Clarifying Character, Part 2

Today, I'll make little commentary on these past journal entries, other than to say it is similar to yesterday's post, detailing another time God did a major clarification of my understanding of His character and the nature of my relationship with Him. 

December 1, 2003
It has been a very trying time these past few months.  Despite working two different insurance jobs recently, my husband is jobless again.  My thyroid developed a growth quickly, I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's disease and had to have the thyroid removed, all this while trying to work full-time.  My oldest son developed ITP and had to spend some time at Riley Children's Hospital.  He's ok now, but the 6 weeks of dealing with it were frightening.

We began working to increase our giving.  We'd heard a sermon recently in which we were told to "Test God.  Look and see.  Try Him and know that He is good."  Test Him and see if He won't replenish your storehouse.  Our storehouse has many types of empty shelves.  We've been giving the 10% and while we are managing to keep ourselves at a teeter on the edge of financial collapse, we haven't fallen over the cliff's edge.  Is this the replenishment he means?

Psalm 145 says, "You open Your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing.  The Lord is near all who call on Him, all who call on Him in truth.  He fulfills the desires of those who fear Him; He hears their cry and saves them." 

How do I equate my personal experience with such language?  My first thought is:  God is unjust.  No, my first thought is I am doing something wrong, but this time I really believe (like my good old buddy, Job) I've walked blameless before the Lord.  Can I call God a liar?  No.  So I am silent.  I just won't speak to Him.  (That lasted all of about a day.)  But, I'd rather stop looking for Him to come through for me than to have His honor called into question over every circumstance. 

Scott and I talked about it.  He believes less in an intervening God than I do, so God "raining on the just and the unjust" kind of works both directions for him--good or bad, all the same.  I thought about this, and it does get God off the hook, but it also diminishes personal relationship.  I've experienced too much evidence of personal relationship to embrace that philosophy so I wait for further light, tithe again, and refine my prayer, "God, now I do this because it is right, and not because I expect replenishment." 

And straightaway, we are robbed!  Someone breaks into our car, steals my husband's wallet and our digital camera.  I pray I'll have a Job-like finish at the end of all this!

I spent the next 3 months and 20 journal pages exploring the idea of suffering.  Then in early March, I had my epiphany:

March 4, 2004
Quoting My Utmost for His Highest again.  October 31--

God wants you to understand that it is a life of faith, not a life of sentimental enjoyment of His blessings.  God has frequently to knock the bottom board out of your experience...you are worth far more to Him now than you were in your days of conscious delight and thrilling testimony...Faith by its very nature must be tried, and the real trial of faith is not that we find it difficult to trust God, but that God's character has to be cleared in our minds...Faith in the Bible is faith in God against everything that contradicts Him--I will remain true to God's character whatever He may do."

Scott and I both realized about a week ago that this is the "project" God has been working on for the past several years with us.  He removed everything that might complicate the question:  "Do you love Me?"  Unconditional love would be all that was left, if anything was to be left at all.  And there it was!  We loved Him back!
What a profound risk He took, it seems to me.  How amazing the way He worked our lives in counterpoint to bring us both to this same faith peak.  His next statement after He asked this same question of Peter was, "Then feed my sheep."

He gave me affirming imagery to go with this idea, too.  Driving along just the other day, I saw a glowing red cardinal sitting near the road in a sea of dead brown grass.  Had the cardinal been sitting in that field in spring, surrounded by the sheen of fresh grass and the brilliance of wildflowers, its color would have had competition and I might never have seen it.  But perched in that expanse of drabness, his colors were startling.  So it is with a child of God if she waits patiently despite the fields of dead grass.

Ever since that time, the cardinal has been my ever faithful sign of encouragement in times of winter...a gift from the God who proved abundantly faithful after all!