Читать книгу Fresh Joy - Heidi McLaughlin - Страница 13

TWO

GOD’S UPPER STORY

A Window into Heaven

“Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.”—Henri J. M. Nouwen (Meditations)

We love stories with a happy ending. How do we find resolution when a love story turns bitterly wrong? Where is our joy when heartfelt prayers for healing come with a resounding “no”? I know we’re in the middle of God’s love story, and he promises to hear all our prayers. But in our darkest hour when we feel that God has turned his face away, we feel abandoned and rejected. After all, the Bible says, “Yes, ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it!” (John 14:14 NLT).

God answers prayers in mysterious ways. We love miraculous stories of a tumour that vanished, a woman who had struggled with infertility finally giving birth, or breast cancer that didn’t return. These are the tales that become legends. But stories of unanswered prayer—not so much. And yet we need to share the stories of these unanswered prayers so we don’t feel so alone and abandoned by God.

I do love prayer. I have been a prayer advocate and warrior for over 30 years, especially after the death of my first husband, Dick. I fully believe that God is “a father to the fatherless, a defender of widows” (Ps. 68:5), and he does hear our prayers.

During my first widowhood years, God felt very near and was a tangible presence in my daily routine. I prayed for the simplest and hardest decisions: “God, where is the irrigation shut-off?” “God, show me how to prune these bushes.” “God, help me to make decisions about my dad’s medical condition.” “God, when is the right time to sell my house?” At times it felt like God was right beside me, walking me through the haze and darkness of unchartered territory. God was close, intimate, and trustworthy.

But God drove a nail into my heart when he didn’t answer my prayer for my beloved Jack’s healing. Within hours of Jack taking his last breath on the kitchen floor and then the paramedics reviving his heartbeat, news of this tragedy spread like a contagious virus. Across Canada, America, and Europe thousands of people prayed and believed for a complete recovery. Our family and friends believed for nothing less. He died five days later.

More Questions Than Answers

Throughout our marriage, Jack and I witnessed and celebrated many answers to prayers. We believed God for complete healing while going through Jack’s dismal prognosis of gall bladder cancer. I recall holding Jack’s hand while sitting in the surgeon’s office and hearing the surgeon say, “I have to remove Jack’s gall bladder and surrounding areas, including his liver. If Jack survives the surgery, he will have one to five years to live.” We were stunned with the reality of the news, but we pressed into our faith, believing and trusting God for more than five years.

Throughout the days following that depressing conversation with the surgeon, I was thick in the midst of juggling my career as a controller for two automobile dealerships. Plus I was squeezing in endless hours sitting with Jack in hospital and doctors’ waiting rooms. Noticing my distress, my colleagues at the dealership were kind enough to send us an enormous arrangement of potted plants, which included a small palm tree.

Throughout the months and years following Jack’s surgery, Jack and I watched our palm tree grow into a lush tall plant. God answered our prayers for complete healing, and a year later we rejoiced as Jack’s blood tests showed he was cancer free. Today my palm tree still sits in my dining room, and its luscious leaves are a daily reminder of how we rejoiced over answered prayer.

So why would God answer prayers for healing Jack’s cancer and then take him home to heaven through a heart attack? Jack and I were savouring the richest time in our marriage with our children, ministry, and recreation and were honouring God by putting him first in every aspect of our lives. Why would my second husband, as did my first, drop from a heart attack and leave me alone once again?

Window into Heaven

I know God doesn’t answer all my prayers with a resounding “yes.” I understand. After all, the Bible clearly warns us, “Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows” (John 16:33 TLB). I’ve learned to view prayer as a way to develop a deep companion relationship with God rather than an opportunity to always ask for more. I know prayer is not a five-step formula to get me everything I want. I clearly remember praying, “God, you know I love Jack more than life itself. We’re doing your good work here on earth and trying to obey you in all things. Jack’s worked so hard to stay strong and healthy, and he’s too young to leave me. Why would you take him now?”

Because we’re human and fallible there are times when we do let bitterness creep into our soul. But as God-seeking women, we can’t allow unanswered prayer to compel us to hit the eject button and declare “I’m out of here; I don’t trust God anymore. Prayer doesn’t work. God doesn’t care, and I will live through the pain in my own strength.”

