"honor me..." - God

"Honor me..." - God

Our faith is to honor God. I'm learning through this experience with Sarah that God gives us opportunity to honor Him by the things we face. So obvious to say that, but when it comes to really difficult things, things that have the impossible written into them, it's sometimes easier to concede defeat before even beginning the good fight of faith. I think we often don't even enter the playing field for fear of disappointment awaiting us. Some don't outwardly say that, but in their hearts they've all but given up already. At the word of bad news, they prepare for loss. Who knows why. It might be that so many defeats already have gotten the best of them, so what's the point in hoping again. But I believe there is a reason to hope in the most difficult of circumstances. There is something special to circumstances that test your faith. I feel there is something important for us to understand in this situation with Sarah, one like many that people face everyday. For they will come to us all... and our response is paramount to all that our lives are to be about.

Impossibilities afford to us an opportunity for the nature of God to be revealed. Without them we would not see the different faces of Jesus that He wants us to see. God is a multi-talented personality with outrageous abilities and capacities. His creative instincts are immeasureable and without limit. He can take dust, breathe on it and make it sing like a lark. He can create oceans and fill it with life. What can He not do? So it is in human affairs. He raises the dead when there is no longer chance for life to continue. I feel He wants to reveal Himself and be known to people. He doesn't want to just be read about or known theologically. He doesn't want to be known only in the pages of a book. There's more and His revealing is to be glorious. It's to happen all the time -daily... because that revealing changes lives. It changes everything when He is allowed to be central to our lives and circumstances. I mean really central, where His perspective effects our attitudes, thoughts and actions.

He gave Sarah to us and his longing to be central in this circumstance is clearly felt. He is recreating it to fit His designs, so that we will be recreated by the impact of his perfect will. Sarah has come in a package yet unfinished or broken. To the medical world she is an impossibility. She is not made to live. God stands in the wings if you will and looks to us for a response. He looks to be placed in the middle. He understands our delima and what we are facing. And still He looks for our response. He looks inside us to see what we believe. He listens to how we pray, and what we think about. Our response means so much, if not everything. He has chosen things to be that way. He has allowed so much to depend on our response. Why else would He say: "The power of life and death is in the tongue..?" If you are speaking... then whose got the power? There is a lover in God who looks lovingly at us, wanting to see one of his beloved ones responding to life's problems in the true knowledge of God, expectantly awaiting and knowing the difference He will make in the situation. He's concerned about outcomes... but not only that. He's concerned about the process and our proximity to Him - to the truth, to the life in Him. Don't misunderstand what I'm saying, this is not a test to see how well we perform. Responding isn't about performance. God judging how well we do. I feel like He's looking to our hearts simply wanting us to know Him intimately, and to be free. He wants life for us when death is being spoken. He wants love for us when noone is loving us. He wants us to not feel alone when we feel like there's no chance we can move the mountain we are facing.

We know the power ultimately starts and ends with God, but we play a role in the unfolding drama and our response is meant to honor God. I've been leaning into understanding what it means to live in this situation in the identity of God honoring Him. In other words, who is God to us in this situation and what does He want to do here? I felt a couple of days ago He shared with me that this situation with Sarah is an opportunity intended by God to reveal Himself, and not only do that, but glorify Himself through it. He then began to talk to me about my response... When I first heard the news about Sarah, Jen and I were rocked. We were taken low by the news. And I guess that's expected and normal. Most people would experience the same. He then began to talk to us about the situation and our hearts began to come back up. We began filling with hope. And now our confidence is secure in the power of God and His ability to take this impossible situation and turn it into something glorious. The Bible is full of stories just like that. So why not this situation?

What He said yesterday impacted me concerning my faith. He said in essence, I'm looking for my sons and my daughters to respond with excitement when they are faced with the impossible. I want them to get excited because the revealing of my nature, of what I'm like, is connected to it. He was saying He wants me to get used to living in impossible circumstances, that in truth, this is the normal Christian life. A life of miracles, both small and big, is the normal Christian life. The faith that Jen and I have in this situation should be normal. It shouldn't suprise people at all. To believe for Sarah's perfect health and healing should be expected, especially since He is who He is. I felt Him wanting me to believe naturally for such a thing to happen in her life, like He had wished that would of been my first response instead of despair. He understands my intitial reaction, and He's not upset with it. I can feel now though, He wants to teach me how to respond differently from now on.

He then began to show me how this circumstance was reawakening me to the way I should always be living. And that I should not stop here, but that there is so much more to living by faith than hoping for the occasional miracle. More than even miracels are to be normal, but a world of relationship is found ahead. The reason he wanted my response to be full of hope instead of despair when I first heard the news about Sarah was because the way I respond is directly connected to what I believe about Him and experience in relationship with Him everyday. You could say it reveals how close I really am with Him in this area of my life. It's telling of what I really think about God and how much I know Him - all of these things being super important to Him. They are important to me too. But I didn't fully grasp what significance it has to so many things of my life. For one, my life that He has been leading me to live will not happen unless I abandon myself to a lifestyle of living in the impossible. As crazy as that sounds, I think it's true. I think it's not just true of me, but of many of us.

So I've noticed in one way how soft I have been living. Soft meaning, not challenged in my faith like I once was, not believing for enough, not really allowing for impossibilities to be present as much as they should be in my life. One of the most essential elements to our relationship with God is our faith. If all that I'm doing in life is freely accessible to me without faith, what kind of life am I really living? It says: "without faith, it is impossible to please God." I was seeing that my life is to not only have impossibilities present in it, but it's actually vitally necessary for me to have them if I am to fulfill all that my is meant to be about. Without impossibilities our lives lose a big piece of what our life is to witness to. We need impossibilities so that the miraculous can happen, so that the nature of God can be revealed, so that God is glorified, so that people can see, know and come to the beautiful God who loves them deeply. Our lives are meant to be all about honor... and that honor is to Him. "... all praise, and all honor and glory unto you!"

These circumstances, like this one with Sarah, are all about Him. We are all apart of the story, but all arrows are pointing to one person. We are given the privalage, which is great, to be apart of lovingly directing people's attention to the beauty of a God who wants to disclose Himself, become naked to the humanity that He has created and loves. For within these kinds of circumstances a wonderful gift is offered to the seeing and hearing heart. That gift and/or gifts will be unwrapped inside hearts like yours and mine as we step to the side and allow Himself to take center stage. Hope is a gift being given here. Life is another one. Laughter is being given. Peace like a river is a real thing... and is pouring into our hearts and others. Confidence in the goodness of God is on the table. People can take of that bread and get full. There is so many things being given, all because God is taking opportunity with an impossible situation the requires an absolute miracle. Before the miracle itself happens, before we know whether or not the death sentence will prevail (which it won't), life is happening. The unshakeable God with His unshakeable Kingdom is unmoved by the flood of gross news. And those He calls His own are finding a solid place to stand. There is a sure foundation under us. And in the waves of destruction that came to wash us out to sea, a well-built house is going up instead (Luke 6) The torrent of destruction isn't taking us out. Our footings are not giving way. No. Instead we are increasing in strength trusting in the unfailing goodness and unchanging nature of a miracle working God. Thank you Jesus! This is for real. We are not masking secret pain and despair. We are not in denial. We are not on the back foot. We are watching God establish His house in our hearts that will be unto others what we have always wanted: A place of refuge and love where healing is accessible, God is true, and hope is ever alive.