credit rating, Vic’s job, Vic’s health, my health, a business, and our good name. We felt like we had lost everything. I was feeling hopeless and helpless, but most of all so tired that I did not want to go on anymore.
I am glad this was not the end of the story in the book of Joel or for us. If you read further through Joel he does make reference to the locust again. Joel 2:25 “I will repay you for the years the locust have eaten—the great locust and the young locust, the other locust and the locust swarm.” What does it mean when God says he will repay us for the lost years? We can not go back in time and live it over again. God does take our bad experience and redeem them. He builds us back better than before. He repays us with a life that is better because we went through the situation.
It has been a few years since I have sewn, but I used to do that quite a bit. I remember one dress that I was making and I sewed the sleeve on at the neck seem. When I realized I had a choice, I could continue sewing only to have a dress that was not wearable since I have yet to meet a human being with an arm coming out the top of their body or to rip the seem out and resew the sleeve. Many times God sees some things in us that in the long run would make us not able to fulfill our purpose. The dress with a sleeve coming out of the neck would not be wearable. Since a dress that is not worn does not fulfill its purpose, then it would have been a waste of fabric, thread, buttons, and time. Sometimes God has to rip out seems in our lives so that we can more effectively live out his dreams for our lives. In Joel and in Ezekiel God took the apparently ruined and hopeless situations to rip out seems in their lives and rebuild something even better. The ripping process is painful, but necessary.
I could not resew the sleeve in its proper place until that seem had been ripped out. Then I was able to pin it in and sew it where it was supposed to be. I am still discovering all the things God was ripping out of me in the experiences I went through. Just like the dress was better when the sleeve was taken out and resewn, I will be too.
What is God ripping out of your life? I know it is painful and let me encourage you. This process will not last forever and God will bring a renewing that will make you happier, more usable, and better equipped as a Christian to fulfill the callings he has for you in this life. So hold to the Lord and see the new life he will bring you in the end of it all.