I chose to make a deliberate choice to open the window to heaven and get a glimpse into God’s “upper story.” This upper story is God’s big picture of our personal lives, from beginning to end, while we’re walking on this earth. It’s the redemptive meta-narrative of God’s plan for our lives from a heavenly perspective. In the upper story we find out what God is up to, how he is weaving our story into his unstoppable and unchangeable divine story. God, the author of our lives, is writing a grander blueprint of our lives that will unfold in clarity when we see him face to face. For reasons you and I will never know, God has to say “no” now and then.

I agree with Philip Yancey in his book Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? as he looks at the blessing of unanswered prayer:

By answering every possible prayer, God would in effect abdicate, turning the world over to us to run. History shows how we have handled the limited power granted to us: we have fought wars, committed genocide, fouled the air and water, destroyed forests, established unjust political systems, concentrated pockets of superfluous wealth and grinding poverty. What if God gave us automatic access to supernatural power? What further havoc might we wreck?9

When I began my relationship with Jesus Christ in 1978, I wanted to sing like the people on the worship teams—the ones who ended up recording cassettes and albums and travelling around the country performing at concerts. I asked God to give me a perfect-pitch voice as inspiring and engaging as theirs. It never happened. God’s plan was to use my voice for prayer and encouragement and to bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to the nations. Thankfully God gave me a speaking and writing ministry, but over the past 25 years I’ve had to deal with the disappointment and rejection of many “nos.”

It gives me comfort and hope when I apply a heavenly perspective to stories in the Bible of the numerous people who also received a “no.”

• The prophet Jeremiah anguished and wept for Judah, for the temple, and for Jerusalem not to be destroyed. Jeremiah cried out, “My grief is beyond healing; my heart is broken. Listen to the weeping of my people; it can be heard all across the land ... I hurt with the hurt of my people. I mourn and am overcome with grief” (Jer. 8:18–19, 21 NLT). Jeremiah devoured God’s Word—it was a joy and delight to him. Jeremiah was faithful and obedient to the point of agreeing not to marry. Yet when he cried out for God to save Jerusalem, the answer was “no.”

• Elijah, the zealous prophet, was worn out and depressed after the showdown with the 450 prophets of Baal. He ran into the wilderness and sat under a solitary broom tree, praying that he might die. “‘I have had enough, Lord,’ he said. ‘Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors’” (1 Kings 19:4). Again, God’s answer was “no.”

• The apostle Paul pleaded three times for God to remove the thorn from his flesh. Not only was God’s answer “no,” but Paul was told, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9).

• Then there was Jonah, who did not want to go to Nineveh. Job, who wanted to die. Israelite armies who prayed for victory endured humiliating defeats. God answered all of them with a “no.”

Instant answers and immediate joy are expected in this present generation. Want to know how many more days until spring? Ask Siri. Want to learn how to make apple roses or to crochet? Find the right YouTube video. Want to know the distance from your house to the conference centre? Pull up Google Maps. With our present technology we feel entitled to get immediate answers for the things we need or want. But God is not our latest guru, Google, or Bible Gateway.

God is clothed in majesty and shrouded in mystery. He is far but yet so near. On the day I can create a flower or tree I will feel justified in questioning him. Until then I will subdue my soul by reflecting on these profound words: “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely” (1 Cor. 13:12 NLT).

Isn’t this wonderful news? No matter how hard we try, we can’t figure out God. Saturating ourselves in these truths compels us to let go of our questions and trust God for the day when we will understand everything.

Every intersection of crisis demands a choice. The worn-out cliché “It will either make you better or bitter” is annoying but true. Will we allow unanswered prayers to harden our hearts or use them to push deeper into God’s unfailing love, to grow wiser and experience a more profound sense of joy? Our God of the “upper story,” who orchestrates everything to fulfill our very best lives, longs for us to trust him in the good and bad things that come our way.

Trusting God through hardship doesn’t mean we suck it up and move on. There is a time for expressing honest grief and deep sorrow. David, the author of many of the psalms and a man after God’s own heart, was on the run for his life for 16 years. With honesty and pain he lamented and cried out over and over again:

• “I am exhausted from crying for help; my throat is parched. My eyes are swollen with weeping, waiting for my God to help me” (Ps. 69:3 NLT).

• “Hear my prayer, O Lord! Listen to my cries for help! Don’t ignore my tears” (Ps. 39:12 NLT).

• “I pray to you, O Lord, my rock. Do not turn a deaf ear to me. For if you are silent, I might as well give up and die” (Ps. 28:1 NLT).

