Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. - James 1:2-4

When I was pregnant with my second child, my beautiful girl, I was on bed rest for 2 months.  My daughter was so excited to greet the world that she decided she didn't need the 9 months required by other babies to fully develop in the womb.  Nope, she figured she only needed 7 months.  I and her doctors knew better, however, and so we did everything we could to keep her inside my body for the appropriate amount of time.

In this life of chronic... well, everything... it's so hard not to feel like my little baby daughter did while she shared my body.  I find myself fighting impatience.  Sometimes the impatience feels like it has a life of it's own, and it grows and grows until it becomes large and angry and destructive.  Destructive to my own good.
You see, just as my child needed time to develop what she would need to successfully greet the world and live the life she was meant to live, I need time for God's work in me to fully develop and equip me for the challenges to come.

It is so easy to forget that God is doing a work in me, that I am developing.  It mostly feels like I'm just sitting around and waiting.  Actually it mostly feels like I'm just sitting around.  Scratch the waiting.  I don't feel that useful most days.



But the beauty of God is that He is God.  He's not limited by my finite imagination, and He isn't spurred on by my growing sense of impatience.  Thankfully, He continues on at His pace with His plan.  And I am reassured to know that He knows what I need, His ways are higher than mine, and His will will be what prevails.

I need to think of my life as a precious pregnancy, something to be protected and appreciated.  I need to be patient and reassured, not rushing headlong into anything that could distract me.  I will try to recognize the importance of these years that feel like waiting.  I will trust that they are necessary and vital.



Trust, that's the ticket, isn't it?  I trust you, Lord.  Do Your work in me.


Heavenly Father, help me to be more aware of the work You are doing in me.  Grant me more patience in the waiting.  In Jesus' Name, Amen...

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If that is the case, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O King. - Daniel 3:17

This life is hard, isn't it?  It matters not what our troubles are... whether they are chronic illness and disability, or divorce or infertility, or poverty or abuse.  Life is hard.

We long for a deliverer.

Just as Shadrach, Meshach and AbedNego in the story of the fiery furnace, we long to say proudly to our problems, “We have no need to answer you in this matter.” (vs.16)  There, take that!  We have a Deliverer, and He is able!

If we say this to our problems, we speak the truth.  We speak rightly.

But let's read on to the next verse, shall we?

“But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up.” - Daniel 3:18

What do we say when we reach the next verse in the scolding of our troubles?
It is certainly not easy for the next words we utter to be: “But if not”!

Oh, no, we don't want to consider that our Deliverer may not deliver us from our pains, our heartaches, or our fears.  We want to imagine that with great faith comes great earthly blessing.  That the right amount of hope produces a life of ease.  That if we only pray long enough, He will answer in just the way that we long for.

What these three men acknowledged, and what we need to understand, is that God is still God, whether He chooses to deliver in the way we picture or He chooses to allow hardships and work His wonders through them.

“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”      


Do you know who uttered these words?  It was a man who had lost everything but His life. A man in torment daily, even hourly.  A man whose wife urged him to curse God so that he could die and get it over with.  A man whose closest friends and advisers judged him unworthy, and to blame for his troubles.

Everyone believed that God was bringing judgment upon this man through the hardships he was suffering.

This man was Job.  And as he struggled mightily to understand the whirlwind that had become his pitiful life, as he wrestled with emotions and realities I could never hope to understand, as his mind swirled with depressing possibilities and horrifying thoughts regarding the character of his God, here is what he uttered:
“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” - Job 13:15a

You see, Job had the key all along.  He knew what Shadrach, Meshach and AbedNego knew.  He knew that God is still God.  He knew that God does not torment and slay His own.

And what all of them understood was that if God chose to allow their deaths, then His will was to be trusted. And death was not to be feared.

For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. - Philippians 1:21

How different would our lives be if we lived with this mentality?  The truth is that Christ has delivered us.  Once and for all time.  In the only way that matters.

As for the rest we will say:
“But if not, let it be known: Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”



Great Deliverer, let us never forget where our focus should be.  Help us always to trust in you.... not only through the hard times, but especially through the hard times.  In Jesus' Name, Amen...

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