Never Too Late

(In recent weeks at my church, God has been doing amazing things in restoring the lives of many people who have walked away from Him and are returning to their first love.  This blog post is an old one for me, but I've updated it and I dedicate it to those who feel like huge failures in their Christian life.  My prayer is that it gives you some hope for your future. God is able - and He will!)

"You've ruined your life."

Those are the words of my father, almost 40 years ago, when he learned that I was pregnant.  I was 19 years old, single and a college student.  I don't blame him for that thought.  I was the girl "least likely" to get pregnant in her freshman year at college.  If people from my high school had been asked to predict my future, they would have said that I would become a minister - not a single mom.

The reasons I found myself in that situation aren't really all that important anymore.  I took full responsibility for the decisions that brought me to that place, and with the support of a wonderful grandmother, I gave birth to that child and made a life with her. My father died when she was six months old and never got to see what happened next.

Was he was he thinking that I'd never finish my education, that no decent man would ever marry me, that I'd never have a career, that my relationship with God was over? I wonder.....

In retrospect, I think his words were a blessing in disguise.  They spurred me to prove him wrong.

Why Pray?

Each week, my husband and I host a small group of folks from our church in our home as we participate in a video Bible study. This semester our study is “Intercessory Prayer” by Dutch Sheets.  In our lesson last week, we talked about the “Why?” of prayer.  If God is sovereign and all powerful – isn’t He just going to do what He wants to anyway?  Why do we need to pray?

     Without trying to re-teach Dutch Sheets’ lesson, I’ll summarize it to say that God gave man dominion on the earth, making him God’s representative here.  When Adam and Eve forfeited that legal right in the fall, Jesus bought it back for all of us.  So now we have the legal right and responsibility to invite God into our situations.

     My husband gave this amazing example to make this much more understandable. It’s just like renting a house.  The landlord owns the house and his name is on the deed, yet because you reside in the house, he has to have your consent to enter the house.  When something in the house breaks or malfunctions, it is your responsibility to bring it to the attention of the owner so he can put things right.  He wants everything to be maintained properly in the house, yet he needs you to inform him of the needs and to give him permission to enter your home to make repairs.

      The Bible says that the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. Just like a landlord, He retains ownership but gives us the stewardship of the earth.  When something is wrong (and there is so much wrong here) it is our responsibility to make those needs known to the only one who has the right, power and resources to fix them.  When you think about prayer that way, it seems a lot less like a religious exercise and more like an awesome interaction between the God of the universe and a person who He values as having authority to intervene in a situation. 

     

Over the Circumstances

     If you have read much of my blog, you might wonder about where the title Over the Circumstances originated.  One influence was something that I heard long ago from my pastor at that time.  Davy Jo Hissom was an amazing man of God with a great sense of humor who lived life with joy.  He once said that often when he asked people how they were doing, they would answer, “I’m doing ok, under the circumstances”,  to which he would reply, “Well, what are you doing under them things?”  Then he’d always say that he knew that phrase wasn’t good English, but he wasn’t teaching English!

     He was right.  We were designed to live a life that is victorious regardless of what is happening around us and to experience a joy that is not dependent on the current situation. The Bible calls us "overcomers", not "defeated ones".

     The other reason I chose this title was that it’s a lesson that I have learned from my own life.  I had an amazing, happy childhood – secure in the love of my parents, raised to know God, blessed to have many material advantages and interesting experiences.  I enjoyed good health, did well in school, and had good friends. Then within the space of fewer than 3 years, I lost both my mother and my father to cancer. Then because of my own choices in life, I became a single mother which put me in a position of financial and emotional difficulty for quite some time. Even marrying a good man of God did not insulate me from pain and problems.  We have had our share of those as most people have experienced.  Once, someone remarked that they thought I’d had a hard life.  It took me by surprise because even with all the events that I have listed, I’ve never really felt that my life was hard.  I knew others who had struggled with as much or more than I have.  I just thought of all that as just – life.

      When the amazing love of God chased me down and brought me back into relationship with Him, I began to learn the lessons of how to experience joy in the middle of negative circumstances.  Relationship with God puts all things in perspective and I began to see that the day to day events of my life are not all there is to my life.  God has a plan that I cannot begin to understand, but He teaches me through everything that happens in my life – both the things that I can control and those for which I am not responsible. 

