What Did I do to Cause This?

The Sovereignty of God Series –

Part 2 - What Did I do to Cause This?

In Part 1 of this series A Crisis of Faith we covered a lot of ground. Starting with the idea that all Believers (which is how I will refer to those of us who are followers of Christ throughout the remaining parts of this series) at some point reach that place where we come up against something that is so much bigger than ourselves, and anything that we can handle on our own, and we have to make the decision whether or not we do indeed believe that which we have professed about Jesus Christ and God.

I ended that article with my own personal experience, and the fact that for me, the answers to all of my questions were in fact, “Yes and Amen.” He is in charge completely of my life! I am in complete and total surrender and submission to my Heavenly Father whom I believe to be faithful, just, gracious, merciful, true, and never changing, wanting only that which is for my ultimate good and His unending glory and I rest completely in that truth.

I’ve found that His love for me casts out any fears I may have about the direction He may take my life in at any time. It was just a few years ago that I read the following verses (one I’d seen at least a dozen times) and the light bulb went on, I got it, and felt a huge sigh of relief! 1 John 4:17-19, "Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. We love Him because He first loved us. "

So as we walked together through these steps that we took during the days, months, and years following Kathryn's death, the next issue to come up between Todd and I was – individually “What did I do to cause this?” and collectively, “What did we do to cause this?”

I want to start by saying that bad things do happen often times as a result of poor decisions made. For instance, if I’m sitting in a median waiting to pull out onto a 2 lane road and there are two oncoming 18 wheeler trucks, both within about 35 feet of me and traveling approximately 65 miles an hour, if I pull out in front of these trucks, I can expect that there is a great likelihood I might not survive. That would be a choice I made which brought about really bad consequences. This happens every day, and people “blame” these things, the "bad" things, usually on the devil. Funny how that happens. Human stupidity often gets blamed on the devil, but the things that are just out of our hands completely – like finding out you have cancer – alot of people then presume that God must have been the one that did that. So, let’s investigate what the scripture says about these things, and hopefully bring our thoughts in line with those of scripture.

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We do know that the Word teaches that we are to "Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Ephesians 6:11-13. Much spiritual discernment is needed to know when we may be experiencing spiritual warfare. But sometimes, it takes even more discernment to see when we are experiencing the consequences of poor choices, bad ideas, and difficulties brought on by our own sin.

Study Guide:
(If the scriptures are not included in the text here, PLEASE take the time to look up and read the scriptures and to reflect on their message. There is something God wants to show you through every Word in the scriptures. 2 Timothy 3:16)

The following is a checklist I use personally to determine where I am in my prayer life and in my personal relationship with Christ, as it relates to difficult circumstances coming into my life. It is imperative as Believers that we be willing corporately (as the body of Christ) and personally (in our own personal relationship to Christ) to ask the hard questions, do what needs doing, to lose our fear of accountability and find a heart that only wants to be laid bare before the Lord, open, waiting and ready for His use. I'm sure this list is borrowed from somewhere. I have no idea where it originally came from, or how I came about getting it. It's been written in the back of my Bible and I've been using it for years now.

BEFORE I PRAY:

• Are all my sins confessed? (Isaiah 59:2; Psalm 66:18; 1 John 1:9)
• Are all of my relationships right before the Lord? (Mathew 18:15-35)
• Am I seeking God’s will in EVERY area of my life? (I John 5:14-15) That includes even those difficult relationships that not too many other people really know about?
• Am I seeking to glorify God in all things? (John 14)
• Am I depending on God to guide me everyday through the power of the Holy Spirit? (Romans 8)
• Do I trust God in spite of what seems to be (the external appearances)? (Prov. 3:5-6)
• Will I praise God no matter how this turns out? (Romans 8:28)

So first of all, in all things, I desire for myself, and I encourage you, to try to be introspective enough to see yourself, as much as possible, the way that God sees you and your sin.

