Mikki's Blog - Living in the Grace and Love of God » God’s Help

What Can God Do About Our Pain and Disappointment?

Mikki — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 01:30:59 +0000

Most of us are more than qualified to write a good country song or two. You know, something like,

“My heart is in more pieces than your picture on my floor…” or “This bottle is as empty as my heart.”

Seriously, (and I will sell the rights to those song titles if any of you want to cash in on my genius), pain and disappointment are a part of all our lives.

How can we stay grounded when life is hard, disappointments are many, and we find ourselves helplessly watching our dreams die? Can God do anything about our pain and disappointment?

As I pondered this last week, I thought of how the early disciples must have felt after Jesus was crucified. They had opened their hearts and dared to dream the dream of all dreams! They had given up their preconceived notions, traditional beliefs, and so much more to follow Christ. Their days had been full of miracles and mysteries, excitement and fulfillment.

Then, seemingly suddenly, everything was turned upside down, and they end up with a crucified Christ and a lot of confusion. But that’s not the end of their emotional roller coaster. With Christ’s resurrection came a flood of hope, mixed with a whole wagon load of questions, and much to be settled in each one of their hearts and relationally between them all.

I am quite sure there was a lot of restoration that needed to happen between believers. Much had been said and done in those last days and I imagine that there were quite a few offenses that needed to be dealt with.

Can you just imagine the swirl of gossip, accusation, and slander that surrounded the events of Christ’s last days and crucifixion? And then there was the question of the resurrection. Who believed and who doubted?

We can look at the teaching and prayers of Jesus in John 14-17 and see what Jesus knew they would have to deal with:

Worry, doubt, unbelief, feelings of abandonment, the need to change –again – in order to accept the ministry of the Holy Spirit, fear, the predicted “pruning”, the challenge to love, how to deal with the hatred of the world, religious persecution – from the established religious leaders, sorrow, being separated from Jesus, tribulation, the need for unity and sanctification, and the need to forgive, just to name a few!

That’s what we might call “a tall order!”

And it was in fact, an impossible order, without the ministry of the Holy Spirit who came and filled the believers. Yes, the 120 waited and prayed, and allowed God to deal with their hearts, but I promise you, they were still an imperfect people, but they served a perfect God who had, in reality, already trumped all that they enemy had accomplished.

Certainly, their problems didn’t magically disappear, but the Holy Spirit did bring the empowerment they needed to love one another.

The followers of Jesus had faced the challenges of a very dark season. They had failed many of the tests of the season. But yet God still chose to breathe new life into their hearts and fill them with His Holy Spirit and use them to birth His church.

And we find this truth, even in what appears to be total darkness to us, God is still on His holy throne. He still has a plan. He still has all the power we need. He still longs to fill us with His Spirit. He still wants to use us even when we blow it.

What can God do about pain and disappointment? With honest, repentant hearts, He can do more than we can ask or think. And that realization leads us all to the foot of the cross in love and thankfulness, just as the writer of Hebrews says “to find mercy and grace to help in our time of need.”

8 Important Things to Know During Hard Times

Mikki — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 13:53:03 +0000

We all live in a world cursed because of sin. Part of the effect of that curse is hard times, difficulty, pain, and sorrow. I so wish I could tell you that Christians don’t have to go through any difficulties, but the Word of God contains story after story of believers in difficult times. Paul and Peter in prison, Daniel in the Lion’s Den, Stephen being stoned, believers being persecuted, the very life of Jesus, and I could go on and on. And this list applies to all storms whether we caused them, Satan sent them, or God designed them. In a moment, I am going to share my list of eight things you should know about hard times but before I do that I need to give you some foundation.

Unfortunately some Christians’ theology denies the place of pain and suffering in the Christian life. This is a tragedy because such a theology shames a believer when they try to make sense of their trials and suggests that a good Christian, a faith-filled Christian, wouldn’t be subject to such difficulties. It is also unfortunate because it shames or rejects one of the primary paths to knowing God and becoming useful to Him and others.

The reality of living in a sin-cursed world has to be reconciled to the heart of God. God never intended us to live under the curse of sin and in the end all will be restored to us as it was in the Garden of Eden. And we are in a process of restoration. However an honest Christian faith which represents an honest Christian God must deal with the truth about pain and suffering in order to throw the rope of faith to struggling believers in the midst of difficulty.

