31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: On Asking God Why

Posted on October 13, 2015 by Barbara Harper

This is from Elisabeth’s book On Asking God Why:

I seek the lessons God wants to teach me, and that means that I ask why. There are those who insist that it is a very bad thing to question God. To them, “Why?” is a rude question. That depends, I believe, on whether it is an honest search, in faith, for his meaning, or whether it is a challenge of unbelief and rebellion. The psalmist often questioned God and so did Job. God did not answer the questions, but he answered the man–with the mystery of himself.

He has not left us entirely in the dark. We know a great deal more about his purposes than poor old Job did, yet Job trusted him. He is not only the Almighty–Job’s favorite name for him. He is also our Father, and what a father does is not by any means always understood by the child. If he loves the child, however, the child trusts him. It is the child’s ultimate good that the father has in mind. Terribly elementary. Yet I have to be reminded of this when, for example, my friend suffers, when a book I think I can’t possibly do without is lost, when a manuscript is worthless.

Elsewhere (I am not sure of the source) she writes:

Now is it a sin to ask God why? It’s always best to go first for our answers to Jesus Himself. He cried out on the cross, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’ It was a human cry; a cry of desperation springing from His heart’s agony at the prospect of being put into the hands of wicked men and actually becoming sin for you and me. We can never suffer anything like that, yet we do at times feel forsaken, don’t we? It’s quite natural for us to cry, ‘Why, Lord?’

The psalmist asked why. Job, a blameless man suffering horrible torments on an ash heap, asked why. It doesn’t seem to me to be sinful to ask the question. What is sinful is resentment against God and His dealings with us. When we begin to doubt His love and imagine that He is cheating us of something we have a right to, we are guilty as Adam and Eve were guilty. They took the snake at his word rather than God.

The same snake comes to us repeatedly with the same suggestions. ‘Does God love you? Does He really want the best for you? Is His Word trustworthy? Isn’t He cheating you? Forget His promises. You’d be better off if you’d do it your way.’

I’ve often asked why. Many things have happened which I didn’t plan and which human rationality could not explain. In the darkness of my perplexity and sorrow, I have heard God say quietly, ‘Trust Me.’ He knew that my question was not the challenge of unbelief or of resentment.

I don’t understand Him, but then I’m not asked to understand, only to trust. Bitterness dissolves when I remember the kind of love with which He has loved me–He gave Himself for me. He gave Himself for me. He gave Himself for me. Whatever He is doing now, therefore, is not cause for bitterness. It has to be designed for good, because He loved me and gave Himself for me.

I agree. It’s not a sin to ask, at least not unless the attitude is one of defiance or resentment. He may not answer, or may answer in a way we hadn’t at first wanted, but the more we learn to know Him, the more we can trust Him with those questions, no matter the answer or lack thereof.

See all the posts in this series here.

Book Review: Running Scared: Fear, Worry, and the God of Rest

Posted on August 6, 2015 by Barbara Harper

Edward T. Welch aims Running Scared: Fear, Worry, and the God of Rest primarily at himself as a “fear specialist,” but thankfully he lets us in on what he has learned. He notes that “Fear not” is the most often repeated command in the Bible and can be taken either as “a judicial warning, which has a threatening overtone” or as a “parental encouragement, which aims to comfort.” He says, “Luke places the accent on parental encouragement,” and Welch does as well. The thirty meditations are not an outline or in linear form — there’s a bit of overlap — but reading a chapter a day is doable and helps build on the principles he discusses.

The first couple of chapters set the scene, and, if you didn’t think you were fearful or had anything to worry about, these will convince you! One problem with dealing with fears in a conventional way is that they don’t usually submit to logic, and some techniques for dealing with them are only temporary and don’t get to the heart of the matter.

The heart of the matter, Welch asserts, is that our fears and worries reveal something to us about ourselves. Most of them focus on not getting something we think we need, or fearing something that might happen. Both involve a fear of not being in control and reveal what we value. So he encourages us to “Rather than minimize your fears, find more of them. Expose them to the light of day because the more you find, the more blessed you will be when you hear words of peace and comfort.”

“Worriers are visionaries without the optimism.” Most worriers would qualify as false prophets because our predictions don’t come true more often than not.

“The sheer number of times He speaks to your fears says that He cares much more than you know…The way He repeats Himself suggests that He understands how intractable fears and anxieties can be. He knows that a simple word will not banish our fears.”

“Search Scripture and find that our fears are not trivial to God. ‘Do not be afraid’ are not the words of a flesh-and-blood friend, a mere human like yourself. They are not the words of a fellow passenger on a sinking ship, who had no experience in shipwrecks, can’t swim, and has no plan. These words are more like those of captain who says, ‘Don’t be afraid. I know what to do.’ When the right person speaks these words you might be comforted.”

There is so much that is helpful in this book and so many places I have highlighted that it’s hard to know which ones to share without quoting half the book here. I’ll try to just share some of the things that were most helpful to me.

One was the “manna principle,” lessons drawn from God’s providing Israel with manna in the wilderness. One lesson was that the Israelites weren’t really models of prayer in that instance. They were complaining. That doesn’t give us the right to complain, but it does highlight the fact that God answers because of His grace, not because of “the quality of our prayers.” Another I shared earlier is that the Israelites were to gather what they needed for each day. If they tried to hoard enough to last, the excess would rot. So for us, we depend on God’s grace for each day’s needs. Most worry is about what is going to happen in the future, but Jesus said, “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matthew 6:34). That doesn’t mean we never plan ahead — there are Scripture verses about that, too — but we don’t worry or become anxious about them, trusting God will provide what is needed when the time comes. We won’t have grace for a future event because we don’t need it yet. Another was that the principle of Sabbath rest was built into their system and served, among other things, as a test of faith and a way to honor God and acknowledge His control. Just as they had to trust that the manna would be there every morning, they had to trust that when they gathered enough on Friday to last through the Sabbath, it wouldn’t rot like it usually did when they gathered extra. This is a principle largely lost on modern Christians. True, we’re not under the specific Sabbath restrictions that Israel was, but a Sabbath rest was exemplified by God in the first week of creation. Businesses feel they can’t afford to lose the business that they would if they were closed on Sundays, and individuals feel they can’t possibly get everything done they need to do if they take a day of rest. We don’t realize what we’re missing out on.