There are definite examples in scripture of sin bringing about consequences. One of the best examples is that ultimately, the child conceived through the adulteress relationship between King David and Bathsheba, resulted in the life of their son being taken. (1 Samuel 12)

As many examples like this that there are, you will find many other examples of God’s mercy and love covering our past sin, and not giving us exactly what we deserve. This is a wonderful thing as parents that we have the opportunity to teach our children – MERCY - an earthly taste of such a wonderful principle. (John 8:2-12)

Next, we must come to understand that every day of our lives is not only numbered, but ordered, before we’re even born! (Psalm 139:16 and 23-24; Psalm 37:23-24; Proverbs 16:9; 19:21.) We have a dear friend that says, “If it’s not my day to die, there’s nothing I can do that will cause it, it will all be thwarted. But, if it’s my day to go, there’s nothing anyone can do to stop that either.” I find it comforting, after having lost loved ones, that I didn’t have to “what if” we’d done this or that myself to death, because I was fully rested in the fact that God has the days of our lives determined, patterned and ordained. That’s a great relief! This is once again, an example of His perfect love casting out all of my fears (1 John 4:18)

I would like to encourage you in this way:
1) Always be ready and willing to take an account of your own actions, beliefs, behaviors, etc… to determine if in fact it is possible that you may be experiencing the chastening of the Lord. Be the first to examine your motives, attitudes, and behaviors to determine if you are “suffering” in some way that has been brought on as a result of sin in your life. “…My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; For whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives.” Hebrews 12:5-6 If what you are experiencing is the result of sin, REPENT, and be restored to your God, and your fellow man if necessary and if possible.

2) If you’ve made the determination that your sin has not brought this on you, rest in the knowledge that God’s Sovereignty is at work and He is busy causing all things to work together for your good and HIS GLORY!! (Even if you can’t see the good until you get to heaven, you can rest in the assurance that it’s there!!) (Romans 8:28; Ephesians 1:11; Jeremiah 29:11)

3) Lastly, know that if you are in the midst of a current struggle, are reflecting on past struggles, or bracing yourself for the struggles life will one day bring; it is most precious for us as Believers to know that just as He has been in the midst of those throughout scripture, as an example for us, He is in the midst of your situation too, whatever that is! Deuteronomy 31:6, "Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the LORD your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you.” (Joshua 1:1-9)

You see, in the beginning of our struggle with Kathryn's daignosis, illness and following death, we questioned what we’d done that would cause God to punish us in this way. We came up with a laundry list of things from our past, and decided that if this was the worst God ever did to us; we surely deserved it! But, SERIOUSLY, that is not who God is. His character is not such that He sits around waiting for just the right time to find something that means the absolute most to us and take that one thing to pay us back for all of the wrong we did prior to the beginning of our relationship with Him.

The most important principles we can take from this is that - no matter what happens, or whether or not we ever determine the “WHY?” of the happening, ultimately ALL THINGS happen to bring glory to God, whether it is in the punishment of sin and the offending sinner, grace received by those who do not deserve it, or healing brought about in order that God might be glorified.

I find great beauty in the story in John 9:1-8, "Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him. I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” When He had said these things, He spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva; and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. And He said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which is translated, Sent). So he went and washed, and came back seeing. Therefore the neighbors and those who previously had seen that he was blind said, “Is not this he who sat and begged?”

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God is indeed in the midst of each of every possible scenario in life. Though the circumstances may be different in your life, from mine, or your neighbors, the one constant that remains is our God and Father, and our Lord, Jesus Christ!

Abiding in His Grace and hoping God can use these ramblings to touch someone's heart...

Lori

A Crisis of Faith - Part 1 "The Sovereignty of God" series

First of all, let me start this post by saying that today is Kathryn's birthday. She would be 16 today, a huge birthday. My mom, the girls and I all went to the cemetery to put out some new flowers. It is the only thing that I can do for this precious one's birthday, apart from remembering the one we were blessed to spend with her when she turned a year old. So, Happy Birthday Kathryn Grace...
Well, I've been working on this for hours. If you find any typos, or grammatical errors, it's because I've given up - I'm ready for bed! :o)

Part 1: A Crisis of Faith

Everyone who calls himself a “Believer”, a “Christian”, a “Follower”, (insert your own choice of title here) will at some time in their life come face to face with a crisis of belief. For the sake of this article, I am going to define the term this way: A Crisis of Belief – a time of great physical and/or emotional crisis during which one’s personal belief system is tried and tested.