My life has not been exempt from pain and suffering although I am certain mine has been far less than many others’. Yet from my personal walk I can offer a few thoughts which can help you make it through hard times and become better. As I begin this list, I am going to assume that you know prayer is important. I am going to assume that you know the Word is important. I am going to assume that you know communion with God is important. My intention is to focus on some of the other things that I have learned as a result of my trials.

1. God is giving you an opportunity to know more of His heart. He is working to reveal a greater knowledge of Himself to you. He wants to use this difficulty to deepen your relationship. He is teaching you that He is faithful. We really can’t understand what God’s faithfulness is until we feel abandoned and eventually, and I said eventually, wind up in the place where we can see His handiwork. When I walked through my darkest storm 2 years ago, I felt abandoned by so many and by God most of all. God allowed it and He used it.

2. God is giving you an opportunity to know more of your own heart. God knows your heart better than you do. He is working to teach you more about your own heart. This is a priceless gift from His hand. Contrary to what you might think at first, I am not talking about how dark your heart is. I am talking about how God uses every storm to reveal your woundedness, your unwholeness, which is hindering your relationship with Him and others. For example, my storm brought up every core issue in my life. The fear of abandonment. Rejection. And on and on, but here’s the point. God is getting at something – or many things – inside you. When you know your heart better, you can recognize the lies of the enemy when they come against you again.

3. God wants to use your storm to make you better. Your faith will be tested and tried and PURIFIED. There is nothing too dark, too black, too hopeless, too hard, that God cannot use it for your glory. As 2 Cor. 4:17 says, our afflictions are working something greater in us that we can know. The end result will be glorious for us if we embrace what God wants to do in our hearts.

4. You will fail God during the storm. I am not trying to discourage you or speak a curse over you, but it the nature of a storm distorts your vision. Everything becomes dark and hopeless. You lose your footing. You grope in the darkness. God offers mercy to us all. He “remembers that we are made from dust.”

5. The storm has the potential to destroy you. Storms are powerful, destructive forces. As during all our life experiences, we have the power to chose each day whether to trust ourselves or to trust God. Do we rely on our own strengths to fix this thing? Perhaps you default to manipulation or control. Whatever or however you react in the storm, it really comes down to this: Will I trust myself or will I trust God? We often choose to trust ourselves even though our mouths are saying we trust God. Our actions are screaming, “I am going to fix this!”

6. Freedom can be found in the suffering. Just as our ultimate freedom was found in the suffering of Christ on the cross, our emotional, mental freedom can be found in our suffering. As we find ourselves vulnerable, we can learn to deny ourselves and find freedom in and through the suffering. Again, the ways of God often make no sense to us in our humanity.

7. Your suffering can provide a way for you to be like Christ and provide healing for others. As Henri Nouwen teaches, you can choose to make your wounds available to others as a source of healing just as Christ was our wounded Healer.

8. In God’s reign, “everything belongs,” even the broken and poor parts (Richard Rohr). Nothing catches God off guard. He really does work everything together for our good.

So if you find yourself in a storm, in hard times, my testimony to you is that you hold something powerful in your hands. It is an opportunity to be destroyed or it is an opportunity to be transformed. The darkness will pass eventually, the clouds will clear, the wind will cease, and the end result for you individually can be that you know more of God’s heart, that you have learned to trust, and that He has healed your heart in ways that you didn’t even know you needed before. That is one of the beautiful things about serving a God who is mysterious, powerful, and all-knowing.

Perhaps you might pause and ask Him to help you cooperate with His plans in your life, submitting your heart and will to His anew. Is it hard? Yes. Is it worth it? Unequivocally.

By His Grace

Mikki — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:37:09 +0000

I woke up this morning with a song in my heart and a dance in my feet. I love it when a day begins – and ends – that way. I slept great last night. I finished two grad classes yesterday and am sliding in to finish with just one more class which begins today. My husband fixed my computer, which I am quite sure had been possessed by some evil spirit. The sun is shining; the birds are singing with me on this springtime morning. My diet is working and the scales are going down, down, down. My husband and I are experiencing a new honeymoon of sorts after 32 years. My kids are doing well. I am expecting my first grandchild. I have friends who love me. My church is filled with amazing people. I have an appointment with my hair stylist who will effectively hide all my gray today and make my hair look like the sun kissed it. Someone is looking at my house for the second time in a week and I pray they make an offer so we can downsize.

