What we may experience as a difficult situation at the time may turn out to be a time when God used us the most. God says in our weakness He is strong. All through scripture, many of the godliest people had to endure extremely difficult situations. I think about Hosea, and how God told him to marry a prostitute, even though God knew that she wouldn’t be faithful. Is it possible that God can actually place us into situations that many would view as painful and even wrong, for the purpose of glorifying Himself or teaching someone else? In the case of Hosea and Gomer, God was providing a real life example of His relationship with Israel.

For me, it is very freeing to think of God as bigger than our pain, and when I’m experiencing pain, to know that I am never outside the will of God, even in the midst of torment. God may not remove that pain immediately, even when dealing with someone of great faith, in order to achieve His purpose, which may only be revealed to us when we see Him face to face. Until then, true faith is the ability to say in the midst of pain, “You are God, and I will trust You!” I believe that’s what Christ said when He prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.” Being God, Christ new what God’s will was, and that He had to endure suffering to achieve God’s ultimate plan.

When Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus, God convicted him, and even made him blind so that he would completely depend on God’s guidance to lead him to Ananias, and be healed and anointed by the Holy Spirit. After Paul spent his energy persecuting the Christians, God took drastic measures to stop Paul and use him for His glory. I imagine traveling blind would have been an incredibly uncomfortable experience for Paul, not to mention being convicted of opposing God when all the while Paul thought He was doing the will of God. In that case, God could have made Paul’s conversion more comfortable, but He found it necessary to make Paul depend on Him. It appears as though God did not give Paul much of a choice in the matter.

Now, I realize all of what I am saying can simply be responded to with the argument that God just uses the bad things that happen to us, and doesn’t actually cause those bad things to happen. I guess one has to decide what they believe God is capable of. If the decision is that God is not capable of bringing death and destruction upon His creation, take a closer look at scripture, and you will find that God’s wrath is just as common as His mercy, and His ultimate and final act of wrath will be when He destroys His enemies once and for all. As Romans 9:20 says, who are we to question God?

Finally, I’d like to bring a bit of balance to this matter. It is our responsibility to pray for and take care of those in need. It is not our responsibility to determine whether or not a person is enduring pain as a part of God’s plan, or to try and determine what God’s plan is in that situation. God calls us to take care of those in need, pray for their well-being, and trust that God will take care of them.

Enemy-occupied territory – that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.” – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

If all Christians would take this idea seriously, and apply it to their lives, what a different world we would live in. Instead, we have a hard time resisting the urge to indulge in what the enemy has to offer while we are living here.

This idea has been more real to my wife and I recently, as we prepare to make a change that some consider crazy (we know some think this because they’ve told us). We are asked questions like, “how will you support your family?”, “what will you do once you’re done school?”, and other questions regarding our kids and our house which we are selling.

It seems as though we have this idea that we need to have everything in order before we respond to God’s calling. Here are a few things I think about when I have doubts:

• God does not NEED our money. He only asks that we be generous with what we have.
• God does not NEED our abilities, but wants us to be faithful with the gifts He’s given us.
• God does not depend on our plans to fulfill His own plan for our lives, He just asks that we listen and obey.
• We don’t need to know God’s whole plan to take the first step, we only need to trust Him.

Let us not get caught up in becoming too comfortable in enemy occupied territory. Remember, God has us here for a mission, which, in the details, can look different from person to person. But the call to all God’s people is to love and obey Him, love others and live a life that demonstrates the holiness given to us by God through Jesus Christ.

C.S. Lewis states, in his book, The Great Divorce, “There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.”

There was a time when I looked directly at God and made a promise to dedicate my life to His work. Over the last 13 years, I have had periods of my life where I turned my back to God, and the result was darkness. More recently, I have faced God and have experienced no less trouble, but more peace and hope than ever before.

To be good, I think, is to head in the direction that would make us into more holy people, more like the people God would have us be if it weren’t for our sinful nature. Salvation is a promise made by God, our only responsibility is to point our lives in the direction of the holiness offered freely to us.

At 7:00 pm, we got to the hospital. At 8:08 pm Evan was born (very quick, I know!) At about 9:30, I was on my way downstairs to get myself a drink from the cafeteria when I ran into someone I knew, who is on the volunteer fire department. While I was talking to him, his pager went off, it was a report that a child had gone missing in the town where I live. I didn’t think too much of it at the time, other than that sick feeling a person gets upon hearing such horrifying news.

