But Even If He Doesn't...

I spent a few minutes watching the news this morning and walked away completely dejected.  All the stories of violence, fighting amongst political parties, and dissention on social issues seem to be an onslaught on all the things of Jesus.  It just hurt my heart to watch and think, "And I want kids to RAISE in this?"  

So when I received an email with my friend Jeanette's update on her bout with cancer a few minutes later, I was ready to call it a day and have my own little pity-party of "woe is us" in the corner. That is, until I read her email.

Jeanette is on round 2 of an aggressive form of cancer.  Next week she is back to seeing specialists, taking all sorts of special medications and undergoing procedures.  Throughout the entire thing, she has said she has one thing she desires:  to glorify God.  In fact, this testifies so strongly in the way she's approached this season that a friend from home just wrote her saying,

"Hi Momma B,

I wanted to let you know we will be praying for a complete recovery and that this will be more like a long vacation than treatment! I also wanted to share with you how God is using your illness for good. 

We have a guy who comes to our church who has been out of his 9th trip to rehab for drugs now for 6 months. Last night he said, “Today I realized how selfish I am. For months I have been praying and I realized today that all I ever pray for is my self. Then today Brent mentioned a lady who is about to be isolated for 3 months for treatment of her cancer and it hit me. I was in prison and rehab because of choices I made but this lady did nothing to deserve cancer. Then he asked the other men to pray for “this lady that I do not know but who God used to show me that I need to start focusing on others not just me!” He had tears in his eyes and needless to say, so did I! Many times people ask, “why me? or why do bad things happen to good people?” I don’t really know why, but this is a case of God using one of those bad things for good. "

I read this and just started to weep.  My friend is sick in a bed in Houston, impacting a broken man back home simply because she is choosing to believe that:

1. God is bigger than this cancer

2. He is Good. 

3. He has a plan.  

This instantly reminded me of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego...King Nebuchadnzzar was mad because they would only worship the One True God instead of worshipping him.  He told them he was gonna' throw them into a pit of fire, to be killed.  These 3 men looked at him and replied, "The God we worship can save us from you and your flaming furnace. But even if he doesn’t, we still won’t worship your gods and the gold statue you have set up.”  BUT EVEN IF GOD DOESN'T.   What's interesting here is that these 3 guys were just having their daily quiet times when the king noticed them.  They were just doing everyday, ordinary life.  But they believed, like Jeanette, that God was bigger than their circumstances, that He is good, and that He has a plan..

Can we sit here for the rest of today?  Because if we really truly believe that God is bigger than our circumstances, that He is good and that He has a plan, we can approach the most horrifying of circumstances with confidence that HE HAS GOT IT.  We can live our everyday, ordinary lives in a way that the world is shifted to look more like Jesus.

Would you join me today in offering our circumstances up to God?  Can we ask Him to glorify Himself in our everyday, ordinary circumstances?  Whether they be good or bad or "bleh", He has a plan.  He is good.  He is able.  Take a few moments and tell us what your circumstances are below.  We'd love to pray with you...for breakthrough, for His Presence, for Himself to be glorified.  

And most of all, that you would know:  

You are loved.

 

annetta 

 

"Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world...in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us."

**Special thanks to AB1 for keeping me in the loop on Momma B.