Miracle or Misunderstanding?

    I was an exhausted mess that morning. I had been up every two hours, all night long, with an almost two week old that was losing too much weight. The doctors had said to feed her every two hours, and if she hadn’t gained any weight within a few days, she would be put in the hospital on a feeding tube. My thoughts were on my new daughter when my husband came in the room at eight am.

     “I have to take our son to the hospital,” he said, “the doctors think he has leukemia.”          

     Our sixteen month old son had been running a fever almost since our daughter was born. He had had some blood work done, and the results had come in. I thought they couldn’t be right. He was a perfectly normal little boy, other than the fever. He was playing the same, eating the same, and sleeping the same. There was no sign of an illness other than his fever, so they must be wrong.

     I was torn. I wanted to go to the hospital with my husband and son, but I couldn’t take a two week old that was already having problems to a hospital, so I had to stay home. We made the necessary calls to family to ask for prayer and then I waited for news. I called my sister and brother and they came over. Did I mention it was the Friday before Christmas?

     My husband called as often as he could with updates. They didn’t just think he had leukemia. Based on his blood work, the leukemia was very advanced and it wasn’t one of the types of leukemia that responded well to treatment. The oncologists and nurses were not hopeful.

     Back at home, we kept up the prayers. There were people all over the state of Michigan praying for our little boy, thanks to family, friends, and prayer chains. The doctors had been running tests on our boy and they were about to take him in for a bone marrow biopsy when a nurse came running in the room.

     “Wait a minute,” she said, “there has been a misunderstanding. We double checked the original test results and your son doesn’t have leukemia. He just had a really bad virus that wiped out his immune system.”

     And just like that, the nightmare was over. My son and husband stayed in the hospital over night and came home the next day. My husband shared with me his prayers while he was at the hospital. He told God he could have our son’s life, if God would just let us keep him here on earth so we could provide for his physical needs.

     Was this a miracle or a misunderstanding? Only God knows for sure, but I will tell you one thing. I have a handsome four and a half year old that loves the Lord in such a way that God himself must have reached down that day and touched his soul.

And the Greatest of these is Love

“This is my command: Love each other.” –John 15:17

     Think back to a time when your heart was overwhelmed with love for someone else. Maybe it was while you were watching your newborn baby sleep or staring into the eyes of your spouse on your wedding day.  Whatever the occasion, I’m sure you remember the intense feelings that overcame you. Your heart may have skipped a few beats or you might have had trouble catching your breath.

     This is the same love God has for us. He watches us while we are sleeping and I’d bet that He is just as overwhelmed by His love for us. Why else would He send his Son to die for us? “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16 is probably one of the most quoted verses in the Bible, and for good reason. God so loved us. He loved us so much that even though we sin and continue to try to live the way we want, He still so loves us.

     In the book of John, chapter 15, Jesus refers to himself as the vine, his Father as the gardener and we are the branches. About 13 times in the first 10 verses Jesus reminds us that we must remain in Him and his love if we want to be successful in whatever we do. Remaining in Jesus and his love allows the Father to work on us (pruning……it can be painful sometimes!) so that we do become more like Christ was. If we turn away from Jesus and his love for us, the Father has no reason to prune us anymore and He will just remove us from the vine. However, if we keep Christ’s word and love within us (see Proverbs 3:3 in the margin) we will bring glory to the Father.

     In verses 11-17 of John chapter 15, Jesus tells the disciples the reason for remaining in Him. What is the reason we need to keep His word and love within us? So that we may have joy and we may be called His friend. Verse 13 says, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” This is exactly what Christ did for us. He came to live among us, as one of us. He gave us a clear example of how to live like Him and love like He loved. Then He showed us what true love really is…….He died in our place.

     Christ’s command in John 15, verses 12 and 17 was to love each other as He loves us. This might be easy if you only think about your family. Of course we love them and would lay down our lives for them. But what about our neighbors, co-workers, and people we pass by every day at the store or in their cars and those people we have never even met? Do we love them as Jesus would? Would we trade our lives to save them?