So, there you have it, perhaps you’ve already experienced this yourself. Perhaps, you’ve already experienced several of these. If you are young, you may not have come to this place yet in your walk with the Lord, but rest assured, a time will come for you. Just as surely as it came for Peter on a number of occasions, the questions will come for you too, and perhaps you will be ready spiritually to answer them or perhaps you will be young in your faith and unsure how to answer them. Either way, they will come, and you will answer, and much about your life from that point on will revolve around the event/events preceding it and your answer.

Examples from the life of Peter:

1. “’Who do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter answered and said, ’You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.’” 1 Peter 16:15-16
2. “‘It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit and they are life. But there are some of you who do not believe.’...And He said, ‘Therefore I have said to you that no one can come unless it has been granted to him by My Father.’ From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more. Then Jesus said to the twelve, ‘Do you also want to go away’ but Simon Peter answered Him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” John 6:63-67
3. Sadly, it would be this same Peter who only a short time later would “begin to curse and swear, saying, ‘I do not know the Man!’” Matthew 26:74
4. Thankfully, Christ would appear to Peter after His resurrection, giving Him 3 times to declare his love for Him, showing fruits of his repentant heart, and truly trusting in Christ, in John 21:15-17
   

And so it was, on April 10th, 1995, that a crisis entered my life that caused me to have to answer the same question – WHO IS HE?

Is He in fact the Christ, the Son of the Living God, as I professed Him to be in November of 1990. Is He my Rock and my Fortress, my God in whom I trust? Is He my Savior and my Redeemer? Is He the one who died to free me from my sin, and the curse that came with it?

Or, is all of this (the gospel/the Bible) some fantasy, some made up story created by man to help him cope with the events of this life? What is the purpose of life? Why am I here? What is all of this for? How do I find hope in the midst of death and disease? How is it possible that any good thing could come from all of this? How could this ever be something that would bring glory to God? The questions were unending and the answers were hard to grasp.


But, let me back up a tad, you have to know how I got here, right?

My husband and I married in April of 1990, as unbelievers. We were sinners of the worst kind (perhaps that’s a redundant statement). Anyway, we were not nice people. We were not even good people. I would later learn “There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one.” Romans 3:10-12, we had a lot of company, the whole world.

It would take entirely too long to go through the testimony of my experience of being born again here, and that is not the current topic at hand. But, suffice it to say, I was not looking for God. He was however looking for me. And one night, after reading the Bible (and I didn’t read the Bible as a matter of habit) I went to my knees in my living room before a loving, righteous, just God and stood up a new creation. At the same time, the Lord was at work in my husband’s heart as well, and he also came to Christ. We were both transformed – within days/maybe hours of one another. Praise be to God!

It was 4 years later that we would welcome our first child into the world, Kathryn Grace. She was the most beautiful baby I’d ever seen – of course – and we were so proud to be her parents. I remember those first months being so totally overwhelmed. We had no idea what we were doing. Oh yeah, parenting that first one is a doozy!!

Right away we knew that something was wrong. Born with a heart murmur (which runs in my family, along with a hereditary, genetic heart defect), she was immediately under the scrutiny of a pediatric cardiologist within days of her birth. The weeks, and months of that first year would bring continually worsening reports of her condition. Every visit to the doctor, the news became more grim, her condition more of a concern, and open heart surgery imminent. Every time I would even drive in the vicinity of University Hospital I would become sick to my stomach.