Does life get any better than this? It is so easy to thank God during the good days, but what can we do when the days are not so good?

I assure you I know what those days are like too. Two years ago, my marriage was in shambles, my kids’ hearts were broken; I was in a storm of the worst kind. I had lost my job. My ministry seemed to be over. I was caught in the middle of a controversy which seemed to be of mammoth proportions. I lost friends, ended up leaving my church. I spiraled into a deep depression and considered suicide. So you might ask (for those of you who don’t know me personally), “How did you get from that point to where you are today?” And I do have some suggestions for those of you who are hurting right now, but my simple answer which I give with an humble heart is, “By His grace.”

Oh, I know that these thought don’t give you a formula or even a pattern to get out of your pit, but for me, it is the simple truth. It’s by His grace.

I came to the absolute end of myself. All my defense mechanisms no longer worked. My self-reliance failed because what I had perceived to be my true self found itself empty. In my brokenness, I could no longer do anything for God or others. Anything that even smelled of a formula for succeeding or knowing God or making life work, lay at my feet alongside my dreams in a million shattered pieces.

Although I am not advocating this, I wound up in a place where I didn’t have the strength to read my Bible or listen to worship music. I felt abandoned by God and many others in my life. All my strength was gone. And God begin to weave the brokenness into something new. Looking back, it was as if He unraveled all the threads of the tapestry of my life and began to make me anew.

The process hurt. I hurt. I wish I could say it didn’t and give you a false sense of “Everything will be alright soon.” But I don’t want to give you an untrue picture of what it means when a life is redeemed. For now, I am not speaking of my salvation in relationship to my redemption. I am speaking of how God redeems one’s life from unhealthy patterns, wrong mindsets, and faulty understandings of who He is.

How do you cooperate with God when you find yourself in such difficult places? I offer some humble thoughts with a quiet caring understanding that many of you are in painful places. I pray they don’t sound like a “fix” or a “formula”, but truths learned during one pilgrim’s journey.

1. 1. Know that God will carry you will you have no strength, and in fact, it is during such times that He can do His greatest work of revealing His heart to you. “In your weakness, He is shown strong.”

2. 2. Rest in the knowledge that He will not abandon you no matter what your feelings or circumstances say. “I will never leave you or forsake you.”

3. 3. Understand that the body of Christ, the family of God, was designed to walk with each other and carry each other’s burdens.

4. 4. Faith is about trusting Him, not yourself, and a mustard seed is quite small.

5. 5. Lean on him, relying more and more on Him, and less and less on yourself.

6. 6. Realize that the One who began His work in you has promised to complete it.

7. 7. Know that God has set a boundary over which the enemy cannot cross. That line may not be where you think it should be, but it is there.

8. 8. He is truly able to make something good out of brokenness.

9. 9. It’s all by His grace.

May the following Scriptures from Psalms bless and strengthen you.

By His grace,

Mikki

Blessed are all who put their trust in Him.

I cried to the Lord and He heard me.

I lay down and slept and awoke because the Lord sustained me.

The Lord will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble. Those who know Your name will put their trust in You; For You, Lord, have not forsaken those who seek You.

Uphold my steps in Your paths, so my footsteps may not slip.

He sent from above, He took me; He drew me out of many waters. He delivered me from my strong enemy, from those who hated me. For they were too strong for me…The Lord was my support. He brought me out into a broad place; He delivered me because He delighted in me.

You enlarged my path under me, so my feet didn’t slip.

The Lord is my shepherd…He restores my soul.

In times of trouble, He will hide me in His pavilion; In the secret place of His tabernacle he shall hide me; he shall set me high upon a rock.

Even when my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will take care of me.

The steps of a good man or woman are ordered by the Lord…though they fall, they shall not be utterly cast down; for the Lord upholds them with His hand.

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and repentant heart, O God, you will not despise.

I will cry to You when my heart is overwhelmed; lead me to the rock that is higher than I am.

God puts the lonely in families.

God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

You, Lord, are good and ready to forgive, abundant in mercy to all those who call on You.

You, O Lord, are a God full of compassion, and gracious, patient and abundant in mercy and truth.

They cried to the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them out of their distresses.