I left the hospital at 12:00 am and went to the office a bit to make the card you see in this post. Finished up around 1:00 and headed home for the night. The kids were at my in-laws, so was alone.

On my way home, two emergency vehicles passed me, one being a dive team from the Office of the Fire Commissioner. When I got into town, I noticed several trucks and individuals searching through the town with flashlights. I then drove over to where I saw several hundred people gathered at the man-made lake in town. I stopped and asked someone if this was still about the child that went missing. It was, so I asked if I could help. I signed myself up to help with the search, then went home and got some warmer clothes, better walking shoes and a couple flashlights.

I joined a team of about 25 people, who were walking through the fields surrounding the town. This was at about 3:00 am by now. As I walked through the fields, I was thinking about my newborn son, then about the fact that it’s quite unlikely this boy will be found alive. At about the same time that I was celebrating a new life, my second-born son, a father lost his youngest son.

I walked, hardly noticing what people around me were saying to each other, staring into the flash-light lit night, trying desperately to understand why God chooses to take such young lives. I think God revealed to me that, although it is important for us to celebrate life and mourn death, we also must realize that on the other side of eternity life and death will have so little separation, that we won’t even be able to distinguish between the two. This life is but a vapor that is here one moment and gone the next. God’s understanding of life and death is beyond ours, and we can’t assume that just because we think the timing of a boys death is terrible, that God made a mistake.

God gave me a son, a great blessing and a greater responsibility. My job is to take care of him in a way that honors the Lord until He calls him home. The father of the boy who went missing had the same responsibility, and I believe he took that responsibility seriously. The Lord called the boy home sooner than we would have liked, but we must accept death, just as we accept life.

At about 1:00 pm on Saturday, 20 hours after the search began, the boy was found in the man made lake. He had drowned near the dock early Friday evening. May God comfort the family and friends, and as the mourning continues, may God provide the family with an understanding that He was well pleased with the job they did as parents, and He chose to take their son into heaven at just the right time according His plan. I don’t understand it, but I know God’s hand is on that family, just as He had His hand on our family as our son was welcomed into the world.

When we let Jesus remove the old, he will then give us a new life. Once again, only He can provide it, for it is only by Him that we are given a new life. When Christ rose from death, he rose to a completely new life than He had before, and it is this very life that He offers to us as new “skin”. The life we are given is a life that has defeated death and will live for eternity in the fellowship of our Creator, the One who is able to fulfill our greatest needs and desires.

One more thing… we must remember, when we are dealt a bad hand, and must suffer through something miserable, think about how God has the power to turn that miserable thing into an opportunity to shed another dragon layer and become more like who He intends us to be.

Eunice begins to help people. The Dawn Treader is in need of repairs, so Eunice helps with the heavy lifting. Over the next few days, the crew members of the ship notice a change in character. Eunice has gone from a spoiled, whiney little brat, to a helpful dragon.

When the Dawn Treader is once again ready to put to sea, Eunice decided he didn’t want to be a burden to King Caspian and his crew so he slips away into the forest, with the intention of living on the island for the rest of his dragon life. However, Aslan, the Great Lion shows up and guides him to a lake, where Eunice is supposed to take a bath. But first, Eunice must remove his “clothes”.

“But I’m not wearing any clothes,” Eunice thinks to himself. What Aslan wants him to do is shed his outer dragon skin. Eunice does this, but afterwards the skin is still dry and scaly. So, he proceeds to shed another layer, and another. After a few attempts, the skin doesn’t get any better.

Aslan is the One who must shed the skin. Only the Great Lion can completely remove the dragon skin from the boy. So, with His sharp claws, Aslan claws deep into the dragon skin and tears it with great pain to Eunice until there is nothing left but a naked boy. Eunice points out that he is now without clothes. Aslan responds, “I will dress you”.

I have more to say about this story, but for now, let this sink in…

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

When you teach a child writing, you hold its hand while it forms the letters: that is, it forms the letters because you are forming them. We love and reason because God loves and reasons and holds our hand while we do it.

There can be no love, no compassion, no justice, no grace, but by the hand of God. We are in our most proud moments when we give ourselves credit for offering another what only God could have offered by putting His hand on ours.

Of course, a child will say “I did it Daddy!” when she has written her name with guidance by the father’s hand. However, let the father take away his hand, and she will soon stop saying “I did it!” and ask for her fathers help once more.