Even the Darkness is Light to Him

     Light. I love the way it bounces in a room bringing once dull colors and shapes to life. How it radiates through a forest illuminating the path. And when it sparkles off ocean waves and together with the breeze makes me feel all warm inside. It chases away the darkness, reminding me of the presence of God and filling me with a sense of hope.

     This has been the second full week the girls have been gone. Together we boarded a small plane, crossing the ocean to their future home for the next nine months…a Christian school with hundreds of other American kids. I boarded a similar small plane four days later and returned to Korea, feeling like I’d not only left my girls in another country but part of myself.
     No matter how many blinds I pull and how brightly the sun shines through the windows there’s a certain darkness that remains. It’s loneliness, a sense of loss and longing for their presence that even the sunshine in all its splendor can’t chase away. And I’ve succumbed to it in many ways, allowing myself to wallow in self pity as I sit solemnly on the couch or wander into their rooms trying to picture them here again. 

     In the midst of this, I’ve crossed paths with a myriad of others going through much darker times than I am right now. As I listen to their stories and hear about how disappointment has stolen their dreams and robbed them of joy, I’m tempted to throw my hands up in despair. Surely the darkness has overtaken us! Surely there is no real hope of recovery from its murky presence! And I cry out, “Why God? Why do you allow us to go through such difficulties when you could stop them with one word?”

     The other night Mark and I were sitting at the table eating dinner when I brought up my frustration over God’s sovereignty. His simple words to me were, “God is good.” And throughout our conversation, he refused to move from the certain fact that regardless of what I or anyone else experienced whether painful or life threatening….God is good. I left the conversation feeling angry yet relieved. Angry that his goodness was such a mystery to me, but relieved that I married someone who won’t allow anything to obscure or taint God’s character.

     And I began wondering….what if God healed every sickness and disease?  What if He fixed every bad situation we prayed about? Obviously the result would be that none of us would have any problems, at least no long-lasting ones. What if the moment we cried out to him for help, he removed the problem or the trial and we were immediately transferred back to a state of peaceful, carefree existence? I’m wondering what we’d actually learn and how we’d ever grow. Also, I’m wondering how much we’d need him beyond the initial cry for help.

     God could sit down with each of us and explain why we’re going through what we’re going through. And he could give us a detailed accounting of how he intends to work it for good in our lives and the lives of others. He could lay it all out and show us the relevance of all our suffering. But he doesn’t. And we wonder why. If we could just know why, then maybe we could get through it, maybe it wouldn’t hurt so badly.

     J.I. Packer is one of my favorite theologians. In his book, Knowing God, he says that we often feel slighted when God doesn’t give us an insider’s glance into his providence, especially since our relationship as his children puts us in a special place of honor with him. However, because of the vastness of his wisdom, and the interconnecting nature of all the details of existence his plans are so far beyond our comprehension that our understanding of them, even if explained, is impossible. Instead, we have to trust in his perfect goodness and love toward us as well as his commitment to working all things, good and bad, together for our good and his glory.

     Satan would have us forget this goodness. He isolates the darkness and presents it to us in parcels of despair, trying to convince us that there is no Light…..that He’s been snuffed out….that Jesus isn’t at work in this or that particular situation. But the Light of the world is shining and will continue to shine. His can't be snuffed out and his power is such that no one and nothing can contain it. We may sit for a season in a dark corner of the room, devoid of all natural light, but that doesn’t change the fact that the sunshine is still bursting forth with great power illuminating everything in its path with unceasing brightness.

     Stepping out into the sunshine of God’s Word we’re able to once again see the truth that God is indeed the Father of Light. He clothes himself in light and there's no element of darkness (not one single speck of it) in him at all.  Jesus promised that, “He that follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”  No matter how great the darkness, it can’t hide us from God or separate us from his love. 

"Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.  If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.  If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,”even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day,for darkness is as light to you." Psalm 139:7-12

Following Christ Even When it Hurts

God has me here, planted right where I am, for reasons I may never understand. He’s in charge of my life, my future, my dreams – my everything. When I surrendered to His calling years ago, part of that yielding was saying to Him, “I’ll go wherever you want me to go and do what you want me to do, even if it means walking down paths that are hard and uncomfortable.”

I remember sitting on my bed for hours contemplating the cost of following Christ and what it meant for me – leaving behind a world wrapped around my fleshly desires and interwoven with sin patterns that had nearly destroyed me. But in spite of the destructive nature of my sin, I feared letting it go and embracing something new.
A whole year passed as I wrestled with these thoughts. And no matter how hard I tried to water down the Gospel message, He continued to remind me daily that following him required that I not only count the cost but that I daily be willing to take up my cross. Because I saw how much pain and suffering it brought to his life and to the lives of the disciples, fear often gripped me holding me back. How could I endure such difficulty if, in fact, it came my way? Was He worth it?