Another chapter, “The God of Suspense,” deals with the fact that sometimes God delivers before we even know we have a need, sometimes He seems to deliver at the last minute, and sometimes He delivers after the fact, “after hope dies,” as with the death of Lazarus and the widow’s son. In those cases. God had a greater purpose in mind: to show people that Christ had power over even death. He cites some cases in which the very thing someone feared came upon them (as Job said), and God didn’t deliver in the way hoped for, yet He did something greater in drawing the person closer to Himself and helping them know Him in ways they would not have otherwise. He cites many Biblical examples that God does not shield us from every hardship, but “If the difficulty you anticipate comes upon you, you will receive grace” to deal with it.

He talks a great deal about the Sermon on the Mount and being taken up with God’s kingdom:

Are you worried? Jesus says there is nothing to worry about. It isn’t our kingdom, it’s God’s. We take our cue from the King, and the King is not fretting over anything. He is in complete control.

When you know that the Kingdom is God’s alone (though He gives it to us), that is the only thing that can lead to peace and rest. Owners are the ones who do all the worrying; stewards simply listen to the owner’s desires and work to implement them. Owners are responsible for the outcome; stewards strive to be faithful.

A few more favorite quotes:

“Worry is focused inward. It prefers self-protection over trust…It can reveal that you love something more than Jesus. It crowds Jesus out of your life.” It can even “choke the word” of God in our lives (Mark 4:19), so it is nothing to be ignored or treated lightly. “Anxiety and worry are wake-up calls that must be handled by spiritual means.”

“Worry’s magnetic attraction can only be broken by a stronger attraction, and David is saying [in Psalm 27] we can only find that attraction in God Himself.”

“When you call out, you might feel like He isn’t present or easily found. That is the nature of pain. The worse it is, the more alone you feel. But this is a time when the words of God must override your feelings. There are times when we listen to our feelings and times when we don’t. This is a time when we don’t. Instead, whenever there is a clash between our sensory experience and the promises of God, the promises of God win. The one who says, ‘verily, verily’ can be trusted. Call out and He will be found when you need Him.”

Welch deals with not only the anxiety and worry over physical needs, like money and provision, but with personal needs like approval and love, fear of death and judgment. He discusses prayer and what it means to have died in Christ and what freedom that can bring us. He points to our need to find and focus on our calling from God, what God’s peace, or shalom, means, and His instructions to be peacemakers. In short, I think he pretty much covers every base he can think of that might be related to anxiety and worry and points us to Christ in each instance.

There were a few places I disagreed with him about some particular, but I don’t fell the need to delineate all of that here. Overall I found this one of the most helpful books I have ever read. I mentioned before that I had bought it as a Kindle sale and forgotten about it, then came across it about a month before my recent surgery and decided to read it in the days leading up to the procedure. Combined with the prayer of friends, it helped me keep my mind on God and off the “what ifs,” and I know I will return to it often in the future.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Laudable Linkage

Posted on June 27, 2015 by Barbara Harper

It has been a while since I’ve shared interesting reads I’ve come across online. Here are some from the last few weeks:

Moms With Hands Full Need the Church.

I’m Grateful That Lady Forced a Bible On Me, HT to Challies. “We have this idea that doing something significant for God requires huge planning, red letters in the sky, a parting of the sea, signs and wonders. But the truth is, He’s working through us in ways we could never arrange on our own.”

No Disappointment in Jesus? HT to Story Warren. “It’s in life, in the real world, down here where things do and do not pan out, that the just are supposed to live by faith. When we are honestly disappointed in the way the God we trusted has handled things, when what has happened was not at all what we wanted—then statements like “Not my will but thine be done” have powerful meaning. What a sinewy kind of trust old John the Baptist had as he lay in chains—captive, doomed, lonely, blessed, and not offended.”

Are You Letting Your Kids Walk All Over You?

I Don’t Know What to Say. What’s helpful and not helpful when someone is grieving.

What I Learned From Elisabeth Elliot in Her Last Years.

Elisabeth Elliot’s Writings. Ann gives a good overview.

Staring at Dementia, Fighting For Joy.

Where’ve You Been? Story behind a touching and beautiful song about a man’s grandparents, one with Alzheimer’s.

How Can I Have a Successful Blog While Raising Little Kids?

Father’s Days: A Cartoonist’s Journey Into First Time Fatherhood of a baby with a severe illness.

7 Things You Need to Know About Medicare But Probably Don’t.

A boy’s stuffed tiger goes on a grand adventure at Tampa International Airport. Thought this was so cute and sweet!

Of course, yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling is on many minds and hearts. I’m still processing the news and don’t know whether I’ll say any more about it, but the best posts I’ve read so far are But What Does the Bible Say? by Kevin DeYoung and CBMW’s Official Response to the SCOTUS Ruling, and then Nancy Leigh DeMoss has a video response here.

Melanie shared this recently – a real-life illustration of the sheep knowing their shepherd’s voice:

I don’t know how many of you are familiar with Ron Hamilton, aka “Patch the Pirate.” He’s fairly well known in the Southeast. I love this arrangement of his song. Ben Everson is a master at these mutli-harmony things:

Happy Saturday!

Book Review: How I Know God Answers Prayer

Posted on October 24, 2014 by Barbara Harper

I think I first read Rosalind Goforth’s first book, How I Know God Answers Prayer, maybe in my twenties, so about 30 years ago. I don’t remember how many times I have read it since. It is a testimony of how God has answered prayers both small and great in her life through the years, spurred by people’s occasional response that perhaps what seemed an answer to prayer was just a coincidence that would have happened anyway. She wanted to demonstrate through a lifetime of her walk with God that prayer is just a child of God asking her Father for what she needs, and seeing Him answer – not always just the way she originally wanted, but with love and wisdom nonetheless. Of her three books, including Goforth of China (a biography of her husband) and Climbing (a book she was asked to write concerning some of her own experiences and perspectives), Climbing is my favorite, but this book is very good as well.