Three types of suffering

Another danger of believing that if Christians would just have enough faith then there would be no sickness or heart ache is that there is a tendency to tell ourselves that if we are suffering it is because we did something wrong. That is certainly a possibility, but not always the case. There are three types of suffering the Christian encounters. These three are 1. Suffering caused by our own sins 2. Suffering caused by the sins of someone else 3. Suffering that moves us on or prepares us for where God is taking us. There are many examples of these in the Bible.
The first type of suffering can be found in 1Samuel 15 when God rejects Saul as king. Basically the story goes like this God spoke to King Saul through the prophet Samuel. God told King Saul to attack the Amalakites and leave no man, woman, child, or animal alive. However, Saul decided that after he attacked them that he would spare the Amalekite’s king and take the spoils. God gets pretty angry and talks to Samuel about it. God then says to King Saul via Samuel that he is ticked off and has rejected him as king. The result of not following God. There are plenty of modern day examples of suffering because of our own sin. Whenever we face the consequences of our decisions and it results in something we don’t like. Our jails and prisons are full of suffering because of our own sin. However, our situation does not have to be that extreme for us to see this many health problems, financial problems, weight problems, etc are a result of us not taking care of what we needed to take care of and we suffer for it. I will quote the Apostle Paul:
Do not be deceived: God can not be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction, the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Galatians 6:7-8
Sometimes when we suffer it is a result of us suffering the consequences of our sin. The thing we need to do if we find ourselves in this type of suffering is to repent. We need to confess our sin to the Lord and then change our behavior. A good example from the Bible is the story of David and Bathsheba. David is looking around and notices a beautiful woman named Bathsheba. So David discovers Bathsheba is married, but he approaches her anyway. One thing leads to another and they have an affair. Then Bathsheba ends up pregnant. Now David has a problem—a woman married to another man is pregnant with his child and he can not hide this because her husband is a soldier and is away at battle. David at this point could have confessed his sin and dealt with it. However, he chose instead to call Bathsheba’s husband for a break from the battle field. The plan failed though because Bathsheba’s husband decides that it would not be fair for him to sleep with his wife when the other soldiers did not get to sleep with theirs. When David found out he still had a chance to repent and make things right, but he chose deception once again. He order Bathsheba’s husband be put in the very front line of battle and he would be killed. This time his plan worked. So David (a man after God’s own heart) is now guilty of adultery and murder. The prophet Nathan approaches David about a man who covered up his sin. David was outraged and ordered that man be killed until Nathan said to him “That man is you.” At this point David repents and marries Bathsheba. God does forgive him, but there is still a price to pay for his sin. As a result the baby Bathsheba is carrying will die. David and Bathsheba went through the heartache of loosing a child as a result of their sin. Sometimes we really do suffer as a result of our own sin.
However, sometimes we suffer because of someone else’s sin. This can be very damaging. Think about those who have been abused as children or a rape victim. These people suffer for years and many times the rest of their lives because of someone else’s sin. Jesus is the ultimate example of this type of suffering though and he suffered more than any of us ever will. He suffered because of your sin and my sin. In Isaiah 53 the coming of Jesus is prophesied:
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our trangressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53:3-6
Let’s look closely at this as it is the whole essence of the Christian faith. We sin, we do wrong things, at the very core of all of us is the potential for commiting evil wrong acts. All sins are sin. We tend to want to think that some sins are small and some are big. The Bible does not distinguish between the two. God sees this and it breaks his heart. He sends his son Jesus. In Isaiah it says that he was a man of many sorrows and familiar with suffering. It also says he carried our sorrows. He came down from heaven where there is no sorrow or suffering just so that he coul d pierced for our trangressions and crushed for our iniquities. So that he could take the punishment of our sins on himself. He took it all for us. This is an important distinction as well—Jesus did not just die for the sins of the whole world. He died for my sins and your sins. I had a Sunday School teacher in high school who used to remind us frequently that if you or I had been the only person on earth that Christ would have still gone through all that suffering just for you or me.
Think about that for a minute because this is a huge point. Jesus was beaten beyond recognition, nailed to a cross while being mocked and ridiculed, had a spear poked in his side, and given vinegar on a sponge to drink when he cried out in thirst. God the Father could not even bear the sight so he turned his head and Jesus cried out “My God, My God why have you forsaken me.” This was all done for me and for you so that we did not have to suffer the consequences of our sins. In Romans it says the wages of sin is death. This death is to eternal damnation in hell. He did this for you and would have done all of it if you were the only person he was doing it for. Jesus loves you so much!!!!
Did Jesus deserve this punishment? No he was without sin so this was not his consequence—it was ours. Scripture says that if we believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord that we will be saved from the eternal destruction of our own sins. I want you to consider now for a moment, do you believe in your heart that you are a sinner who needs a savior? Do you believe in your heart that Jesus came to be that savior? Have you confess with your mouth that you are a sinner who needs a savior and that Jesus Christ came to same you? Then accepted him into your heart as the Lord (supreme ruler of your life)? If you have not I encourage you to take this life changing step. I would also urge you to get involved in a local church so that they can help you understand the commitment that you have made and to help show you how deeply Christ loves you.
Now that we have looked at Christ—the ultimate example of someone who suffered because of someone else’s sin, now lets look at some other examples of how many are suffering as a result of others sins. These can be very painful and I do not want anyone to think I take this lightly. There are those who have suffered horrible abuse in their childhoods or women who have experienced terrifying rapes. These events can be devastating sometimes for a whole lifetime. These women and children were innocent victims. They did not deserve the suffering inflicted into their lives, but the ones who did the inflicting were commiting sin. So they are suffering the result of someone else’s sin. There are many examples of others sins inflicting pain and suffering into our lives some are not as serious as this I realize, but I want those in severe pain to know that there is hope. I want you to know that Jesus suffering covers you as well. Jesus wounds were also afflicted so that you could be healed. You were not abandoned by God, quite the opposite he cries with you. Scripture says that he will never leave you or forsake you. These events can leave you feeling hopeless, broken, devastated, and sometimes it feels that life can not go on. However, let me share some comfort from God’s word.
A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. Isaiah 42:3
