We Never Fight Alone

Catherine Marshall was an author decades back that became an invalid for over a period of two years due to TB. She was married, had a young child, and found herself on complete bedrest. She spent her time reading scripture and asking God all of the hard questions we deal with when life goes "wrong". She found herself concentrating on Jesus' many miracle healings. The love and compassion He had for the crowds of people always surrounding Him she knew had to be for the here and now also. If it was for them, couldn't it also be for her?
So she and her husband began faithfully praying for a miracle. But none came.
Catherine began an intense inner struggle, and finally came to the point she told God He could do whatever He wanted to do with her. Even if it meant never getting well, even if it meant remaining an invalid for the rest of her life on earth.
Catherine told God she trusted Him to love her and take care of her. She let go of her will and her expectations and put all of her faith into her heavenly Father.
How hard that is. Hard to let go of our expectations of what life is supposed to be. Hard to hand things over when we so desperately want to hang on, so desperately believe our way is best, so desperately believe our plans are God's plans and He will simply make it all happen. The inner struggle of trying to hang on to the trust in our belief of a loving and faithful God when everything is falling apart and we feel desperately alone and all faith is gone is excruciating. We read scripture and want to believe it is for us, yet doubt. We pray and feel each word bounces off the ceiling. We wonder what we have done wrong to make God not love us, to abandon us. We know no other person in the world could ever understand what torment we are in, I mean we are Christians, right? We can't show the world what's under the surface, they would think we were crazy, they would think we must not truly love God to be in this place. So we put on the happy face while we slowly die on the inside.
Catherine Marshall fought a battle. All of us do at some point or points in our lives.
To believe that God is present with us is hard when we are in the midst of the storm, so hard to see. It seems so much easier to give up. And how easy it is to tell God we are done. That we will continue to do the "christian thing" but on a personal level we are done. Thankfully He continues to be faithful even when we are not.
Catherine Marshall found physical healing. Sometimes we find when we let go of what we cherish most God often doesn't require anything more than our willingness. I can't say it always turns out the way we would like, but when we look back down that long road it will certainly show us that when times were at their worst, He was right there carrying us through to a better place. And when we get to that proverbial other side of the road we see just how He has grown our faith and love for Him. Life is a long road of hurts and trials, bad times do happen to us all. But I would rather do this life with God than on my own any day.

Look and See

I was reading Acts 3 this morning about the crippled beggar at the gate. It really caught my attention when Peter told the cripple to look at him. Why was the beggar not looking?
Was he so used to the routine he was no longer really paying attention?
If the people going by didn't hesitate or slow down did he just move on to the next?
Was he not waiting long enough, or paying enough attention?
What if Peter hadn't said look at me?
What a blessing he would have missed.
The crippled beggar wasn't expecting much, just a temporary fix. He was ready to settle for much less than what was about to be offered.

So what if we aren't listening when God says look at me?