Since I was reading it this time for Carrie’s Reading to Know Classics Book Club, I tried to view it as others might who have not read it before. For the first time I thought perhaps a little of the effect of what she relates might have been lost by the description of events taken out of context. For instance, when she writes near the end about finding “that the Lord could guide me even in trimming my hat to his glory,” some people might think, “What?” In Climbing, one of the difficulties she underwent was criticism of her dress when she would come home on furlough. There was no Internet, Facebook, or even Wal-Mart in those days to keep up with what was going on in the fashion world back home, and she had no idea what would be stylish or out of style or different from the last time she had been there. It is really ridiculous that people would criticize under such circumstances, but they do. Once when a lady offered to get new outfits for her when she was home, she was relieved, until the lady brought her garments entirely in black, which she evidently thought was appropriate for missionary ladies. Jonathan told her she looked like she was in mourning, but she felt she couldn’t refuse the gifts without causing offense. She didn’t necessarily want to be up-to-the minute in the latest styles (in fact, when Merry Widow hats were in style at one point, she thought they were ridiculous and tried to find a way not to wear them), but she didn’t want to be a distraction, either, as they visited churches and conferences. In that book she relates some of God’s leading and answers to prayer regarding that whole issue, represented here just by the sentences, “I found the Lord could guide me even in trimming my hat to his glory! That is, so that I could stand before an audience and not bring discredit to my Master.”

She mentions the anti-foreigner sentiments and some of the dangers involved, but I don’t know if readers will understand just how pervasive and dangerous it was. China was a very closed-off country then, and anything “foreign” was suspicious (one reason why Hudson Taylor advocated dressing like Chinese rather than British). She does mention here that one of the ways she and her husband tried to combat this was to hold “Open House” where they’d let their neighbors come in and tour the house so they could see there wasn’t anything dangerous about them. In one of her other books she writes that one of these times, someone saw her daughter’s dolls in her bed and spread the word that the Goforths kidnapped children and shrunk them. It seems ridiculous now that anyone would think that, but it was a very superstitious and suspicious time. Rumors like that could at the very least cause people to avoid them, and at the worst set off a powder keg of anger. Sudden mob violence was not uncommon, especially leading up to the time of the Boxer rebellion. I remember reading in another book (I forget whose) about a missionary having in her school a skeleton for educational purposes, and then trying to decide how best to dispose of it so people wouldn’t think they had killed someone. Trying to preach a gospel that the people were probably going to react negatively against at first in such a setting indeed required a lot of prayer and faith.

But even with some events taken somewhat out of context, she presents a testimony full of grace in how the Lord dealt with her. Some of the answers she relates were major – a sudden breakthrough in her husband’s grasp of the language when he was discouraged and near giving up, found later to have happened right at the time that a group in his old college had met to pray for him, response in meetings found to have happened when others were praying (incidents that should remind and encourage us to pray for others), healing when all other help had been exhausted, protection from danger, especially in their escape during the Boxer rebellion. Of the last, she was asked why God spared them so miraculously but not others. She responded:

Truly a vital question, which could not lightly be set aside! Humbly and prayerfully we pondered this “Why” in the light of Scripture. In the twelfth chapter of Acts, we read of Herod’s succeeding in putting James to death by the sword, and directly after comes the story of how Herod was hindered in carrying out his intention to kill Peter who was delivered by a miracle. Then who could read that marvelous eleventh chapter of Hebrews with its record of glorious martyrdom and miraculous deliverances without being thrilled? In face of these and many other passages, while still unable to answer the “why,” we saw our Almighty God used His own prerogative to glorify His name whether in the glorious martyrdom of some or in the miraculous deliverance of other.

I referenced this a few months ago in a post on our pastor’s cancer, how God heals some but not others, for reasons only He knows.

Such big and dramatic answers to prayer can be thrilling, but what touched my heart even more were the smaller, “everyday” answers: a lost key found, provision for clothes, a gift of fresh fruit, the need for a telephone and a coat and help during a speaking engagement when she felt ill.

Some of the incidents were deeply personal, such as the time her husband wanted to go touring out among the people, and she said no at first, for the safety of the children (smallpox was rampant and the Chinese then had no thought of keeping sick people home). She had to learn that “‘the safest place’ for myself and the children ‘was the path of duty.'” Though several of her children died from other causes, none died during this time in their ministry once she yielded to the Lord about it. Another personal situation was finally understanding what it was to rest in the Lord and trust Him for salvation from the power of sin and not just the penalty of it, after feeling like she had been on something of a roller coaster spiritually for 40 years.

Something else I thought some people might have a problem with in reading her book were the times she mentioned prayer being hindered by a wrong attitude or bitterness on her part, or, in one instance, the fact that she felt God allowed something to bless her for responding in a right way. These days what we often hear is that God deals with us on the basis of His grace, not our “performance.” That is true. Yet there are instances in Scripture, even in the New Testament, of disobedience hindering. We’re told that some people are sick and some have died because of partaking of the Lord’s Supper in a wrong manner, that we should reconcile with our brother before offering a gift to God, that confession of sin is a part of praying for healing, that we can’t expect forgiveness if we don’t forgive. We’ll never be perfect, but we can’t expect the Lord’s blessing if we are hanging on to known sin. As to the other, does God ever do a special little something for us when we obey in some area or do the right thing? I don’t know – I can’t think of a Scripture reference that deals with that exactly in the New Testament. We tend to think, especially when reading the Old Testament, “Be good and God will bless me, mess up and He will come after me hard.” But even there Job experienced great calamity even though he was doing everything right, and the wicked seem to prosper even when they are not obedient. Ultimately everything that God allows comes from His wisdom, love, and grace. But I have felt at times, especially in my very early days as a Christian, that some blessing or answer to prayer came just after taking an important step in the right direction, not as a reward or as God patting me on the head for doing right, but just as a little encouragement from a Father to His child. Don’t we do the same for our children? When we see them struggle in an area and do the right thing, don’t we give them some kind of encouragement, even if it is just a smile or a nod or a thumbs up or a “Well done”? Of course, we need to do right even if no one seems to notice or care or no “blessing” comes in response. I don’t think this nullifies the fact that it all comes from God’s grace because we can only obey and make right decisions with His grace. (I’ve written earlier that grace does not nullify the need for obedience but rather enables it. See Of grace, law, commandments, rules, and effort and What grace does not mean). God blesses us far beyond our ability to obey as it is, and obedience should be an outgrowth of love and reverence for Him rather than a “work” to “earn” blessing. This is too involved a topic for this post, but I feel sure she isn’t advocating that prayer and obedience are like vending machines where we put in out part and then expect God to do His – not at all.

