This was the scene on The South Downs at 9.30 this morning.. bliss :)
Having been a bit of a couch potato recently, due to the stupid virus, this week I am claiming back my life. I am fed up with it and I am claiming Gods promises for me. I have needed this time to have a rest, aside from being ill, and there is part of me that feels God had it planned this way. But having read ‘He Loves Me’ by Wayne Jacobsen I’m not so sure. He makes the case that Jesus died for all the iniquities in our lives, he overcame death, it is NOT Gods will for us to be ill or suffer or whatever. I’m not sure I have got my head around all that, as recent posts will show. But what is interesting is that he says for many Christians it is far easier to accept that God might be part of something untoward in our lives, feeling that although suffering one is in His will, makes it easier to cope with. He says we should stand on the word and recognise bad stuff is not of God and fight against it.
I don’t know… but I do know that I have been feeling heaps better and I know God is prompting me to do a few things. One is to get up early to pray, which I used to do but stopped with the tiredness and the other is to start walking again. I love walking, I always feel closer to God when I am out in creation and it is the one thing that keeps me fit! Having done sod all for months my leg-tone is not what it was, and so when I felt the prompting, I was raring to go! I also felt prompted to go up on the South Downs (about a 15 min drive from our house) rather than go round the lanes as I usually do. And what a blessing it was. I didn’t go far (about 4 miles) but it was so beautiful, it was amazingly sunny, the sky was gorgeous and the birds were singing away! (even saw a buzzard). I prayed all the way round. I just opened my mouth and it didn’t stop for an hour. Tongues, intercessing, seeking Him. Wow, it felt so free. I just felt like God was really guiding my prayers, like I haven’t felt in a while. I sat down in a quiet spot to read and have some quiet time and felt so much guidance. I am leading at church on Sunday (eeekkk!! first time) and have been seeking Him about how and what to say, and this morning it just all came. I think this morning just reminded me to 1: be Obedient to his promptings and 2: Stand on Gods promises.
I know He has a plan for me, to propser me and not to harm me and I believe that with all my heart. The last few months have been hard and I’m not over the virus completely yet, but I will not let it define me. I will not make decisions based on how I might feel. I will be strong and trust in Him…
3 Comments
Perpetua
March 24, 2011 at 6:24 pmGlad you had such a special hour, Red. You'll probably remember it for quite a while.
I can't easily comment on the rest of your post because I'm coming from such a very different place theologically. Probably the best way to describe me would be as a liberal catholic (note the lack of capital letters) so the idea of God planning every aspect of my life or willing things to happen to me is not part of my understanding or experience of God.
I've had cancer twice, but I don't believe God either planned this or made it happen. If I thought it had been his will for me, I doubt I could still believe in him. Our bodies are amazingly and wondrously complex, but sometimes they simply go wrong. The most important thing for me is that God is there, right in the middle of our pain and suffering, helping us to deal with it. If the cancer should come back, which isn't impossible, I believe he would be there alongside me again. But that it would be his will for me, that I CAN'T believe.
Jules
March 24, 2011 at 6:47 pmThanks P. Sorry to hear you have suffered so much. Yes I think you could say the same about the human body as about the earth – that God designed it to work in a particular way with all its little foibles, which means that sometimes it is susceptible.
Just to clarify I don't think I explained it very well – I wasn't suggesting that God actually made me ill, I couldn't believe in a God that made peope ill deliberately either. It's just I felt at the time, that it seemed to fit with His plan for me – I needed to take some time off, to rest and take it easy and I'm not sure I would have done that without being ill, no matter how much I felt God telling me to do that. Perhaps I needed to be ill in order to see what I was doing to myself. So although I don't think he made me ill, I find myself thinking that maybe he allowed it for a short time. But within that I know He was, and is, with me, and I feel much closer to him as a result. As I said, the book I mentioned above suggests that that point of view is foolish – and is probably right – but the point I was making is that it almost made it easier for me to bear, thinking that perhaps God was somewhere within it, or that he had a purpose for me in that time. does that make sense?
redx
Perpetua
March 25, 2011 at 4:54 pmYes, it does, Red. I'm with you in believing that God can and does use the hard things that happen to us to bring us closer to him, but the things themselves just happen as part of this complex world we live in. I don't think we're as far apart on this as I first thought.