When Life Doesn't Come Easy....

Have you ever noticed that sometimes in life, the right attitude, the right confession, the right belief doesn't always produce the desired affect. I have "grown up" spiritually under the Word of God, and have been privileged to be tutored by excellent mentors with a great degree of Biblical training. Our words have power, we have to manage our thought life, we need to replace our thoughts with God's thoughts through confession of the Word and so on and so forth. We have spiritual authority, covenant rights, and are loved by a healing Abba Father. All these things are true to the "N'th" degree. All very Biblical and accurate. I want to address a very unpopular topic for second. Have you ever heard the horror stories about a Pastor or well meaning Christian that was involved in a prayer or counseling scenario where they told they counseled that the reason they had cancer or whatever the issue might be, was because they had a "lack of faith?" I have, it's not pretty and it's not scriptural. It's saying, more or less, "you have cancer, because you don't have enough faith to prevent it." I have many horror stories that I can personally draw from, where well meaning, but spiritually ignorant or biblically illiterate believers heap up condemnation and guilt on the shoulders of someone who desperately needs love, grace, and support from their fellow believers. Then to add insult to injury, if a person does die (gaining Heaven), those left behind attribute the supposed failure of their prayers and faith confessions on the back of the deceased by saying, "Oh, if they would've had faith." A great and powerful man of God used to say, "that's ignorance gone to seed." I sure agree.

Here's where I get honest. Have you ever hit a wall? Have you ever prayed like you were repeating the Word, or praying as if it were an empty religious mantra? Do you your words ever feel like empty vessels, drifting nowhere? Did it get you through the adversity or did it seem shallow or insincere. Has life ever put you into conflict with your personal theology or doctrinal beliefs? I think it happens, and I think God understands. I think where our response to tragedy and adversity comes in is to be sensitive to the needs of others, even if what their going through is in conflict with our fresh out of Bible School ideas about God. We need to become believers that are not a mile wide and an inch deep. Life gets messy. There's not always a cut, copy and paste answer to every thing. Sometimes the greatest ministry we can give another person is to stop judging them, stop speaking and just listen. Smith Wigglesworth said, "we carry with us, all the impossibility when we judge God by the limitations of our unbelief." To take that a step further, I posit, that we judge others by the limitations of our unbelief, and because of that all we see is impossibility. I think it's time to get back to the Biblical, Christ-centered model of ministering to those that are hurting and stop trying to pretend were something were not.

~“Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are.”~ A. Golden

Psalm 77:3-5 (New International Version)

3 I remembered you, O God, and I groaned;
I mused, and my spirit grew faint.
Selah

4 You kept my eyes from closing;
I was too troubled to speak.

5 I thought about the former days,
the years of long ago;

I can say to another person that I don't have all the answers. I have become that honest, but I always say," let's go to the Word and see what its says about your situation." God always answers prayer, but if were looking at it through the filter of our unbelief, then we don't always see the answer. Why? Because it wasn't the one we were looking for. I have found that God doesn't always answer my prayer the way I have demanded Him to, go figure, he's God! God is always faithful and never disappoints. So, here a few a few my thoughts for tonight.

Selah....

Chaplain Jeremy