Since this is a testimony of answered prayer, naturally most of the anecdotes involve those answers. Yet she also shares some times when God didn’t answer, at least not in the way she prayed for. In one instance, years later she could see and was thankful for the fact that He hadn’t granted a particular request, one that would have changed the path of her life away from China. In other instances, like healing that did not come and the deaths of several of her children, she continued to trust even though she couldn’t understand.

I don’t think Rosalind shared any of these answers to prayer with the attitude, “Look at me and my wonderful answers to prayer. Aren’t I special?” I think she would have been horrified that anyone would think that. I think rather, she just wanted to show forth His provision and willingness to take care of His dear children’s needs, like the psalmists, whose testimony was, “Hear what great things the Lord has done and how He delivered me.” Every Christian walking and talking with God would have a record like this whether written or not, though admittedly probably not with situations like being delivered from an angry mob on the list. But like the Ebenezers I mentioned a few weeks ago, we should all be able to look back on those times where God met with us, provided for us, and answered prayer for us in a way that only He could. It’s good to share things like this with our families, so they know God didn’t just meet people’s needs back in Bible times, but He still does today. Such things redound to His praise and encourage us in the Lord when “when I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night; for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy. My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me” (Psalm 63:5-8).

For the 31 Days writing challenge, I am sharing 31 Days of Inspirational Biography. You can find others in the series here.

Reading to Know - Book Club

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

31 Days of Inspirational Biography: Louis Zamperini, Olympian, POW, Christian

Posted on October 20, 2014 by Barbara Harper

The preface of Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand tells of three men in a raft in the Pacific Ocean. Their plane had crashed, the rest of the crew was dead, they’d been on the raft for 27 days. Finally they rejoiced to hear a plane. They shot flares into the sky and put dye in the water to make their raft more visible. But then the plane started shooting at them: it was Japanese, not American. One of the men jumped into the water, but the sharks came toward him…

And then the author cuts away to the childhood of Louis Zamperini, one of the men in the boat. He had been on the fast track to becoming a juvenile delinquent until his brother intervened for him with the high school principal who had banned Louis from participating in sports as a punishment. The principal relented and allowed Louis to run track, where Louis found focus and purpose.

Louis did so well, in fact, that he ran in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and was expected to be the first man to break the four-minute mile. His dream of the 1940 Olympics was shattered when they were cancelled due to WWII.

Louis joined the Army Air Force and became a second lieutenant and a bombardier. On one harrowing mission, his plane was ravaged by over 500 bullet holes, yet made it safely back to base.

But on one May day in 1943, their plane crashed into the Pacific, killing the other eight crewman. Louis and the other two survivors stayed afloat for 27 days until the event described in the preface occurred.

I had thought that would be the climax of the story, but it was just the beginning of Louis’s troubles. The crew was eventually captured by the Japanese and taken to a place off the grid from the other POW camps. It was not registered with the Red Cross, no one knew about it, the men were given up for dead, and ultimately the Japanese could do what they wanted with the prisoners with no fear of consequences.

When we think of WWII we often think of the atrocities of the Nazis, but the Japanese were uncommonly cruel. Hillenbrand explains that their concept of “saving face” makes surrender the ultimate humiliation, and the soldiers’ surrender to them gave them license, they felt, to degrade them in any way that came to mind.

At several points in Louis’s story, I thought, “How much more can one man endure?” He must have wondered the same thing at times.

Even after he returned home, his troubles did not end as he was afflicted with post-traumatic stress syndrome, severe nightmares, and succumbed to alcoholism.

But the subtitle to Unbroken is “A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption.” Louis’s survival, resilience, and redemption make for an exceptionally touching and inspiring book.

The story is told primarily through narrative, with very little dialogue, but it is captivating. I listened to it via audiobook, and Edward Herrman did an excellent job narrating.

There are those who would want to be forewarned that there is a smattering of bad language in it, understandable in the context, including one particularity vulgar word that could have been left out. But other than that, this is an excellent book.

A movie is being made of Louis’s life, and I hope they won’t leave out the faith element. After Louis got back to the USA, his troubles weren’t over, but God used them to lead him to Himself.

(Reposted from the archives)

For the 31 Days writing challenge, I am sharing 31 Days of Inspirational Biography. You can find others in the series here.

31 Days of Inspirational Biography: Darlene Deibler Rose learns “faith stripped of feelings, faith without trappings”

Posted on October 18, 2014 by Barbara Harper

Last year I wrote about Darlene Deibler Rose’s testimony in the book Evidence Not Seen of being a missionary in the Philippines and then imprisoned as a POW during WWII. This is one of my all-time favorite biographies. This year I wanted to share just this one excerpt. The following takes place after Darlene has been incarcerated by the Japanese for some time:

I knew that without God, without that consciousness of His Presence in every troubled hour, I could never have made it…Quite suddenly and unexpectedly, I felt enveloped in a spiritual vacuum. “Lord, where have You gone? What have I said or done to grieve You? Why have You withdrawn Your Presence from me? Oh Father—” In a panic I jumped to my feet, my heart frantically searching for a hidden sin, for a careless thought, for any reason why my Lord should have withdrawn His Presence from me. My prayers, my expressions of worship, seemed to go no higher than the ceiling; there seemed to be no sounding board. I prayed for forgiveness, for the Holy Spirit to search my heart. To none of my petitions was there any apparent response.

I sank to the floor and quietly and purposefully began to search the Scriptures hidden in my heart…

“Lord, I believe all that the Bible says. I do walk by faith and not by sight. I do not need to feel You near, because Your Word says You will never leave me nor forsake me. Lord, I confirm my faith; I believe.” The words of Hebrews 11:1 welled up, unbeckoned, to fill my mind: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” The evidence of things not seen. Evidence not seen — that was what I put my trust in — not in feelings or moments of ecstasy, but in the unchanging Person of Jesus Christ. Suddenly I realized that I was singing:

When darkness veils His lovely face,
I rest on His unchanging grace.
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.

On Christ the solid Rock I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

I was assured that my faith rested not on feelings, not on moments of ecstasy, but on the Person of my matchless, changeless Savior, in Whom is no shadow caused by turning. In a measure I felt I understood what Job meant when he declared, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him” (13:35). Job knew that he could trust God, because Job knew the character of the One in Whom he had put his trust. It was faith stripped of feelings, faith without trappings. More than ever before, I knew that I could ever and always put my trust, my faith, in my glorious Lord. I encouraged myself in the Lord and His Word.

