Rescue Me

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 

----- 1 CORINTHIANS 1:3 - 4

This is a very favorite passage. It gives me an answer for suffering, for why God allows tragedy in our lives.  Yes, God could easily step into the situations of our lives and prevent the tragedies  and heartache.  But He doesn't...not always.  We need to be remember that we aren't even aware of tragedy that God has kept from us. Yet, some does enter our lives. Why? Why is God okay with our heartbreak, loneliness, rejection, abandonment, and loss?

Could it be that God is more interested in redeeming our miseries and misfortunes than in giving us a rescue, a way out?

I am reminded that this is God's nature. He does rescue, but it is His nature to redeem, to buy back, that which was taken from Him. It is in suffering that we are more likely to know our need for Him.

There is a story of a drowning man who recognized His need for God--that only God could rescue him.  "God, if you save me, everything, all that I am, is yours. I will give myself totally to you." Suddenly the man felt stronger.  Hope filled him. He paddled a little further, then promised, "God, maybe I don't have to give you everything. But I promise I will give to the church if you save me." The man felt a pull to the shore; drowning did not seem to be his only outcome.  "Maybe you don't need my money, God.  If you save me maybe I'll just come to church," he said. "Uh," he added, "when I can get there." The man felt sand under his feet. As he walked toward the shore, he declared, "I made it. I thought I was a goner, but I stayed with it. I'm just lucky I'm a strong swimmer."

God rescued the man in this story...but it made no difference in how the man lived his life.  Despite promises to give everything to God--to give money, to go to church, once the man was safely ashore--despite it all, he forgot that God had rescued him.  He never followed through on a single promise made in the dire moments when his life was on the line.

The man was saved, yet he remains adrift.  He is lost.  He is not, however, beyond the reach of the Father.  God will save him, but salvation will accompany pain and suffering because this is what is redeemed.  The struggle, anguish, the heartache are bought by God because once He owns them, He can make them new...and good.  Only until we experience tragedy will we know our need for God.  Being rescued won't clarify the need. Being redeemed will validate it.

But even after redeeming the tragedy, God isn't done with us.  He then blesses us with others who need our comfort.  Because of the misery we've suffered, because of our trust that God will redeem it and make something new, God will place people in our lives who need the comfort of our experience.  Our suffering will be used to help someone else get through their own time of suffering.  If God stepped in to rescue, someone might miss the blessing of the comfort we are able to provide.  It is only in this that we can give thanks for our heartbreak.

Covered with Love

15 What then?  Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. ----- Romans 6:15 - 18

Philip Yancey calls it grace abuse: taking God's forgiving grace for granted, and forging ahead according to my own plans and desires.  Grace abuse is continuing to live as a slave to sin, "trusting" God's grace to bail me out. This is what cheapens grace. And it's effects are damaging to the Kingdom of God.

God's grace does indeed cover me. He has lavished me with forgiveness. In this same letter to the church in Rome, Paul reminds me that there is nothing in this world or in the spiritual realm that will ever come between me and God's grace.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord -----Romans 8:38 - 39

This is such an awesome promise to take hold of, to put my trust in: there will never be a distance, a gap...a breath...between me and God's love.  Nothing will come between me and His love! That's a promise on which to build my faith. It surrounds me.  NO, it covers me.  I belong to Him, and He will never abandon me.  Because of that, don't I owe Him everything? Because I will always have the support of the One, True God, the Almighty and Eternal, should I not surrender all that I have, all that I am, to Him? Is there even such a thing as "my" will when considering all that I have in Christ Jesus?

Yes, there is. I still have the ability to choose to go my own way--to sin--or to choose obedience. This great God has not covered me with an encumbering, robotic conformity. Instead He has entrusted to me willful obedience. I have the ability to choose His ways. And when I surrender my self-centered desires and ambitions--when I choose to obey the ways of God--I choose to love Him. Obeying God is my greatest act of love. It means I trust His outcomes. I hold His promises with deepest faith.  The grace of God is with me through whatever I encounter. And I honor that grace when I choose to obey. That is slavery I can accept.

Nighttime Wrestling

24 And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. 25 When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26 Then he said, “Let me go, for

the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”  27 And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.”  28 Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.

 

Before Jacob met up with his brother, a reunion coming after a 20-year separation, following a painful and life-threatening parting...before the brothers met up again, Jacob needed some time for reflection and repentance. He needed to take stock of his life and make some decisions before he re-entered his homeland...the land that had been entrusted to him. Jacob needed to face who He was and who God was in his life.

This account reminds us that God is with us in our times of reflection and self-disclosure. In fact, it is God who draws us to such moments. Jacob knew it was time to return home. He knew it was time to face his estranged family. God was nudging these decisions, but He wouldn't let Jacob go until Jacob acknowledged the deceptions he had inflicted on his family.

Sometimes we know the right (the righteous) thing to do, but we resist.

• It may mean giving up something we have "earned," something we treasure. Jacob was ready to turn over flocks and herds in order to appease his brother.
• It may mean admitting we were wrong. Jacob bowed seven times before approaching his brother, humbling himself, acknowledging an unworthiness before Esau.
• It may mean giving our life. Jacob was ready to meet his brother, remembering Esau's anger against him, not knowing whether 20 years apart had soothed the murderous rage. Jacob was ready to meet his brother Esau, to settle the past between them...even if that meeting cost him his life.

But during the dark and lonely night, Jacob gained something new. In the struggle of the night, Jacob faced up to the person he really was. Jacob struggled against the deceiver he had been and the peacemaker he wanted to be. This time of wrestling and struggle with God was a time of confession and repentance. It was a time before God when Jacob acknowledged the deeds of his life and their consequences. He squared off against God...and came away changed. Jacob left that battle with a permanent limp...and a new identity. No longer was he Jacob the Deceiver. Now he was Israel, who had wrestled with God (and mankind)...and overcome. He had not defeated God in the struggle--he had lived through it. He could now face his brother, even with the possibility of death, because he had been through a greater struggle. 

 

God calls us to the dark, lonely times when we must face who we really are...those lonely, sleepless nights that sap our strength and hope. If we give in and acknowledge our deeds, we find God's mercy and forgiveness. We walk away from the encounter changed. If we continue in the battle, God will intervene with something that causes us to let up. Will His intervention bring us to the moment He longs for...the moment of confession and repentance? That remains in our will, but the battle will go on. 

 

I've had my battles. Years of insomnia were sleepless nights of wrestling with what I had done in my life. There was no peace. God called me to do the right (the righteous) thing, but in my pride, I could not confess my sin. The insomnia continued. It continued after my confession until I could accept Jesus' forgiveness. It continued after knowing I'd been forgiven. I suffered with the wrestling in literal insomnia until I could forgive myself. And once Jesus showed me how that could happen, I've had years of nighttime peace.  

 

It was difficult to accept who I really was--a sinner. It's so much easier to deny sinfulness, or re-write what sin is. But then come the sleepless nights when the unconscious mind tries to reconcile the voice of the conscious. Accepting sin as God defines it leads to confession, which leads to repentance...the healing of deep wounds begins. It begins, and continues today. The road to healing is a road of many miles and I have not completed the journey. But thanks be to God! I don't walk them alone. Jesus, my shepherd, walks them with me.