Many times during acts of violence, victims are told they are worthless. There are even times when these victims are told it is their fault and that God rejects them because they are so worthless. If this is you let me assure you Jesus was wounded so we could be healed. God sees your suffering and lovingly accepts you just as you are. He wants to show you how he sees you, the purposes he has for your life, and comfort you along the way. I want to encourage anyone who has suffered at the hand of another to also seek our professional help. A good Christian counselor is trained to help you find hope, healing, and wholeness.
A third type of suffering is the type that moves us from one stage of comfort to another place that God is leading us too or another version of this is God preparing us for something in the future. It is no because of sin at all. The Israelites in Exodus chapter one did not become slaves because of sin. They became slaves because God was blessing them so much. Exodus 1:9-10 says:
“Look,” he (Pharoah) said to the people, “the Israelites have become numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with so they will become even more numerous and if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.”
God gives children as a blessing. So just like any good parent who wants to give their children good things, God (the ultimate parent) gave his chosen people (his children) the gift of children. So they were having children and being blessed in the land of Egypt. Life was good. Then the Pharoah in verse 11 makes them slaves and oppresses them with forced labor. However, even with all this oppression God continued to bless the Israelites with more children in fact in verse 12 it says, “the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread”. The Pharoah’s plan had back fired. He want to stop their multiplying, but instead it increased.
I believe it is highly likely that had the Israelites not had to suffer slavery they would have stayed in Egypt as opposed to going to the promised land. Why would they? Life was pretty good and comfortable life in Egypt, why would they want to leave. God allowed their suffering in order to prepare them to leave Egypt so that they could go somewhere better. Sometimes in our lives we are so comfortable that unless something comes and upsets that comfortable we will never move on to the best thing that God has for us. Sometimes the good is the enemy of the best. I once heard James Dobson on the radio say that the roughest years of his life brought about the most productivity and fruit. It is the same with us.
Almost four years ago my husband had a brain surgery that corrected his seizure disorder. How we got here was not a pleasant road. My husband’s cognitive function had been declining for years. It had gotten to the point that he was struggling to keep working his job. So we applied for him to get disability through Social Security. When we went to his next neurologist appointment the doctor said that Social Security would require us to go to Vanderbilt before they would give Vic disability. So we changed neurologists to Vanderbilt University Medical Center. That led to my husband’s surgery. They took a lesion off his hippocampus. He has been seizure free ever since.
Also before his surgery we had these times of trouble and were really struggling. We decided that we wanted to move from Middle Tennessee to Jasper County, IL. So I started looking for work here. It all happened at once on Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. On Friday the doctor’s told Vic that they wanted to do surgery in February and then on Monday I got a job offer phone call. Vic’s surger was February 19th. The U-Haul was loaded in Tennessee and unloaded in Illinois on February 23rd. Then I started my new job on March 3rd.
Things have turned around quickly for us since we have moved. We had previously been comfortable and happy in Tennessee, but the Lord had something for us here. So, we were allowed to suffer in order to be moved from where we were to the next place he wanted us to go.
Another way to suffer included in this type is the suffering that the Lord uses to prepare us for something. Take a look at Joseph. He went through many ups and downs, learning many lessons in his preparation to be second in command over the most powerful nation at that time—making him the second most powerful man in the world at that time. First he was his father’s favorite son which so enraged his brothers that they threw him in a pit with the intent to kill him. Then they changed their mind and sold him into slavery instead. Remember though that God is in charge and blessed him in his slavery. Joseph became the highest amongst the slaves and trusted by his master. This situation lasted for a little while until his master’s wife decided that she wanted to seduce him, but he rejected her every time. Well then one day no one was in the house and she once again made her advances. Joseph did what any respectable man would do when another man’s wife is trying to come on to you—he ran. However, his coat was left behind so she lied and said he tried to rape her. So Joseph went to prison. While he was in prison the Lord once again blessed him and he became highly respected by the prison officials and given responsibilities. Then there were two men (the baker and the cupbearer) that had dreams and Joseph interpreted both of them. The baker would be killed and the cupbearer would be restored to his position. The cupbearer promised to tell the king about Joseph, but he forgot.
If any man had a right to complain it was Joseph. He was first hated by his brothers and an intended murder victim. Instead became a slave, but then became a leader with favor in the eyes of his master. Then he fell from his high position to a prisoner. He was back on top again, but then forgotten. Life just did not seem like it was going well for Joseph. Things are about to change for Joseph and we are about to see that he is right where God needs him to be. God is about to use Joseph as a key player to save a nation. The king has disturbing dreams, none of his magicians or wise men were able to interpret the dreams. Then the cup bearer remembers Joseph and his ability to interpret dreams and the king asks for Joseph.
Joseph is able to interpret the kings dream and tell him of seven good years followed by seven years of famine. This enabled them to prepare for the famine. So the king made him second in command in Egypt. During the last seven years of the famine his brothers come and he eventually reveals himself. At this point he makes one of my favorite statements in the Bible.
“Come close to me.” When they had done so he said, “I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will not be plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharoah, lord over his entire household and ruler of all Egypt.”
What forgiveness, what humility, and what restraint. I wonder some of the things scripture does not say here. I wonder if Joseph was tempted to get revenge. Did he realize that the dream he had of his brothers bowing to him had come true? Was he tempted to gloat because of how high he was and how low they were? Even if the temptation was there he did not respond in anyway, except as a humble man who had integrity. God was using him to save two nations—Egypt and Israel. He had gone through God’s preparation for this very time. For every low point Joseph had he learned a deeper level of humility and forgiveness. This was to give him the humility he needed to rule Egypt. Then at the critical time to forgive his brothers. God’s school of preparation had taught him well.
Imagine if Joseph had decided not to forgive his brothers and said, “I am your brother Joseph; I am angry and bitter toward you. This food is for Egypt to sustain us during th famine. Go get your own food and if you don’t have any then starve. Why should I care about you when you did not care about me.” The consequence would have been tragic for the Israelites and they would have been wiped out.
What about you? Are you suffering when you did not sin and no one else sinned either? Perhaps God is saying you are so comfortable and I am trying to move you to another place in your life or prepare you for something. Tell the Lord that you are listening and will go wherever he leads. God has big dreams for our lives. We never know what God is up to. Maybe he is planning to save two nations with your life. I don’t know what he is doing, but let me assure you God is doing something and if you hold on you will eventually get to see what it is.