Lord,

Thank you for your love and for sending your Son to show us what true love really is. Please help us to love as you would. We don’t always think about others first so we pray that you will guide us with your Holy Spirit so that we will remain in you and your love.  -Amen

Building Your Relationship with God

     Hebrews 11:1 tells us that “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do no see” (NIV). If you are growing in your faith, your personal relationship with God is becoming stronger and you are becoming more and more certain that God is at work. There will be a deep trust between you and your Creator and a powerful knowledge of His will for your life. There will also be a hunger for constant communication with Him. Now, the methods you use to develop this relationship will be as unique as you are, however, there are a few things that are necessary for any relationship to be successful. You need trust, knowledge of the other person involved and communication, lots of communication. 

     Let’s start with trust. Trust is difficult in any relationship. You won’t feel like growing a relationship if you don’t think you can trust the other party involved. This holds true for our relationship with God as well. If you don’t think you can trust that God has your best interests at heart, you will have trouble with your faith. But the great thing is that God doesn’t expect us to trust blindly. He has given us plenty of examples through His word of His trustworthiness. He promised Abraham a son in his old age and He delivered. He promised to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and He did, with no shortage of miracles along the way. All we have to do is read through the Old Testament to see God over and over again proving His trustworthiness.

     And it doesn’t stop in the Old Testament. Think about this: Would you trust someone who was willing to give up His own son in order for you to have life? That’s what He did. He sent the ultimate proof that He is worthy of our trust by sending his son to die in our place. It is hard to grasp sometimes, but Jesus was a real, live, flesh and blood man that felt hunger, thirst, pain and all the other things we experience on a daily basis. Then He died a horrific, painful death just because He loved us and wants our trust. In John 14:1 Jesus tells us, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; also trust in me.” Take heart friends, He wouldn’t command us to trust Him if He wasn’t worthy of our trust.

     Knowledge of God’s will for your life can also help deepen your relationship with Him. How does God provide us with that knowledge? He gives us His word. Literally. The Bible is full of instruction on how God’s wants us to live our lives, and if we are the Christians we profess to be, we will seek this knowledge on a regular basis. In John Ortberg’s book titled “The Me I Want to Be” he reminds us that “only God knows your full potential, and he is guiding you toward that best version of yourself all the time.” God wants us to know what his will for our life is and He will guide us into that place if we are willing to go. All we have to do is spend time in His word, trust His guidance, and ask Him to keep us on track.

     That brings us to communication. Sometimes, communication can be the hardest part of a relationship. I think this is especially true in our relationship with God. He doesn’t respond in the typical way, does he? We have to learn to listen for God’s voice throughout our day. Sometimes He will respond directly to us through his word and we know it’s Him. Other times He will respond through someone else, through a situation we are dealing with or maybe even a book we are reading. Regardless of how He responds, if you are not actively listening and watching for His response, you will miss it. Growing this part of your relationship may seem the hardest. How do you find time in your busy day to talk to God? And how do know that you haven’t missed his answer? The demands of your job and home life may make you feel like you don’t have the proper time to spend communicating with God. While it is important to spend some quiet time alone with God everyday, that doesn’t mean that He won’t value the short, seemingly broken conversations you may have with Him during your busy day. A quote from Thomas Kelly’s book “A Testament of Devotion” sums up this concept beautifully:

“There is a way of ordering our mental life on more than one level at once. On one level we may be thinking, discussing, seeing, calculating, meeting all the demands of external affairs. But deep within, behind the scenes, at a profounder level, we may also be in prayer and adoration, song and worship and a gentle receptiveness to divine breathings.”

     Moses’ words to the Israelites serve as a reminder to us all, “Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life…” (Deuteronomy 30:19-20). Make the Lord your life, and He will not fail to lead you if you hold to his teachings, trust him and listen to his voice.

God Loves Us

Through out the month of April, I want to help remind you of God's love for us. Easter is the most important holiday we celebrate as Christians. Without the crucifixion and the resurrection, where would we be? One of the most remembered verses of the Bible is John 3:16. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." Really think about that. Would you give your one and only son so that everyone, including some of the worst criminal minds you can think of, could have eternal life? I don't think I could. Thankfully, we don't have to make that decision. God already did it for us!