David’s laments echo deep into my soul. But we cannot stop there. As we continue surveying David’s tumultuous “lower story,” the day-to-day events of his life, we get to see God’s heavenly perspective, “the upper story,” unfold. Finally, David is crowned king of Judah (2 Sam. 2:4). The “upper story” had always been for David to become king, but in the seemingly long wilderness, David had to trust God and stand strong for his daily victories.

Grow Your Joy

Sometimes unanswered prayers change our lives dramatically in ways we didn’t choose or ask for. I didn’t ask to be a widow a second time. The divorce was not in your agenda. The bankruptcy was never in the blueprint. Your child’s disability will never change. It’s hard to live with the fallout. The Bible says we are to pray and believe, and I’m sure that’s what most of you did. How do we move forward without becoming bitter? How do we gracefully move to joy?

1. Accept your lower story. As painful as it is, we have to accept our “lower story,” which is our daily struggle of joy and pain. When Jack died, I had to accept the unfair reality that I was a widow once again. This is our time to lament, cry, get angry, and allow the shock to settle in our soul. Accepting our reality and feelings is the first step to moving forward.

2. Seek goodness. While on the run for over 16 years, David, in the middle of his battles and hardships, chose to praise God and remind himself of God’s unfailing love:

• “Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning” (Ps. 30:5).

• “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him” (Ps. 28:7).

Elisabeth Elliot, who lost her husband on the mission field and faced multiple hardships, said this about our loving God: “To love God is to love His will. It is to wait quietly for life to be measured out by the One who knows us through and through. It is to be content with His timing and His wise apportionment.”10

Our natural tendency is to wallow in anger and self-pity instead of seeking goodness. We need to intentionally go to the source of joy: Jesus, the one who drank the cup of suffering of God’s wrath so that you and I can have access to joy. Before Jesus went to the cross, he said, “You have sorrow now, but I will see you again; then you will rejoice, and no one can rob you of that joy” (John 16:22 NLT). Jesus could endure this suffering because he knew that his daddy had eternal joy waiting for him in heaven. You and I also have that joy waiting for us, but because of Christ, we don’t have to wait. We can actually have it now.

3. Declare victory. Our words have the power to unfold a future filled with blessings. We always have the choice of defeat or victory. In Deuteronomy 30:19 (NLT) God gives us this choice: “Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life.” Joy emerges and grows when we choose to move forward and declare victory.

4. Seek a heavenly perspective. History’s biggest unanswered prayer unleashed the greatest miracles and victory. The night before Jesus went to the cross, he bowed his head and talked to his father with this deeply personal prayer: “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine” (Matt. 26:39 NLT). God’s answer was “no.” Jesus had to endure the suffering for you and me.

Like a lamb led to the slaughter, Jesus humbly went to the cross, and he experienced the excruciating pain of nails driven into his hands. He accepted all the sin in the world, past, present, and future, upon himself. He endured this suffering so that the curtain separating us from our heavenly Father would be torn in half, connecting us to the reservoir of heaven and enabling us to enjoy a life of freedom and joy, which includes

• Redemption of our sin

• The fruit of the Holy Spirit

• The mind of Christ

• The privilege to come fearlessly into God’s presence through prayer

• The opportunity to ask God for wisdom, which he loves to give

• The guarantee of having the Holy Spirit to guide us into God’s truth

• The undeserved blessing of being adopted as God’s children into his eternal family

• The joy of being lavished with God’s love

• The assurance that we will spend eternity in God’s glorious presence

• Unending pleasure of joy

5. Grow good fruit. While we’re still sitting here on earth with our unanswered prayers, we can only imagine what our “upper story” looks like. With all my heart I believe that one day we will clearly see the beauty and majesty of all God planned before the foundations of the earth were formed. Today I may not fully understand, but I pray along with the British author John Baillie:

Teach me, O God, to use all the circumstances of my life today to nurture the fruits of the Spirit rather than the fruits of sin.

Let me use disappointment as material for patience;

Let me use success as material for thankfulness;

Let me use anxiety as material for perseverance;

Let me use danger as material for courage;

Let me use criticism as material for learning;

Let me use praise as material for humility;

Let me use pleasures as material for self-control;

Let me use pain as material for endurance.11

So I cling to my unanswered prayer as an opportunity for God to intertwine his hope and my sorrow to unleash beauty and joy. “Not my will but yours, Lord.” Through this unwanted painful journey God has been at my side helping me endure my new reality. I experience his presence as he heals me through his gracious nature, loving family, and faithful friends. His promises of hope point me toward a place where I will be perfect and complete, needing nothing, face to face with the giver of our fresh joy.