A Dangerous Theology

There is a dangerous theology in the church today that is blinding believers. It teaches that if you only have enough faith you as a believer will not ever experience sickness, poverty, hardship, or suffering. I say this teaching is dangerous because it sets the believer up for disappointment and heartache, when hardships do come along. It makes the believer either think that there is something wrong with his/her faith and that God let them down. Some have walked away from their faith because they were never able to come to grips with the tragedies that struck their lives. They felt God had cheated them and let them down. Imagine the added pain that their God had betrayed them.
I have searched scripture to see where this health, wealth, and prosperity theology is. However, I could find no evidence to back it up. What I found said just the opposite. Scripture promises that we will be persecuted, to consider ourselves privileged to be persecuted, and that persecution does not have to separate us from the love of God. This is quite the contrast.
I remember the day vividly. Less than a month earlier my husband has his first grand mal seizure, then two weeks later we found out that I was pregnant. Then the pregnancy started having problems and our car was not working properly. I was on my way back to the doctor’s office when the overheated light came on and smoke was coming out from under the hood. I did eventually make it to the doctor’s office. The doctor and I discussed that I was probably going to lose the baby. My heart was broken and I was alone. Victor was at work, my family was two states away, and I could not drive the car home. I did not know what to do. I was having trouble getting a hold of someone to come pick me up. Someone to listen to me and understand how devastated I was because I wanted to have that baby more than I wanted my next breathe of oxygen. Eventually I got a hold of Vic’s friend Curt. While I was waiting for Curt to arrive I decided to read a little. The verse popped out at me that day. A verse that expresses the truth about suffering. Jesus was talking with his disciples when he said, “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart I have overcome the world.” John 16:33. Jesus told this to his disciples just following him telling them that he was going to leave them.
Jesus did not want them to have false expectations. He wanted them to know reality. The realities about their grief and suffering are true for us today. It was as if at that moment Jesus spoke to me saying that I was going to have trouble and heartache, but to hold on to him because he had a plan for this pain in my life. I also noticed something else in that verse. It did not say we could have trouble, or that we might have trouble. No, that verse says that we will have trouble.
If we stop there then we only get the bad part and miss the good. “Take heart I have overcome the world.” See this is where the disillusioned believer that has lived by the health, wealth, and prosperity misses out if he chooses to walk away instead of growing. She misses the good part—the overcoming part. The Bible speaks to this in Matthew 13 where Jesus is telling us the parable of the Sower. In this story Jesus tells of a farmer who scattered seed. The seed landed on four different types of soil. The first seeds landed on the path and birds came and ate them. The second seed landed on rocks and when the sun came up the plant was scorched and died because the soil was shallow and had no roots. The third seed landed amongst thorns which choked the plant. The fourth seed landed in good soil, developed roots, because a strong plant, and produced a high yielding crop.
When Jesus interprets this parable he compares the seed in the path to be those who hear the word of God and don’t understand. The enemy comes and snatches the seeds that were sown. The seed amongst the rocks is a believer who immediately accepts the word of the Lord and receives it with joy. However, he builds no roots. So when troubles come he falls away from the faith rather quickly. The seed that lands in the thorns can be compared to the believer who accepts the Lord, but the worries of life and over concern with wealth choke her faith and make it not productive. In fact in John 15 it says that unfruitful branches will be pruned off the vine. The seed that lands in the good soil is the believer who hears the word, accepts it, develops his faith, and produces a good harvest. The problem with believing that Christians do not suffer is that first of all it is not Biblical; second of all it hinders us from growing roots to establish our faith so that we can withstand suffering when it comes. Otherwise we are like the seed that lands among the rocks.
The Blessing of Suffering
If we look closely at scripture we also see that not only does Jesus promise that we will have trouble, he says we are blessed when we have trouble he tells us to rejoice. He tells us that the prophets that came before us had trouble and so will we. Jesus had trouble and so will we.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad because great is your reward in heaven, for the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Matthew 5:11-12