For the 31 Days writing challenge, I am sharing 31 Days of Inspirational Biography. You can find others in the series here.

31 Days of Inspirational Biography: Rosaria Butterfield

Posted on October 17, 2014 by Barbara Harper

I don’t know when 148 pages of someone’s life story has impacted me more. There are sections where I have sticky tabs and markings on several pages in a row.

The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor’s Journey Into Christian Faith is Rosaria Champagne Butterfield’s story of how she, as an atheist, leftist, feminist, lesbian professor specializing Critical Theory, or postmodernism, and whose specialty was Queer Theory, who hated Christians, encountered and embraced the truths of Christianity in what she calls a “train wreck” of a conversion.

After a few pages detailing how she came to her professorship and worldview, she describes a kind and inquiring letter from a pastor in response to an article she had written.

The Bible makes it clear that reason is not the front door of faith. It takes spiritual eyes to discern spiritual matters. But how do we develop spiritual eyes unless Christians engage the culture with those questions and paradigms of mindfulness out of which spiritual logic flows? That’s exactly what Ken’s letter did for me – invited me to think in ways I hadn’t before (pp. 8-9).

The letter had invited her to call him, and after a week, she did. He invited her to have dinner with him and his wife at their home, and she accepted. She was also at this time doing research for a book on the Religious Right and figured he could answer some of her questions. “Even though obviously these Christians and I were very different, they seemed to know that I wasn’t just a blank slate, that I had values and opinions too, and they talked with me in a way that didn’t make me feel erased” (p. 10). Thus began two years of regular meetings and studying Scripture before she ever set foot in a church, which Ken and his wife knew would probably be “too threatening, too weird, too much” (p. 11) for her. “Good teachers make it possible for people to change their positions without shame. Even as Ken prayed for my soul, he did it in a way that welcomed me into the church rather than made me a scapegoat of Christian fear or an example of what not to become,” (p. 14.)

Gradually she came to believe, but she knew it would cost her. “I clung to Matthew 16:24, remembering that every believer had to at some point in life take the step I was taking: giving up the right to myself, taking up his Cross (i.e., the historicity of the resurrection, not masochism endured to please others), and following Jesus.” “I learned that we must obey in faith before we feel better or different. At this time, though, obeying in faith, to me, felt like throwing myself off a cliff” (p. 22). “One doesn’t repent for a sin of identity in one session. Sins of identity have multiple dimensions, and throughout this journey, I have come to my pastor and his wife, friends in the Lord, and always the Lord himself with different facets of my sin” (p. 23).

She tells of a woman she knew and counseled who was in a Bible-believing church but was in a secret lesbian relationship. Her secret denied her the help and prayers of other believers and only resulted in shame and pretense. When Rosaria asked why she didn’t share her struggle with anyone in her church, she replied, “If people in my church really believed that gay people could be transformed by Christ, they wouldn’t talk about us or pray about us in the hateful way they do” (p. 25). Rosaria then asks readers, “Do your prayers rise no higher than your prejudice? I think that churches would be places of greater intimacy and growth in Christ if people stopped lying about what we need, what we fear, where we fail, and how we sin” (p. 25).

Rosaria was a tenured professor in subjects that would now radically change because of her conversion. When she let it be known that she was now a Christian, both she and her gay friends felt she had betrayed them and turned traitor. “I…was alert to the reality that God had ministry waiting for me. I prayed that I would be strong for the task at hand. Yes, I was still a laughing stock in the gay community. Yes, I was still a traitor and an example of what not to be. But so too was Paul the Apostle shamed among Pharisees, and I trusted that God would take my life and make a place for me” (p. 50).

The rest of the book tells how God did just that, both in her career and ministry to others, leading her to marry a pastor, to eventually adopt four biracial children, and to become a homeschooling mom.

Along the way, she shares an eye-opening perspective of what Christianity looks like to others. For instance, when she moved to a community where there were Bible verses on bumper stickers and placards, instead of it looking like people were sharing a bit of light, it looked to her like the community was for “insiders” only. Christians seemed like “bad thinkers” or even anti-intellectual to her before this journey, using Scripture to shut down conversations rather than to shed light. Unfortunately, that is too often true: instead of truly discussing what the Bible has to say and being “ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear” (I Peter 3:15b), some Christians take offense at being asked and use Scripture to bludgeon. I’ve known some who have been turned off, not so much to all Christian truth, but to Christian community because of this experience.

One theme that comes out throughout the book is the willingness to engage people who are different from us in any way. Thank God the pastor and wife who first shared Christ with her looked past her butch haircut and gay and pro-choice bumper stickers to the need of her heart. But even after she became a Christian, she ran into this phenomenon in various churches. When her husband was the guest speaker at a church and she was getting out of the car holding one of her adopted children while the other was asleep in the car seat, a man said to her, “So, is it chic for white women to adopt black kids these days?” After asking him if he was a Christian, she said, “So, did God save you because it was chic?” When her husband started pastoring a small church plant made up mostly of college students, families would come for a month or so and then leave because of a “lack of fellowship” with people just like themselves. I could step on a small soapbox here: I get so discouraged when people within the same church only want to fellowship with people just like themselves — same age bracket, same marital or parental status, same way of educating or disciplining children, etc., etc.

If I shared everything else I marked, I’d be nearly rewriting the book here, so I can’t do that. But here are just a few more things that grabbed me:

“Since all major U. S. universities had Christian roots, too many Christians thought that they could rest in Christian tradition, not Christian relevance” (p. 7).

“When we read in the book of Romans, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (8:28), we are not to be Pollyanna about this. Many of the ‘things’ we will face come with the razor edges of a fallen and broken world. You can’t play poker with God’s mercy – if you want the sweet mercy then you must also swallow the bitter mercy. And what is the difference between sweet and bitter? Only this: your critical perspective, your worldview. One of God’s greatest gifts is the ability to see and appreciate the world from points of view foreign to your own, points of view that exceed your personal experience” (p. 125).

