Titus 2 Men And Women

"Whether it be good, or whether it be evil. We will obey the voice of the Lord our God...that it may be well with us..." Jeremiah 42:6

Have you ever received bad news, I mean really bad news? Maybe it came through a telephone call about a family member. Maybe the police knocked on your door with very somber faces. Maybe the doctor was completely at a loss for words. Maybe the news wasn’t about someone else, maybe it was about you.

Without reiterating our story unnecessarily, I remember very clearly asking Dr. Stephen Bates at the Baptist Medical Center if my child was going to live, and him telling us, with regret in his eyes, "I don’t know." The words to describe the feelings Paula and I went through do not exist, because I’ve looked. The short of it is, that my family has been there. With complete gratitude, I fully understand that I am writing from the vantage point of a happy ending. I fully understand that not every case in life will end up the way our case did at that time. The benefit for me though is that now, even now, as much as I am pained to, and as many bad memories as it brings back, I can go back into that pit of February 2001 and see some things about a truly gracious God during an extremely grievous time.

Looking back, I see some things about me that I needed to know. I needed to know that I wasn’t nearly as strong as I thought I was. Proverbs 24:10 "If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small." When faced with the cold blooded reality of desperate uncertainty the strength of my faith, failed. When you and I receive bad news, we are face to face with the integrity of our trust in the good news. Paula and I were faced with one eternal decision, we either really did trust God that "all things worked together for good to them that love God," or we didn’t.

I’ve learned this; it is by God’s grace that we are brought face to face with the integrity of our faith. A faith that is never tested, is a faith that can’t be trusted. This is why Peter tells us that the trials of our faith are more valuable than gold. (1 Peter 1) These trials, these sacred sufferings, force us to face the truth about ourselves.

Now the fact is that our faith is not to be based upon God’s conclusion, but upon God’s character. I’m not to trust God only as long as He makes temporal happy endings. The object of my trust in God is not His decisions, but His discretion. Job declared in Job 13:15 -- "Though He slay me, yet do I trust in Him." The question we had to answer was whether or not our trust in Him was based upon Him, or was our trust in Him based upon our comfort.

When you and I receive bad news we must never lose sight of the fact that it is always trumped by the good news. For those who are in the Father’s Family this life is as bad as it gets, we only get better from here.

I found out that the bad news hurts, but the good news helps. As long as I am in this corrupted body, I will never fully experience and enjoy the absence of agony. What will happen though, is that every time I am forced to face my faith, if I will respond with honesty and submission, my faith will strengthen, my peace will grow, and my heart will hurt less and less.

I know that in the future, God "will wipe away all tears." I know that in the past, "Jesus wept." I know that for the present, "we have not an high priest that cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities," who knows and understands the hurts and horrors we face. I know that God will use the sufferings we experience to fashion our faith, and form our character to the image of His Son. I know that He is working everything I my life, happy or hellish, from His loving heart, for my benefit.

Before February 18^th, 2001, we knew those things. Through those experiences, more and more now we can feel those things.

James wrote very clearly, "Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray." When you and I get bad news, we can never pretend it’s not there, or we’re not bothered. Our one and only response to bad news is to go to the one who gave us the good news and pour out our hurt, open up our heart, plead for help, and hold His hand.

Sufferings bring sorrow, but for the saved they are sacred. I pray that God will give grace to the weak, peace to the strong, and perspective to the confused. May God richly bless you this day.

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