If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would accept you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. John 15:18-19
Once again we see Jesus promising that there will be suffering in this life. I can understand that there will be suffering in this life, but when I see that we are blessed when we struggle or that we will encounter suffering because we follow Christ. Those can be hard facts to swallow. What does it mean to be blessed because we are suffering? Why would a loving God allow us to suffer particularly because we are following him? Imagine the new believer who has been taught that he if he will just have enough faith he will have no sickness or financial issues or that he can name that Mercedes and claim it in the name of Jesus. Think about the disappointments when he comes to this part of the faith when suffering has intruded into his “perfect” life that he believes God has promised. Now imagine he comes to Matthew chapter 5 where it says we blessed when we are persecuted or John 15 that says the world will hate us. This believer has come to see that the Christian life he thought he signed up for is not at all what he thought.
If we look at the parable of the sower we can see that one of the blessings of suffering is that we develop a root system to strengthen us when we are suffering. We become stronger and produce a good yield with our lives. We need to be teaching this to new believers. We need to let them know that the life of faith is going to include heartache, but that we have something that the world does not—we have a loving Lord that will go with us through our suffering. He will work it out for good in our lives (Romans 8:28). He will not separate us from his love (Romans 8:35). We will have a reward in heaven.
I remember my struggle with this issue not long ago. Suffering has a way of bringing the lies we have believed to the surface for correction. Let me take you back to that day at the doctor’s office. I did not know that this was the beginning of many years of deep suffering for my family. That very night after I left the doctor’s office, I did indeed lose the baby that my husband and I named Robin Lee Vanderhoof. Then that car took more money then we had to fix it, but with a bit of creativity and some help from family we fixed it. Then for the next six months that car broke down every other weekend until we sold it. Then for the next five years we had— an average of 3 grand mal seizures per week, 3 bouts of unemployment, a business failure, rejection from our church, financial ruin, three surgeries, post-partum depression, had to sell our house before it was foreclosed on, but the Lord did give us two bright lights Caleb and Simeon were born. I was emotionally exhausted. Somewhere in the middle of all of this I had a night of seeing some problems in my own heart that the Lord ministered too. It was a Thursday night and I was in my office at the Williamson County Jail working on paperwork. My radio was on to WayFM (one of the Christian radio stations out of Nashville, TN). Then the song HELD by Natalie Grant came on.
Two months is too little.
They let him go.
They had no sudden healing
To think that providence would
Take a child from his mother while she prays
Is appalling.
Who told us we’d be rescued?
What has changed and why should we be saved from nightmares?
We’re asking why this happens to us who have died to live’
It’s unfair.