“Many people in our community protect themselves from inconvenience as though inconvenience is deadly. We have decided that we are not inconvenienced by inconvenience. The needs of children come up unexpectedly. We are sure that the Good Samaritan had other plans that fateful day. Our plans are not sacred” (p. 126).

When a teenage girl in foster care with mental illness heard a pastor speaking about God’s call, afterward she “approached Pastor Steve and said, ‘Steve, I hear voices all the time. How do I know the difference between hearing the voice of God and hearing the voices of my own sick mind?’ Pastor Steve said, ‘Dear one, we all have the check the voices of our own sick mind with the Bible. Daily. You are no different’” (p. 128).

One thought that came to mind while reading the book was, “Why don’t we see this happening more often?” If the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, and it is, then why don’t we see such transformative conversions more often, and why are those raised in Christian culture often so anemic? Sometimes I long with the Psalmist “To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary” (Psalm 63:2). Is it because we don’t share the gospel in a kind and loving way enough? Or is it because not many people are truly willing to examine the claims of the Bible and bring themselves under its authority? Maybe both. I’ve seen online encounters where non-Christians have as much of a “smackdown” way of encountering Christians as Christians do encountering them. I know I would have been scared to death to engage someone like Rosaria before she was saved: I’d have been afraid that I wouldn’t be able to answer her questions and she’d be able to run rings around me with her reasoning ability. But I have to remind myself that those whom God brought across her path with just the right thing to say at the right time were operating under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, not their own wisdom and insight. Sometimes we look for a formula: we see articles or pamphlets about “How to witness to atheists” or whomever else, and those can have some helpful points, but we can’t memorize a script and then present it to people. We need to share a Person and show His love to others and trust Him for the right words to say and pray for His working in hearts.

Rosaria writes now from a Reformed Presbyterian perspective, and since I am not from that perspective, I’d disagree with a few minor points here and there, but I am not going to nitpick about them. I do believe Christians can agree on the big issues and agree to disagree about smaller ones.

There is a condensed version of her testimony here, but I do encourage you to read the book as well. I was one of my top ten books read in 2013, and it is one of my top ten of all time.

And if you think of it, you might pray for her ministry now. I’ve caught a few news items since reading this book where she has gone to speak at a university and faced student protests from those who are close-minded about her message. She understands where they are coming from because she used to think the same way. May the light of God’s truth open many more hearts.

(Reposted from the archives. I was just going to post a quick summary – but I couldn’t. 🙂 )

For the 31 Days writing challenge, I am sharing 31 Days of Inspirational Biography. You can find others in the series here.

31 Days of Inspirational Biography: Walter Wilson

Posted on October 11, 2014 by Barbara Harper

Walter Wilson had the ability to turn nearly any conversation into a witnessing opportunity, yet with graciousness and kindness rather than belligerent buttonholing. A friend commented about him that he certainly had the gift of evangelism. True. But he also had an obedient and willing heart. He would have been the last person to have wanted people to think he was unique or that no one could do what he did. We can learn much from his spirit as well as the particular ways he had of turning conversations to the things of the Lord.

Harry Ironside urged him to write some of his experiences, which led to five books of anecdotes about various opportunities he had to lead people to the Lord. Some of the stories have been compiled into a fascinating book titled Just What the Doctor Ordered.

He was able to lead a German shop owner to the Lord when he told him the blank book he was buying was to be used for recording his prayer requests and answers. The man asked, “Can you get to Gott?” explaining that he had wanted to “find Gott” for many years.

One of my favorite chapters, “The Wrong Address But the Right Persons,” tells of a visit he tried to make while out of town to the son of a friend. After looking up the name and address, he arrived to find the man’s wife and two friends. As they began to talk, he realized that this young man, though he had the same name, was not the son of his friend. As he apologized and began to get ready to leave, he noticed a well-worn Bible on a table. He asked if they read it and loved it, which they said they did. He asked if they had learned from its pages how to be saved. Stirred, the three looked at each other, and then explained that when he had rung the doorbell, they had been on their knees praying that God would send someone who would show them how to be saved.

Another chapter tells about an atheist doctor known for his antagonism. Dr. Wilson visited him and discovered the one issue that kept the doctor from believing. He invited the doctor to church, and the Lord gave him just the right illustration that removed the obstacle in this doctor’s thinking. Another chapter tells how, as he was holding special meetings in a certain city, the pastor invited him to visit a church member who had been seriously ill in the hospital. They did so and had a good visit. Dr. Wilson took notice of a nurse in the room and went over to her to ask her if any of this man’s visitors had brought any message of comfort to her as well. She said no, she was not a Christian as these folks were. As he told her about the Lord, she began to weep. “All unknown to those who had visited the sick man, this nurse had been listening, the hunger had been increasing, and the desire to have what they were talking about became more and more acute in her soul…Although the visiting Christians had overlooked this splendid prospect, nevertheless God used their words to prepare her heart…The hungry heart may be quite close to us but may be all unobserved because we are not looking for the troubled soul.”

Other chapters are “The Case of the Japanese Barber,” “The Ticket Did Not Arrive on Time,” “God visited the Circus,” “Mrs. Fox Did Not Like It,” “A Hopeless Cripple Could Sing,” “Lost on Mount Wilson,” “The Candlestick Was Not in the Ark,” “”Lillian Was Miserable on the Stage,” “’Will I See My Little Girl Again?’” “The Intern Was Surprised,” “The Cursing Barber,” as well as others. At the end is a chapter entitled, “Hints and Helps For Personal Soulwinners.”

Dr. Wilson was not a trained or ordained preacher. He was a “medical doctor, natural scientist, salesman, businessman, author, preacher, school administrator, and more.” But he viewed sharing the gospel as his “principal business in life.” David Woehr, in his biographical sketch at the beginning of the book, says:

He translated that concern into action by taking advantage of every available opportunity to present the gospel. On the other hand, he placed great emphasis on the leading of the Holy Spirit. Each morning he would earnestly pray for the Holy Spirit to guide him to the particular person whom He had prepared to receive the gospel. During the day, expecting God to answer his prayer, he would take advantage of each favorable occasion to speak a word for Christ. He was not one to wait for some strange, inner urging of the Spirit to move him, for the opening up of an opportunity was leading enough for him.

