A Letter from my heart to yours:
In the chapter about what to do with our own guilt I talked about being forgiven and being changed, but sometimes I look at my past failures or my present problems and I’m not sure God is really there. There have been other times when I believed He was there, but I doubted that He really cared about me.
When I was young, I think I sort of borrowed my grandpa’s faith. Over many years of learning that God keeps His word, he trusted God. So, I believed in the God of my grandpa.
I know that you will face many difficult problems in your life, and I wanted to share with you what has helped me when I felt like God wasn’t listening.
I love you. If you need to “borrow” my faith for a while, it’s okay. I know that the more you get to really know God and His Word, the more you will know He loves you. Then, day by day, difficulty by difficulty, your faith will also grow.
Thanks for reading.
Bill
WHERE IS GOD WHEN IT HURTS?
I best understand myself and the Lord when I turn my feelings and situation into a story:
There he sits, outside the ICU for hurting families. His family looks more like a train wreck than a family. He watches and waits and prays. His crisis didn’t happen overnight. At first he denied his home was in trouble—tried to ignore the growing symptoms. He tried hard to fix the problems. He looked for help in friends, books, seminars, and church, and he talked to anyone who would listen to him. Still he failed over and over again. It’s almost like a cloud of doom moved over his life and now he sits in the waiting room…waiting for someone, anyone, to help!
How are the pressures in your life?
Have you stopped praying that your marriage will be fantastic, and that your children will be healthy, wealthy, and wise and become great spiritual leaders? Are you now just praying that your marriage will survive or that your children will merely stay alive, keep from getting pregnant, stay out of jail, and stay off (or get off) drugs? Are you living in fear that your loved ones are unsaved and that any day an accident could take their lives … eternally? Have the problems in your family already destroyed your marriage or are you afraid your marriage won’t survive the next crisis?
Picture yourself in the waiting room for broken families. You’re pacing the floors of a hospital waiting room while one of your loved ones undergoes life-threatening surgery. As you wait, minutes tick into hours, hours into days, and days into years and you are still waiting. Tick, tick, tick; the painful minutes slip by.
In the loneliness of the waiting room, you’ve tried ignoring the crisis and tried distracting yourself with anything that will take your mind from the pain of waiting. You’ve listed the things you should be doing, but you’ve given up trying to do them because you can’t keep your mind on other things anyway. You have no words to speak. Your faith needs life support. While you wait, Satan, the accuser of your soul, reminds you of all your past failures, missed opportunities, and words you should (or shouldn’t) have spoken. The regrets begin to pile up and you slump in a chair, slipping into despair, self-condemnation, and hopelessness. You withdraw into yourself. Even though there are others you care about in the waiting room, you are so absorbed in your own feelings you cannot see their needs. You know your silence deepens their wounds, but you are weak. Your friends try to say the right words, but their efforts to love you or help you only make you feel more alone in your regret.
Your loved one lies silently in the ICU. Although it pains you to stand by his side, you wait. You want him to wake up, hug you, say, “I love you,” and come home. Your only relief is crying out to God.
“WHERE IS GOD WHEN I NEED HIM?”
I believe God is the all-powerful creator of everything. He is eternal, immortal, all knowing, ever-present. But in the loneliness of my crisis waiting room, believing hasn’t been enough. If my belief doesn’t turn to trust, I’m in trouble!
During those desperate times I asked God for help and begged Him to answer my prayers. I’ve tried bargaining with Him by making promises to Him. I’ve thought, “If He really loved me, He would come to my rescue!” I’ve confessed my sin and even made up sins I might have committed to make up for ones I’ve forgotten. I’ve hoped and then lost hope, waiting for God to show up. I kept calling His Name, but it seemed like He wouldn’t answer.
WHAT I DESPERATELY NEEDED TO LEARN ABOUT GOD
What I eventually came to understand is that our God, our Heavenly Father, is in the waiting room with us. He’s waiting too. As God, He could intervene in our prodigals’ lives. He could change their circumstances and protect them from emotional and spiritual train wrecks. He could have kept them from wrong choices and wrong relationships. But because He gave them free will to choose to love Him in return, He’s in the waiting room also. Like a Father, He waits. He never forces or imposes. He waits. He waits for them just like He waits for all persons in all places, and if they rejected Him, He cries, “How often I would have gathered you like a mother hen gathers her chicks, but you would not” (Matthew 23:37 and Luke 13:34).