This is what is means to be held.
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive.
This is what is means to be loved and to know
That the promise was when everything fell
We’d be held.
At that point I was still angry over losing Robin Lee even though years had passed and the other struggles. So this song hit home for me. I began to cry. Here I was working on client files and then this song catches my attention and I started crying. I remember asking the Lord “Why should I follow you when all you seem to be bringing me is heartache? If I am not protected from some suffering then why would I want to follow you anyway?” God did not strike me down with lightening or get angry with me. It was as if at that moment he said to me that he loved me and had been waiting for me to ask him that all along. At that point I began to realize that somewhere along the way I started to believe that God had put a cap on our suffering. I knew that suffering was a part of the Christian life, but I thought God had some mark that said “only this much” when it came to how much a Christian suffers. Now I was at a point further than I thought that mark was. As I broke down it was at that point that I was able to experience the comfort that the Lord gives us as we suffer. However, until I was honest with him I was not going to be able to experience that comfort.
Where are you at in your life? Maybe you are realizing at this point that you have believed the lie that says Christians don’t suffer or there is a limit to how much they suffer and you are not suffering. If that is you I challenge you to talk to Lord about this now. There are only three types of Christians when it comes to suffering—those who will suffer, those who are suffering, or those who have been through suffering. If you are not suffering right now then there will be a day when you do. Have the Lord give you a proper perspective on suffering beforehand so that you will be better equipped to accept his comfort as you go through suffering. Maybe you believed the lie that Christians don’t suffer or that there is a limit to their suffering only you are in the middle of suffering right now. You are so confused and do not know what to do. You are trying to have more faith, read more scriptures, and pray more so that your faith can remove your suffering only it is not working. I encourage you to get before the Lord and be honest about your thoughts and feelings. I can not tell you how long you will suffer or that your suffering will go away when you do this. What I can promise is the Lord will meet you right where you are, hold you in his arms, comfort you, and tell you how much you are loved. Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. So hold on to Christ as you suffer, you are establishing roots in the process so that your faith will be bigger.

True Communication

Before leaving my work at the community mental health center I was beginning to see some research articles about the damage of social networking on the internet through sights like Facebook, My Space, and Twitter. Also the potential pitfalls of text messaging. I have witnessed the issues with text messaging first hand with teens. I have seen where two teens are sitting side by side texting each other instead of talking to each other. It seems as if they have forgotten how to talk to each other.

I am not saying that texting, Facebook or any other social media sight are bad in and of themselves. There are many times when my husband recieved a business call here at home and he does not have pen and paper on the mower. Texting him the contact information can be quite useful. Also there are some people who live far away that I am able to keep in touch with due to Facebook. There are a couple of concerns that I have. First of all, things like Facebook can overtake your life. My second concern is that less and less actual conversations are happening due to virtual conversations. True face to face conversation is becoming less and less. There are actual things that we need in life that happen through actual interaction with other human beings that do not happen in the cyber world. We become less and less able to deal in the real world. Also not to mention that in cyber world a person can be anything they want to be instead of who they really are.

I know myself I am finding that I miss actual conversation with others. It seems everyone is so busy we don't make time for each other anymore. At church we hear sermons, say hi, and shake hands. Then in Sunday School we talk about our lesson and may be share a prayer request or two (likely few if any in our groups actually pray for the request is my guess, I try to but often forget). Then we go home and it is called fellowship. There is no conversation, no getting involved in one anothers lives, no spurring one another on to love and good deeds, no bearing one anothers burdens. The Lord made us to interact with one another. We need to pray together, cry together, pray for one another, bring food when someone had surgery, we need to eat together. Some of these things can only happen to a certain level in cyber world and some can not happen at all.

My late night point (I typically post late at night since that is when my house is quiet) is to enjoy your text messages and social media, but keep them under control so they don't overtake your life. Also while at the same time enjoying your friends on cyber world make sure you still maintain actual face to face friends. They all have some value to both you and the world around you. I know I am going to make it a point to have more face to face fellowship with those I love in my life.