"He said to them, 'it is not for you to know times and seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority'." -- Acts 1:7

Oh! What a sea of encouragement...

“Casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you” I Peter 5:7

It is a happy way of soothing sorrow when we can feel ‘He careth for me’. Christian! Do not dishonour your religion by always wearing a brow of care; come, cast your burden upon your Lord. You are staggering beneath a weight which your Father would not feel. What seems to you a crushing burden, would be to Him but as the small dust of the balance. Nothing is so sweet as to

‘Lie passive in God’s hands, and know no will but His.’

O child of suffering, be thou patient; God has not passed thee over in His providence. He who is the feeder of sparrows, will also furnish you with what you need. Sit not down in despair; hope on, hope ever. Take up the arms of faith against a sea of trouble and your opposition shall yet end your distresses. There is One who careth for you. His eye is fixed on you. His heart beats with pity for your woe, and his hand omnipotent shall yet bring you the needed help. The darkest cloud shall scatter itself in showers of mercy. The blackest gloom shall give place to the morning. He, if thou art one of His family, will bind up thy wounds, and heal thy broken heart. Doubt not His grace because of thy tribulation, but believe that He loveth thee as much in seasons of trouble as in times of happiness. What a serene and quiet life might you lead if you would leave providing to the God of providence! With a little oil in the cruse, and a handful of meal in the barrel, Elijah outlived the famine, and you will do the same.


If God cares for you, why need you care too? Can you trust Him for your soul, and not for your body? He has never refused to bear your burdens, He has never fainted under their weight. Come, then, soul! Have done with fretful care, and leave all thy concerns in the hand of a gracious God.

- Spurgeon, Morning and Evening

John Piper on Faith and Suffering

The great chapter on faith in the Bible is Hebrews 11. It begins, "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." What is often overlooked in this chapter, though, is the final eight verses where we get the balanced picture of faith as that which lays hold on God for rescue from suffering, and as that which lays hold on God for peace and hope in suffering. Verse 33: "By faith they conquered kingdoms, performed acts of righteousness, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection."

Now if we stopped reading here our conception of how the quality of faith manifests itself would be very distorted, because here it sounds as if faith always wins in this life. But here a shift occurs and we find that faith is also the power to lose our life: "By faith . . . others were tortured, not accepting release, in order that they might obtain a better resurrection; others experienced mockings and scourgings, yes, also chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheep skins, in goat skins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated (men of whom the world was not worthy) wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground . . . And all these gained approval through their faith."

The glory of God is manifested when he heals and when he gives a sweet spirit of hope and peace to the person that he does not heal, for that, too, is a miracle of grace! O, that we might be a people among whom God is often healing our sicknesses, but is always causing us to be full of joy and peace while our sicknesses remain. If we are a humble and childlike people who cry out to God in our need and trust in his promises, the Holy Spirit will help us and God will bless our church with every possible blessing. He will, as the text says, work everything together for our good.

(URL: http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/christ-and-cancer#/listen/full)

I used to be a big dreamer. In my teen years I was so passionate and determined, and I knew what I wanted: to be a world-changer. In my own words back then, I didn't want to just be a scratch on the surface of time -- I wanted to be a chasm. I didn't know how this would come about or what this would look like, but I was pretty sure I was going to be a Katharina Von Bora and marry a Martin Luther...or something like that.

Reflecting on those girl-hood hopes brings some irony when I look at where I am right now. Today found me on the constant verge of a panic attack just chasing around two toddlers, and that is typical for me these days...not just that, I'm praising God that I'm doing well enough to do that much! And so I realize that those dreams are just as good now as then, but my perception of what that girl should look like has changed. Because right now, incapable and needy and lost little me fills that role just as much as what I had always dreamed I should. Not because of me, but because of who I am in God. And it sure doesn't look like anything to aspire to. God works His greatest miracles in the most unexpected places. It is so true that God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.

When Gollum Bit His Finger Off
by Douglas Wilson

Believers often find themselves up against it. The challenge might be medical, familial, financial, educational, or personal. We tend to think in terms of pressure or stress, and when it gets really bad, trouble. The old Puritans thought in terms of affliction, as well as in terms of God's antidote to affliction, which is contentment. Samuel Rutherford once said that affliction was like a wine cellar. When I am afflicted, he said, I look for God's choicest wines.

Contentment is not something that is suspended in a timeless place, but is rather what God is teaching us while we wait for our deliverance. And we are supposed to be looking for that deliverance in such a way as gives us rest in the present. There is a faithless way of looking for deliverance that exacerbates the present troubles, and there is a way of looking for future deliverance that brings a present deliverance. We are called to the latter.

There are two things to remember as you are carrying the weight of an affliction. The first is the "space" of the deliverance, and the other is the "time" of the deliverance. Let us consider the second of these first.

It was a proverb among the descendants of Abraham that "on the mount of the Lord it will be provided." This came from God's provision of a ram for Abraham at the last minute, to be substituted for Isaac. As He tells the stories of our lives, we need to come to grips with the fact that God loves cliffhangers. The application that we should draw from this is that we should love cliffhangers too -- even though we are the ones hanging from the cliff.

With regard to the "space" of the trial, a weighty difficulty has mass, it takes up room. It is something you have to carry. But as you carry it (to be distinguished from collapsing under it), you grow stronger. Afflictions are God's weight room, and He can seem sometimes like a particularly hard trainer. When you are benching more than you thought you volunteered for, and way more than what you thought was a good idea, you need to trust Him. He knows more about this than we do.