I still recall vividly that Easter morning in 1988 when I woke up knowing  it was time – time to let go of the fears and throw myself into the arms of the one who I was certain beyond a shadow of a doubt loved me. I held out my hands and offered up the sacrifice of my life, acknowledging that apart from his redemption I was hopelessly lost and in bondage to sin. I told him that I trusted his death and resurrection to save me from this misery and to redeem my life from the pit. For quite some time before this moment I had the intellectual understanding that Jesus was the only Son of God, perfect in every way, and that his death and resurrection paid the price for my sins. But until that moment, I’d refused to transfer my trust to Him.

There are days when I forget what I promised him that Easter morning, when the skies are blue, circumstances pleasant, and all seems right with my world. Then there are times like today, when I find myself living in a place, a situation that’s completely out of my comfort zone. When in my flesh I would choose something alltogether different. And that’s when I remember the cross and hear Jesus asking, “Will you follow me?" He never said it would be easy, or fun for that matter. He simply promised that He’d go before me and be with me through it all. And that His grace is sufficient; His power perfected in my weakness.

The world wants me to forget the cross, to deny the struggle and live for myself. But I know there's no way to do both. Either I’m living for Christ and following Him or I’m living for the world. I choose Christ even when it hurts.
"Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me." Luke 9:23

Prayers that Move Mountains

I encounter seasons when prayer comes as naturally as breathing -- when I find myself desiring to talk with God about everything. And then there are times, many of them, when praying becomes so difficult I struggle to find even rote words to say.  Though prayer is simply communication with God,  God uses our prayers to accomplish his purposes on earth.  He doesn’t need them, and our prayers don’t change his decretive will, but he works through them to transform lives and circumstances.

Jesus taught that if we ask anything in his name, according to God’s will, he’ll do it. Using the analogy of casting a mountain into the sea he made his point -- that God is able and willing to accomplish the seemingly impossible through prayers of faith, prayed according to the will of God. When the disciples were praying in the upper room, Peter’s chains were loosed and the prison doors opened. Prayers uttered by Jesus and the apostles brought healing, deliverance and salvation. 

As I walk through the Gospels, following Jesus on an exciting journey from one miracle to another, I watch in awe from a distance as he not only lived out the Word, but as the Word transformed the world and the people in it. And the miraculous didn't end with his death and resurrection. In fact, I put on  walking shoes to journey with Paul and the apostles through Acts and find that I need running shoes instead. Keeping up with their travels, and the miracles they performed as well as the difficulties they encountered along the way is like moving from one climatic event to another with little rest.

Fast forward a couple of thousand years to my own life. Though I  believe that signs and wonders, in the dramatic way they were performed in the NT, have ceased. I don't believe that God has ceased being God! He still has the power to move mountains. And though I may not witness miraculous healings on a daily basis, I see and experience God’s power at work in the world. The impossible becomes possible. A declared atheist embraces Christ. Healing comes to a marriage once deemed hopeless. A loved one receives news that he's cancer free. Friends step out in faith to adopt an orphan. Longtime enemies move toward reconciliation. God amazingly provides for our needs when there’s no logical solution in sight – we’re suddenly offered the “right” job, a raise, and new opportunities. We pray for our church, our communities, our world and we see the miraculous as people come to know Christ, neighbors work together to bring order after a devastating storm, world leaders make a wise decision.

Behind all these actions, people are praying in Jesus' name. We cry out for God to intervene and then often fail to notice when change occurs. Not because we’re indifferent, but because change happens so gradually and in such a different way than we’d imagined that it’s almost unrecognizable. Unless we’re carefully watching each day, we miss the miracle God unleashes through our prayers.  But to the watchful eye, it's like a beautiful sunset unfolding in our sight.

Recently a close friend sent me a video of time lapse photography of nature. The pictures, taken every few minutes over the course of many days, didn’t reveal impressive changes on their own. Yet when melded together in a video they showed an amazing transformation. The fog, which rolled in slowly throughout the day, came to resemble a raging sea when shown in fast forward. The sun, seemingly immoble, danced across the sky.

            I wonder what we’d see if we zeroed in on a specific part of our lives that we’d prayed long and hard about, then placed the scenes together in time lapse motion so that five years was reduced to five minutes or an hour. I think we’d be surprised at the incredible changes.

God is at work in our lives and through our prayers. We can be absolutely certain of his love for us and his ability to move any mountain he chooses. So by faith we persevere in prayer, refusing to focus on the seemingly unchanging circumstances but on the God who is able to change all things. At the right moment, sometimes when we least expect it, he breaks through with the miraculous. Then when we look back, gathering snapshots from the past, we'll  see with clarity the movement, the action, the transformation that was slowly taking place all along.

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,  to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.” Eph. 3:20-21