How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me? Psalm 13: 1 - 2
It is one of the hard facts of the Christian faith that it
is the difficult times that produce the greatest fruit in our lives, if we make
the most of them. That of course is the dilemma because it is the hard times
that are most difficult to make anything out of. All of our good intentions fly out of the
window and every truth that we believe about God and our lives as Christians is
tested to the limit in our trials.
A year ago our youngest son, who had been living in America
for a year, was getting ready to be married to a very nice American girl in USA
and two weeks before the event everything went wrong. Our daughter in law was having great difficulty
getting a British visa and to add to the difficulty the dog chewed her passport
making it unacceptable to be used at all. The delay caused by getting a new
passport meant she would have no passport to go with on honeymoon. They had
spent a lot of money on the honeymoon, applying for a visa and now she needed a
new passport as well.
In addition to all this, Hurricane Irene blew up the north
east coast on USA wrecking the park they were going to use for the picnic that
they had planned for their reception. They had no visa, no passport and it
looked like no reception venue and no honeymoon. Everything was awful – it was
no one’s fault but why had God allowed it? They were two lovely Christian young
people who had been faithful to God and now on the biggest day of their life so
far everything had gone pear shaped. Why hadn’t God intervened? It just wasn’t fair!
They were upset and all parents on both
sides of the Atlantic were upset and personally I found it very hard talking to
a devastated son who was thousands of miles away. I felt really down and moaned
and moaned to God. My attitude was not good but at least I was talking to the
only person who could actually do anything about the situation. Two days later
I felt so low and quite ‘by chance’ I listened to a song called Psalm 13 by one
of the Vineyard bands. The lyrics touched me deeply as they spoke right into
the situation. I read the psalm and the last two verses were ‘But I trust in your unfailing love; my
heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to
me’ Psalm 13: 5 – 6. The light bulbs came on and with no evidence to
support it I declared that I will trust in God’s unfailing love – why? Because the Lord has been good to me.
I may have been squeezed till I almost
screamed but I could never deny that God had been good to me so I could trust
him despite all the evidence to the contrary. I knew all would be well. On
the other side of the Atlantic my son’s future mother-in-law was urging them to
trust God. Within a week all the situations had been turned around; the sun
shone on the wedding day, another reception venue had been found for the
picnic, our daughter in law got two passports – one for the honeymoon and one
for the visa - and two days after the wedding her British visa was granted.
God is good and utterly reliable and trustworthy
despite the circumstances and we will never discover this for ourselves till we
have had this truth tested in the fires of adversity. I now KNOW I can rely on God
because he has been good to me and even in the midst of difficulties God is
still good to me and all his children.
Do not fear the fires of afflictions but
ask God to help you walk through them with integrity and honesty, praising and
worshipping our Creator who is good and wonderful no matter how hard the road
we are walking on. You will bear increasing fruit as you trust him because you
will know for yourself the truth of God’s goodness and faithfulness even in the
midst of adversity.
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