Always a gentleman and never intrusive or abrasive, it was evident that the love of God motivated him. He was not a salesman with a product to huckster onto some unsuspecting potential client…Each one with whom he came in contact was a person who perhaps needed the water of life. He was a man under orders, ready at every moment to follow the Spirit’s leading and be the instrument by which God would bring a new-born babe into His kingdom.

For the 31 Days writing challenge, I am sharing 31 Days of Inspirational Biography. You can find others in the series here.

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

31 Days of Inspirational Biography: Mimosa

Posted on October 8, 2014 by Barbara Harper

Sometimes people who work in children’s ministries can get discouraged due to the seeming lack of fruit or the fact that they have some children just a few times and then never see them again. Mimosa by Amy Carmichael tells the story of a little girl who was marvelously changed by just a short encounter with the gospel.

When Amy Carmichael was a missionary in India she learned that some little girls were sold to the temples for immoral purposes. Whenever she could, she tried to rescue these girls, to talk their parents into letting them stay with her instead. One such little girl was named Star. She had been with Amy for a while when her father came, bringing her sister, Mimosa, with him, to try to take Star back. He met and talked with Amy and Mr. Walker, the director, and at one point even stretched out his arm to take Star — yet he felt he could not move, that some strange power was preventing him.

Mimosa saw this. Some of the workers had a short time to talk with her, not even time enough to present the gospel completely. Mimosa asked her father to let her stay: he would not hear of it.

Those who had met with Mimosa longed for her: she seemed intelligent and interested. They lamented that they had not had time to tell her more. “How could she possibly remember what we had told her? It was impossible to expect her to remember……Impossible? Is there such a word where the things of the Lord are concerned?”

Something of what she heard about a God who loved her stayed with her. She knew instinctively she could no longer rub the ashes of her family’s god on her forehead, as was their custom. The women in the house thought her naughty or “bewitched” and beat her with a stick. She was bewildered, but she knew God loved her, in spite of all she could not understand of her circumstances.

After she was married at age seventeen, she found she had been deceived by her husband’s family: He was “landless [and] neck-deep in debt.” It was no shame to be in debt: in that culture: “”If you have no debt, does it not follow that no one trusts you enough to lend you anything, and from that is it not obvious that you are a person of small consequence?” But Mimosa’s character could not endure it, though she had never been taught against it. She encouraged him to sell the land in her name, the only piece of land he had that he had given as a dowry, to pay off the debt, and then suggested they would work. He was amazed at such a thing, but agreed. His unscrupulous elder brother suggested they start a salt market and that Mimosa sell her jewels to get them set up: he would take care of it. He instead somehow misused the money. She gave some money to her mother to keep for her, but then her mother would not give it to her when she asked for it: her mother was angry with her over the loss of the jewels that had been passed to her. “Let thy God help thee!” she told her daughter.

Mimosa went out to pray: “O God, my husband has deceived me, his brother has deceived me, even my mother has deceived me, but You will not deceive me…Yes, they have all deceived me, but I am not offended with you. Whatever You do is good. What should I do without you? You are the Giver of health and strength and will to work. Are not these things better than riches or people’s help?….I am an emptiness for You to fill.”

Thus her life went. She was a derision because she would not worship the false gods or engage in idolatrous practices. She worked hard because her husband would not. There were times when she was weak and could not work that God worked in unusual ways to provide for her. She had three sons; then a snake bite left her husband blind and crazy. In a couple of instances she received a bit more information about the God she loved, and she clung to it and to Him.

Meanwhile, Star was concerned for her sister. She felt led to write to her and prayed someone would read the letter to Mimosa. A cousin did read it to her, as often as Mimosa asked him, but neither of them thought to write back to Star, so she and the ladies of Dohnavur were left to wonder and pray.

A mysterious illness which took the life of one of her sons caused the neighbors to torment her further with their words. They felt it was all her fault since she would do nothing to appease the gods. Mimosa replied, “ My child God gave; my child has God taken. It is well.” Though weak, ill, grieving, and alone, she still told God, “I am not offended with you.”

The years followed in much the same way. She had two more sons. The oldest one was taken by the father (who had regained something of his right mind) to another town to work but, to Mimosa’s grief, required him to rub the god’s ashes on his forehead.

She began to long that her children should have “what she had never had, the chance to learn fully of the true and living and holy God and themselves choose His worship.” It would take too much space here to tell how God wondrously worked out the all the details to go to Dohnavur, even, miraculously, her husband’s approval. Her sister, Star, was strongly burdened to pray for Mimosa and discovered later that was just the time when all of this was coming to pass. Twenty-two years after she first visited Dohnavur, she returned. It can only be imagined what she felt as she soaked up Christian fellowship, learned to read, studied the Bible, was baptized. After a time she went back to her husband, determined to win him. He was in a less tolerant caste, yet amazingly he did not put her away. Her life was not easy. “But then, she has not asked for ease; she has asked for the shield of patience that she may overcome.”

“Is not the courage of the love of God amazing?” Amy Carmichael wrote. “Could human love have asked it of a soul? Fortitude based on knowledge so slender; deathless, dauntless faith — who could have dared to ask it but the Lord God Himself? And what could have held her but Love Omnipotent?”

For the 31 Days writing challenge, I am sharing 31 Days of Inspirational Biography. You can find others in the series here.

My Ebenezers

Posted on September 25, 2014 by Barbara Harper

Some of you might recall the line in the hymn “Come Thou Fount” which says, “Here I raise mine Ebenezer — hither by Thy help I’m come,” and you might know that it echoes 1 Samuel 7:12: “Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and called its name Ebenezer; for he said, ‘Till now the Lord has helped us.’” “Ebenezer” means “stone of help,” and it was not uncommon in Old Testament times for Israelites to set up a pile of stones for a monument marking God’s help. You can read more of the background on this story here.

A couple of years ago, Do Not Depart called for some modern day Ebenezer stories: those situations in your life when you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was the Lord who helped you, those seeming “coincidences” that you knew were really evidence of God’s hand at work. I wrote most of this out then and added a little to it. There are numerous encouragements in the Bible to remember what God has done, not only in His Word, but in our own lives: it reminds us of His care, power, and provision, and encourages us to pray, thank Him and trust Him in our current circumstances and for the future.