It may seem odd to quote an unbeliever at this point, but I only do so to provide an analogy. Oliver Wendell Holmes once said that when a mind expands to accommodate a new thought, it can never afterward resume its old shape. Once you have carried that weight, you have carried that weight and can do so again -- with a lot less commotion in your soul this next time. When your faith has grown to accommodate the task of carrying the weight of your 2010 trials, you should find yourself (in 2014) carrying things that you would have at one time declared an impossibility.

The deliverance is coming, and we should all long for it. But there are two deliverances -- one is the natural "last chapter" to that particular story. But the other deliverance revolves around what is happening in the story. Frodo was delivered when Gollum bit his finger off, but he was also delivered when he first agreed to take the ring. This last deliverance is much harder to see, but seeing it makes all the difference.

(URL here: http://www.dougwils.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8493:when-gollum-bit-his-finger-off&catid=85:dealing-with-sin)

It is so hard to grasp a God Who is so great and awesome that He created grand mountains and swirling seas, so tender that He created sweet babies and delicate flowers...

Yet also allows my pain.

My Mom is staying with us right now. She, John and the kids are all sleeping soundly. I am too sick to sleep. We are all equally precious to Him...but He has chosen me for this. In the last two years I have hemorrhaged, had hypothyroidism, 2 surgeries, a miscarriage, a broken foot, a kidney infection (this is day 3 out of the hospital), and the ongoing postpartum psychosis that has been the most unbearable. But friends are having babies, getting married, and experiencing hosts of joyous occasions. This is our God; He is Lord of both.

It encourages me so much to look at Jesus. We don't have to ask if He was valuable to God. And yet He went through All of That, with God fully understanding what He was asking of His Son.

Right now I am nauseated, full of manic wakefullness and anxiety and panic that are beyond my control, and exhausted from not eating or sleeping well for two weeks. I watch the clock, waiting for my family to wake up to help comfort and distract me. And I'm asking God, how long? And reminding Him to have mercy on my humanness. Pleading.

But let me not forget Your mercies, Lord! Willing friends and family who have opened their hands to help me during all of this. A husband who, I have no doubt, has been given HUGE amounts of grace from God to adequately love, encourage and comfort me every day as he does. That my children are somehow surviving all of this. The tears that friends cry for me as they pray for my healing. Thank You for showing your love through these things.

(I started typing this up a couple months ago, and just got around to finishing it...it was good to remember some of these things. )

(From my journal on 9/30/10...)

"The foolishness in thinking that God won't be faithful to you is not just that this signifies a doubt concerning the character of God, but also that it reveals an idea concerning yourself that is false: that you are important. You are important to God, but that is simplly an outpouring of grace - you deserve none of it. And if your importance lies in the grace that exists because of the character of God, then you are important, but this is only because of God's mercy. This is why we can trust that God will care for us, and that He will be faithful: Our importance is rooted not in ourselves, but in His character. He can no more cease being faithful to us than He can cease being Who He is."

I was thinking about this a lot this morning. It's amazing how we can think that our trials are more important than the trials that someone else faces...because we are more concerned about what we could lose than what someone else could lose. And this is primarily because we have this idea that we are more important than they are. It is terrible when you actually get down to the heart of matters and realize how selfish you are. :-)

Clearly, though, if our importance is rooted in Who God is and not who we are, we are all equally important to God and equally instrumental in His plan for His glory. He will take care of us...so that takes a big weight off our shoulders and mind, and opens our hands and hearts for concern for others. The moments that have been easiest for me in the past months were moments where I was carried up in someone elses trial that seemed much bigger than my own, or when I was witnessing the suffering of another that made me completely caught up in compassion for them. I so often felt dry for compassion from others, and here I could stop thinking of myself and pour it out on others who were in need of compassion. Compassion is such a beautiful thing -- and where would compassion be without suffering? As Jesus wept for Lazurus, for Mary and Martha and their pain, when He knew He had all power to reverse the loss they were experiencing and even would do so very soon! But if He had not allowed that suffering and loss to be experienced, we would not have been able to see His compassion as He wept for those He loved, or His power as He raised Lazurus from the dead.

These paragraphs from John Piper's book "When the Darkness Will Not Lift" have made me think about this a lot:

“How Bill Leslie became a watered garden and a spring: He told of a near breakdown that he had and how a spiritual mentor directed him to Isaiah 58. He said it was verses 10–11 that rescued him from a season of darkness marked by feelings of exhaustion, burnout, and a dead-end ministry The text says:

'And if you pour yourself out for the hungry, and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness, and your gloom will become like midday. And the Lord will continually guide you, and satisfy your desire in scorched places, and give strength to your bones; and you will be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.'

What struck Pastor Leslie so powerfully was the fact that if we pour ourselves out for others, God promises to make us like a watered garden—that is, we will receive the water we need for refreshment and joy. But even more: we will thus be a spring of water that does not fail—for others, for the demanding, exhausting, draining ministry of urban self-giving. He saw that God’s way of lifting gloom and turning it into light was to pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted. This gave him a pattern of divine life that got him through his crisis and kept him going for the rest of his days.
God has made us to flourish by being spent for others. Jesus said, “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” Most of us do not choose against this life of outpouring, we drift away from it. We confuse pressure and family life and stresses at work with Christian sacrifice, when in fact much of it has little to do with meeting the needs of the hungry and afflicted and perishing.”