Righteous are you, O Lord, and right are Your rules. You have appointed Your testimonies in righteousness and in all faithfulness. My zeal consumes me, because my foes forgot Your words. Your promise is well tried, and Your servant loves it. I am small and despised, yet I do not forget Your precepts. Your righteousness is righteous forever, and Your law is true. Trouble and anguish have found me out, but Your commandments are my delight. Your testimonies are righteous forever. Give me understanding that I may live. (Verses 137-144)
"Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, and the floods came, and winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not do them will be like foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it." Jesus, Matthew 7
I love my friend. I've known her now almost all our lives. Both of us were raised in the Baptist church. Both of us married young. And we both love Jesus with our whole hearts. But that didn't stop the winds coming and the rain pouring down. And the spiritual weather that beat upon my friend's house was brutal. Breast cancer--a ravaging, fast moving storm--laid her in the hospital, after her mastectomy, in an experimental study that would hopefully save her life. It was its own hurricane. A bone marrow transplant that left her eyelashes swimming in her eyes as they fell prey to the chemicals that were another death to her. The cleansing of her blood cells left her immune system compromised. Another storm to weather. I called her the day her lashes fell into her eyes. The day she wondered what all of this was for. Next to her was her husband. Loving her. A masked compadre sitting vigil to her pain. Also sitting there. Jesus. To my friend as real as her husband. And without that Presence her heart might have failed. It walked a thin line in the storm, I know. Because we all want a reason for the winds blowing and beating on the house. Sometimes it must be enough, in the moment, that we are not alone in the maelstrom. My beautiful friend lived. To see her gaggle of grandchildren. How blessed she is these more than twenty-five years later! Her life built on a Rock. Made to weather and endure. Past this life. But when the storms come, if we don't know Whose we are, we might just be taken away in the debris that is left. If we don't know the promises of God to us, haven't been trained by the ups and downs of life to trust that He is good, we will be destroyed.
Pain is the storm. Not just the physical pain of disease, but the gut-wrenching, soul crushing thought that perhaps the winds blow on us because we are unworthy, sinful or unloved. The lights go out in the house, darkness creeps up on us, whispering we will die there, in the storm. That's what happened to me. And to my friend, April (not her real name). Saved from her addictions through a Christian program, she met and married a man much older than she. He'd been married twice before, had grown kids and a poor track record. But he was a Christian graduate of the same program. For a while their marriage seemed to work. His family was wealthy. Pillars of the church. When he and April moved near the extended family, they bought a home and she began a successful business there. But her husband had internet issues. And after over a decade of marriage, left her in an ugly scene. Though she struggled to survive the abandonment, the sandy soil of her relationship with Jesus sent her, in her pain, back to her former medications. Unfortunately, they were unlawful, too. Ironically, it was in jail that she discovered God to be her Rock. He has been miraculously there with and for her. In ways I hope to write about one day soon. Would that she had been more safely anchored to Him in the days of her pain. I know that story all too well from personal experience.
What all three of us knows now, though, is that God's promises are well tried by now. Does He mean it or not when He says we can trust in Him? Have we needed to know that and found God faithful? Storms are out there brewing for everyone--Christians and non-Christians. We aren't exempt because we know Christ. He wasn't exempt. What makes the difference is where we are anchored in the typhoon. Are we tethered to Him or floundering in a sea of doubt? Our way with Jesus should be marked with testimonies of His faithfulness in sunshine or blizzard. Those times we can remember when things are bleak to assure us He is good and that God loves us. When I know God's promises and I've seen that He fulfills them, it makes the storm endurable because I know I'm anchored to His faithfulness. Jesus said that when I hear the Word and then do it, I will be on solid, immovable ground. Because I've tested it. Not just read it. Not just thought, "Oh, that's a wise saying--a good perspective." The Word of God was never meant to be the sayings of a kindly prophet. The Word of God is bread, life, alive--conversation with the Living God. If He says, "Do this and live!" I should do it. And the more I experience the truth of His words, the more my testimony will be, "Your testimonies are right forever. Help me understand them that I may live!"
Our foundations may quiver in the storm. We might be a little--or a lot--afraid. I remember holding my father-in-law's hand as he lay dying two years ago. The look in his clear blue eyes was far away when he opened them to peer into mine. Like he was trying to see me from someplace in the distance. But he held my hand tightly, like a person dangling from a cliff not wanting to let go. For several hours we sat like that, his large, cooling hand in mine. It wasn't until the last few minutes of his life that Papa eased his grip. Seeing someplace better, I hope. Willing to leave my grasp to take hold of another hand. It reminds me that I hold God's hand that way. Gripping it for strength and the knowledge that I'm loved. Holding on even more tightly in the storms. In life and death, Jesus has me. Has my back. Holds onto me. Under girds the foundations of my life when I totter and doubt. Even if the foundation cracks a bit so that after the storm we need some repair, we can rejoice that we still stand. Steadfast, immovable (1 Corinthians 15). Trouble and anguish may have found me out, but I'm still standing!
"Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, and the floods came, and winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not do them will be like foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it." Jesus, Matthew 7
I love my friend. I've known her now almost all our lives. Both of us were raised in the Baptist church. Both of us married young. And we both love Jesus with our whole hearts. But that didn't stop the winds coming and the rain pouring down. And the spiritual weather that beat upon my friend's house was brutal. Breast cancer--a ravaging, fast moving storm--laid her in the hospital, after her mastectomy, in an experimental study that would hopefully save her life. It was its own hurricane. A bone marrow transplant that left her eyelashes swimming in her eyes as they fell prey to the chemicals that were another death to her. The cleansing of her blood cells left her immune system compromised. Another storm to weather. I called her the day her lashes fell into her eyes. The day she wondered what all of this was for. Next to her was her husband. Loving her. A masked compadre sitting vigil to her pain. Also sitting there. Jesus. To my friend as real as her husband. And without that Presence her heart might have failed. It walked a thin line in the storm, I know. Because we all want a reason for the winds blowing and beating on the house. Sometimes it must be enough, in the moment, that we are not alone in the maelstrom. My beautiful friend lived. To see her gaggle of grandchildren. How blessed she is these more than twenty-five years later! Her life built on a Rock. Made to weather and endure. Past this life. But when the storms come, if we don't know Whose we are, we might just be taken away in the debris that is left. If we don't know the promises of God to us, haven't been trained by the ups and downs of life to trust that He is good, we will be destroyed.
Pain is the storm. Not just the physical pain of disease, but the gut-wrenching, soul crushing thought that perhaps the winds blow on us because we are unworthy, sinful or unloved. The lights go out in the house, darkness creeps up on us, whispering we will die there, in the storm. That's what happened to me. And to my friend, April (not her real name). Saved from her addictions through a Christian program, she met and married a man much older than she. He'd been married twice before, had grown kids and a poor track record. But he was a Christian graduate of the same program. For a while their marriage seemed to work. His family was wealthy. Pillars of the church. When he and April moved near the extended family, they bought a home and she began a successful business there. But her husband had internet issues. And after over a decade of marriage, left her in an ugly scene. Though she struggled to survive the abandonment, the sandy soil of her relationship with Jesus sent her, in her pain, back to her former medications. Unfortunately, they were unlawful, too. Ironically, it was in jail that she discovered God to be her Rock. He has been miraculously there with and for her. In ways I hope to write about one day soon. Would that she had been more safely anchored to Him in the days of her pain. I know that story all too well from personal experience.
What all three of us knows now, though, is that God's promises are well tried by now. Does He mean it or not when He says we can trust in Him? Have we needed to know that and found God faithful? Storms are out there brewing for everyone--Christians and non-Christians. We aren't exempt because we know Christ. He wasn't exempt. What makes the difference is where we are anchored in the typhoon. Are we tethered to Him or floundering in a sea of doubt? Our way with Jesus should be marked with testimonies of His faithfulness in sunshine or blizzard. Those times we can remember when things are bleak to assure us He is good and that God loves us. When I know God's promises and I've seen that He fulfills them, it makes the storm endurable because I know I'm anchored to His faithfulness. Jesus said that when I hear the Word and then do it, I will be on solid, immovable ground. Because I've tested it. Not just read it. Not just thought, "Oh, that's a wise saying--a good perspective." The Word of God was never meant to be the sayings of a kindly prophet. The Word of God is bread, life, alive--conversation with the Living God. If He says, "Do this and live!" I should do it. And the more I experience the truth of His words, the more my testimony will be, "Your testimonies are right forever. Help me understand them that I may live!"
Our foundations may quiver in the storm. We might be a little--or a lot--afraid. I remember holding my father-in-law's hand as he lay dying two years ago. The look in his clear blue eyes was far away when he opened them to peer into mine. Like he was trying to see me from someplace in the distance. But he held my hand tightly, like a person dangling from a cliff not wanting to let go. For several hours we sat like that, his large, cooling hand in mine. It wasn't until the last few minutes of his life that Papa eased his grip. Seeing someplace better, I hope. Willing to leave my grasp to take hold of another hand. It reminds me that I hold God's hand that way. Gripping it for strength and the knowledge that I'm loved. Holding on even more tightly in the storms. In life and death, Jesus has me. Has my back. Holds onto me. Under girds the foundations of my life when I totter and doubt. Even if the foundation cracks a bit so that after the storm we need some repair, we can rejoice that we still stand. Steadfast, immovable (1 Corinthians 15). Trouble and anguish may have found me out, but I'm still standing!
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