Here are a few of my Ebenezers:

A move during junior high led to a school that was extremely cliquish. Sometimes people toss that word around lightly when they’re feeling a little lonely, but this school had definite, well-defined cliques with very little interaction between them, and I didn’t seem to be accepted in any of them. I’d had a circle of friends before, so I wasn’t sure what the problem was. I had a crush on one guy in the most “cool” group, but of course he and that group were impossible dreams. In later years I found out it was God’s great mercy that kept me from getting “in” with that crowd as they were involved in a number of things that would have been detrimental to me.

When I was 15, my parents divorced. It had not been a happy home for years, but the break-up of a family still hurts deeply. Besides that, we were moving from our very small town to the teeming metropolis of Houston, I was leaving my friends and all that was familiar and going into the unknown right in the middle of high school, and I was told I would not be allowed to contact my friends or relatives for a while because my mom was afraid of my father finding us and what he would do if he did. I laid on my bed clinging for dear life to Romans 8:28: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” Even though I had only a surface understanding of that verse, God honored that faith and fulfilled His Word. As a result of all those changes I began seeking Him earnestly, God led to a Christian school and a good church, I heard about the college where I would one day attend and find my husband.

After we moved, when we visited the high school I was to attend, I was convinced I could never go there for various reasons. We didn’t know what the alternatives could be, but we saw an ad for a Christian school. We visited and interviewed, and I wanted to go, but my parents could not afford the tuition. One day we drove to the school to tell them I wouldn’t be able to come. My mom went in, and I stayed in the car. The pastor and his wife drove up, saw me, and came over and told me someone offered to pay my way that year, and someone anonymously did the next year as well. It was through this school and church that I got stabilized in my faith in Christ and grounded in His Word.

My parents could not pay for college, either, but through various means God got me through five years at a Christian university. Lots of Ebenezers there! But one stands out: an offering from my Sunday School class at my home church allowed me to buy some necessities like deodorant and toothpaste. Coming back to my dorm room, I heard our hall was having a party and everyone was asked to contribute a dime for ice cream and toppings. I had literally only one dime left. As I gave it, I began to feel panicky about not having any money at all to my name. Then God reminded me of the offering just given. He was taking care of me in big and small ways.

One Christmas Eve morning shortly after our first anniversary, we were driving from SC, where we lived, to visit my family in TX. Our car broke down near Biloxi, MS. It was an old German car called an Opel, and when we’d had problems with it before, it took weeks to fix because the parts were hard to find. I wasn’t sure how everything was going to work out now, how we’d get home and then get back to get the car, etc. My husband found a phone booth (no cell phones in those days), and found a random mechanic with a tow truck in the yellow pages. He explained the problem and then said something like, “By the way, it’s an Opel, so it might be a problem to get parts for it.” The mechanic answered, “No problem — we just bought out the local Opel dealership.”

I could heap up a whole pile of Ebenezers from my experience with transverse myelitis, but I’ll share just one: when I was scheduled for an MRI, everybody kept asking me if I was claustrophobic. I wasn’t sure (nowadays I would say, “YES!”), but their questions were making me nervous. I was told the day before that I would have to be very still for the procedure, which I think lasted the better part of an hour. The day before, in my Daily Light on the Daily Path devotional book, all the verses were about being still. A few of them: Ruth 3:18: Sit still, my daughter; Psalm 46: 10: Be still, and know that I am God; Psalm 4:4: Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still (more are here). Those verses kept running through my mind while I was in the MRI machine, and God kept me very calm: I even dozed off.

For years my husband had to travel quite a bit. At first I was a total basket case beset by fears, but God gradually enabled me to cope. Three years ago I wrote a post about coping when a husband is away, and it has become one of my most viewed posts in 8 years of blogging. Though I inwardly whined and wailed about having to be alone so much at first, I am thankful to be able to testify of God’s grace and help and to be able to encourage other ladies in the same situation.

When my son was planning to be married in OK and we were making plans to drive there and back from SC, my husband planned to rent a U-Haul there in OK to bring back our new daughter-in-law’s furniture and the wedding presents. But U-Haul wouldn’t rent to him because someone with his type of car had sued them once before because of some problem. We couldn’t find any other rental options in OK, so we ended up having to rent a trailer from a local business and take it with us there and back. Everything was fine on the return trip until the trailer blew a tire. I don’t even remember where we were at the time — some stretch of Interstate between cities. We tried calling AAA, but they don’t deal with tires on rental trailers. Thankfully my oldest son had a data plan on his phone and looked up local businesses and found a Wal-Mart a few exits up. But we’d have to unhitch the trailer and leave it while we went for the tire. I remember looking out the window and praying that my kids would see God’s hand in this. We were nervous about leaving the trailer there alone, but we also didn’t want to leave any one of us alone to guard it while everyone else went to Wal-Mart. I was praying fervently that no one would break into it and steal any of my son’s and daughter-in-law’s things. When we went to Wal-Mart, they were just closing their tire service center and didn’t really want to let us in, but we explained the situation, and they did. Meanwhile we got a call from our newly-married son, on his way East on his honeymoon trip: “Dad…did you leave the trailer on the side of the road?” They were passing by just at that time and saw it. We explained what had happened, and they circled back to stay with the trailer while we got the new tire, then we went back, put the new tire on, and went to get something to eat together. Though it’s a bit unconventional to go out to eat with one’s parents on one’s honeymoon, there were so many evidences on God’s hand at work in this situation: if we had rented a generic trailer, Jason would not have recognized it as the one we had and wouldn’t have called about it; if they hadn’t been passing that way at that time, they wouldn’t have seen it; if we had been even a few minutes later, we wouldn’t have gotten into Wal-Mart, and as our other calls hadn’t led to any other options, we would have had to spend the night in town and leave the trailer out on the Interstate all night.

There have been so many other situations…wrecks narrowly averted, running late and coming upon the scene of an accident that might have been mine if I’d been on time, financial needs met right at the needed time, finding something that was lost after earnest prayer about it, praying for wisdom and receiving it, a word of encouragement at just the right moment, help for a task that was too big for me, something from the Word that was just exactly what I needed for the day. I am so thankful for His loving, intimate, wonderful care!!

Help me, O Lord my God: O save me according to thy mercy:
That they may know that this is thy hand; that thou, Lord, hast done it.
Psalm 109:26-27

My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,
    and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,
when I remember you upon my bed,
    and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
for you have been my help,
    and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.
My soul clings to you;
    your right hand upholds me.
Psalm 63:5-8