I remember the last time that we saw the cardiologist there before we flew to Boston for the angioplasty that would come before her surgery. My father was with me that day, and the news was really bad, she was very sick and thought to be in respiratory failure. As we left his office, I was trying to figure out how I was going to tell Todd, and my mother, and the people where I worked (a church), and our friends and family, and the people in our own church. I remember thinking about “disconnecting” myself from Kathryn emotionally because all of this was simply too painful to absorb. I knew that would be impossible - she was my baby, my child, my precious one – and yet I felt the need for some sort of self preservation, some kind of relief. I know now that there is no relief in matters such as these, you just have to walk through them, one second at a time, and He alone gives you the grace to do so.

Fast forward to April 6, 1995, the first of 4 days that would change us forever. Kathryn went to surgery, and five hours later she was on life support. Unable to come off of the bypass equipment once her surgery was completed, the doctors made the decision to put her on a device that would do the work of her ventricles, and leave her on a respirator. Then, they came out to tell us what they had done. We were dumbfounded, in shock, unable to process what had happened. I remember when the doctor left the “counseling” room how my mom and dad, and Todd and I stood there in disbelief. My dad finally broke the silence and told all of us to join him to pray. He turned towards the little sofa in the room and fell to his knees. The rest of us followed.

It was the first of many prayers prayed those 4 days, and on Monday she died.

It would take me 40 days to write out all of the details and would take you 30 to read it all, so I’m leaving much out, but it was then that the CRISIS began…

A lot of people would be looking to see if we believed what we had been saying we believed for the last 4 years. Was it really ALL about Christ? Does He REALLY love us? Does He REALLY want what was best for us? Does He REALLY have a plan? These and so many other questions would fill our minds, and the minds of those closest to us. Why would He take a child? Oh, the agony of the thoughts of those days are still so fresh, and my words seem completely incapable of describing to you what that feeling was like.

So what sort of conclusions did we come to amidst all of this questioning? It all finally boiled down to this: Yes, we believe He loves us more than anything, so much He gave His own life to save us. Yes, it is ALL about Christ! Yes, He does want what is ultimately best for us, even when that doesn’t look like what we think it should!
Yes, He really does have a PLAN! Could His decision to allow this child to die at 13 months of age have a purpose? YES! YES! YES! And again I say YES!

So, how does all of this parallel what Job experienced in his life? (Please keep in mind that as devastating as our experiences have been, I do not in any way want you to conclude that I believe we've lived a life anything like Job experienced! We were simply asked to share things that have happened in our lives that parallel lessons which can be gleened from the book of Job, and I am passing that "message" along to you all as well.)
Job lost all of his children at once. We only had one to lose, but we lost all that we had at once too. Thankfully, no one stood on the outside (or the inside as was Job’s case) telling us to “curse God and die” as his wife did to him in Job 2:9, but it was at this point that Job had his crisis of faith.

Would he continue to trust? Indeed he would, and we too have clung to his words in agreement since those days so many years ago… Job 2:10 “Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?”…and Job 1:21, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” And finally, Job 13:15, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him…”

Do we really believe what we’ve professed and taught all these years?

Yes, and again I say, YES!!!

So here are your questions for reflection:

• Do you believe?
  You see there are two types of belief: there is a belief that leads to salvation and one that does not. Which do you have? Do you have either? Read the following verses:
  James 2:29
  Romans 10:8-10

• Have you experienced a “Crisis of Belief” in your own life? What was it and what effect did it have on your relationship with the Lord? How did your response to the crisis affect how others see Christ in you? Do you consider how your behavior affects what others believe about Him, based on what you’ve professed to believe?

• If you have experienced a crisis of belief, did it leave you fearful of what else might happen in your life? Or, have you come to find a deep appreciation and love for the truth of God’s sovereignty in your life, and in all things? Do you understand what it means for God to be sovereign, or is this something you need to study further?

The next part of this series will focus on Job’s friends, our own fears, and the idea that sin can bring drastic consequences in our lives. We will examine whether or not bad things that happen come as a punishment for prior sins? So part two is, “Did I do something to cause this?”

As always, and especially today, I am abiding in His grace,

Lori