Story after story, the Bible demonstrates that God, creator, immortal, ever present and all powerful, is acting just like a father in the waiting room outside the ICU. In my crisis I panic, in the middle of the crisis, God offers and waits, offers and waits, offers and waits. We may feel like He’s not doing anything, but He is. He’s just not doing what we want when we want it. He’s being God, being consistent, offering and waiting … and God knows sometimes it’s got to get worse before our prodigal will listen.
Reflecting back, I see that my wife Bobbi and I moved through three stages as we waited in the ICU for hurting families. We finally reached a better understanding of how God loves His children and why He waits.
STAGE ONE– LOVING AND WANTING ONLY WHAT IS BEST FOR YOUR CHILDREN
We wanted the best for our children: health, wealth, and happiness. We wanted our children to know and love God, be like Him, and be protected from this world. We wanted them to be productive, to find someone to love them, and then go to heaven when they die. We wanted God’s blessing on our family.
Do our hopes for our family sound familiar? God gave Adam and Eve the beautiful Garden of Eden. It was a place without weeds, conflict, or disease. God gave him a partner and helper in Eve. He intimately gave of Himself in His relationship with Adam and Eve. He gave them all of the above and still they rebelled.
STAGE TWO- LOVING AND BEING WILLING TO PERSONALLY SUFFER SO YOUR CHILDREN CAN BE SAVED
When those we love turn from God’s best, we became willing to suffer for them so they could find forgiveness and eternal life. We grieved that they had turned from God’s best and we became willing to suffer, pay the price for their failure, even die for them, if it meant they could be saved.
Does our desire to rescue our children sound familiar? God did this for each of us. God, the Son, left heaven and took upon Himself the likeness of men and was willing to suffer to meet his children’s greatest needs: forgiveness and eternal salvation. He was willing to come live with us, to show us how to live and love. He was willing to die on a cross, taking the punishment of the guilty so the guilty could be forgiven. He chose to lose so we could gain! He offered Himself as a living sacrifice for all who would accept Him. He offered and waited. He still offers and waits.
STAGE THREE– LOVING AND BEING WILLING TO HAVE YOUR CHILDREN SUFFER SO THEY CAN BE SAVED
There came a point when we realized that we were not only willing to suffer so our children could be saved, we were willing for them to suffer if it meant they would turn to God. I remember when Bobbi and I prayed, “Lord, whatever it takes.” We finally understood that it might be necessary for our loved ones to suffer the loss of health, wealth, happiness, or even long life, in order for them to be saved. We wanted whatever it took to bring them back to God. We tried to stop asking God for what WE thought was best and asked Him to help us TRUST Him to know what is best. We are learning to trust God to use crisis to bring them to Christ or bring them to maturity.
We’ve found that sometimes God answers prayers by taking away pressures, but sometimes He doesn’t. Sometimes He chooses to let us grow through crisis so we will learn to trust Him. We’re learning that God often uses crisis to discipline His children because we have to face the consequences of our choices. God sometimes allows us to suffer so others can be saved. He even allows entire cultures and nations to collapse so the rest of the world will be warned and turn to the Lord.
IT SURE IS CONFUSING!
It’s hard: wanting only good for those we love, being willing to suffer so those we love can be saved, and finally praying, “Whatever it takes Lord!”
Maybe you’re thinking, “Okay, looking at these three stages I think I understand, but I still want to protect those I love from pain!” I know that in my family experience, I’ve often been confused and I have given up hope. Sometimes I don’t see His action in my life or in response to my prayers, and I won’t until I get to heaven.
In crisis, I find my greatest comfort in knowing that God is right there with me in my ICU waiting room. What He chooses to do will always be right. I will understand it when I get to heaven, or it won’t matter to me then…but, God IS God and I TRUST HIM!
2 Corinthians 1:8-9. (NLV) 8) “I think you ought to know, dear friends, about the trouble we went through in the providence of Asia. We were crushed and completely overwhelmed, and we thought we would never live through it. 9) In fact, we expected to die. But as a result, we learned not to rely on ourselves, but on God who can raise the dead.”
Finally, in the middle of my confusion and doubt, when I don’t understand, I can believe. But even if I can’t believe, I can trust. But even when I can’t understand, believe, or trust, God will still be God. He is not limited by my understanding or trust. He will still be the God who loves and offers, who acts like a father waiting with me in the ICU waiting room for wounded families. He waited for me. He waited for you, He is waiting for yours.
Trying to trust Him even when I don’t understand,
Bill