A Reminder I Didn't Want But Needed

This morning (ok, it’s actually early afternoon but my body needs extra sleep so I just got up). Anyway, this early afternoon I am grateful for truth. At numerous moments in the past two months it has held up when nothing else has.

Shortly after my diagnosis, I sat across the lunch table from my friend Jennifer and told her I wanted someone from the persecuted church in China to walk through this with me. I knew the journey would be hard, the suffering would be seemingly unbearable at times, and I was afraid that without someone yelling truth into my ear I would fail.

My fear was magnified because I know that some of the ways we tend to handle suffering here in the US don’t work. We want to smile at someone and guarantee their healing and encourage them that their faithfulness to God has “earned” them some sort of pass. It’s because we just want to encourage them but it’s not true. Only God knows the end of my journey or anyone else’s and I guarantee you my faltering faithfulness hasn’t earned me anything. It only takes about two seconds of real suffering for that mode of handling suffering to fall apart. On the other side, there are also the times we hurt for someone so badly that we slip into a desperation that doesn’t help either. We act like there’s no hope in sight. But the cross and the resurrection are true so there’s never a place for total hopelessness. Our despair on their behalf doesn’t help them in their suffering either.

I needed this reminder because this morning I wanted answers from God that aren’t consistent with His Word and plan. I wanted things to happen and Him to promise things according to my desires instead of His. I asked Him questions and looked in His Word and found not what I want find but the truth instead. At the moment I am a little frustrated and irritated because I still want my way. But I am reminded that in the epicenter of suffering, anything less than 100% truth is useless at best and a temptation to doubt God at the worst. As much as I “want” my way, I hear the Chinese persecuted believer yelling in my ear. “Kathy, you’ll never make it if you cling to anything other than God and His Word. No US cultural Christianity platitudes or desires of your heart inconsistent with God’s keep you alive in the fire. Only Him. Only truth. That’s your only hope.” Spirit…thanks for the reminder. Please make me heart wrap around what my head knows is true. Thanks for your mercy.