     I’m not saying that I spend every minute of every day walking on clouds or that I never feel sad or disappointed; it’s just that I’m not on an emotional roller coaster anymore. When the Bible says, “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” (Romans 8:28)– that’s where I find the key.  If I am “the called” according to His purpose and I pursue that first, then I don’t have to be concerned about all the little things that happen day to day.  I know that ultimately, God will use those things to accomplish what He has purposed for my life.

     2 Corinthians 4:17 says, “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory”.  Sometimes the very things that try our faith are the things that are building us up to be more effective Kingdom people. If walking according to our calling is our primary focus, then this is what we should desire. 

     I wish I could say that I’m always the perfect model of faith regardless of the circumstances in which I find myself.  I’m not.  However, I have found that when I remember this principle in the middle of all that life throws at me, I am most content.  I’ve also walked through situations where God has made Himself very real to me precisely because of what I am experiencing and while I would never want problems, I would rather have Him in the problem than never know Him at all.  I have problems, but the problems don’t have to have me. 

Ask Me Every Day

Several people have told me how much they like the stories in my recent “Lessons from a Baby” series.  There is some background to this continuing saga that I want to share because I think it will be an encouragement to someone.

My son and his wife (Josh and Brittney) have been married for six years.  Both of them have always wanted to be parents and the desire to have a family was in each of their hearts years before they met and married.  Unfortunately, there is a fertility issue and doctors have told them that their only hope of conceiving a child is through in-vitro fertilization (IVF). While they considered this, they also were trained and licensed as foster parents, hoping someday to adopt a child through the foster system because private adoption is far too expensive.

In April of 2015, a sweet baby girl was placed in their home.  Though social workers knew that Josh and Brittney only wanted to foster a child that could be adopted, they persuaded them to take her.  I watched them become parents as they cared for that child. Through all the typical first-year stages, they loved her and helped her grow and develop, all along taking her for visitations to her birth father, knowing that she would probably leave them one day.  That sad day for all of us came in February of 2016 when she went to her father permanently. 

Later in 2016, they were able to attempt IVF with the help of a sweet friend of Brittney’s who was willing to go through the grueling process of being an egg donor for them.  Sadly, that one expensive attempt was not successful.

On one of the early days of January 2017, Brittney wrote something on her Facebook page about the heartbreaking year of 2016 with the loss of the foster baby and the failed IVF attempt.  Her faith amazes me sometimes.  In the middle of all that sadness and disappointment, she was still trusting God to build their family and she shared that hope in the same Facebook post.

The evening that I read her post, I was sitting in my recliner, just thinking about their situation.  I was thinking that I really wished that God would bless them with a child.  I wasn’t even really praying – just mentally wishing.  Now I don’t know how you hear God because I believe He communicates with all of us uniquely, but I saw in my spirit – just like seeing giant capital letters in my mind, “ASK ME EVERY DAY”. 

I have prayed about this situation many times, but not necessarily every day and maybe not with as much dedication and earnestness as I could have.  So, when God tells you to pray about something every day – you pray about it every day! 

Four days later I was sitting at the desk in my home office, working on something or another, when Brittney sent me a Facebook message and asked me if I had time to talk.  They had been contacted by social services and had been asked to take a newborn baby girl.  They had to make a decision by the next day and she wanted to discuss all the issues surrounding this child with us and with Brittney’s parents before she and Josh decided what they wanted to do. Four days later!

Obviously, they decided that they wanted to pursue the adoption of this precious baby and as of just a few days ago, she is now and forever, officially an ELLIS!

I’m not telling you that if you pray for something every single day that your answer will come in four days or a week or a month or a year.  I am saying that we should not give up in prayer. Matthew 7:7 says, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you”. (KJV) I’ve read some articles that look at the meaning of this verse in the original Greek and they suggest that a better translation of this would be, “Keep on asking and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking and you will find.  Keep on knocking and the door will be opened to you.” (NLT) 

All I know is that the Holy Spirit prompted me to pray in this way and the result for us is a blessing in our lives every day.  Being a grandmother, watching a little one grow and learn and change again, is teaching me new lessons about God and our relationship with Him constantly.  That’s why so many of my recent blog posts have revolved around her.  I still have much to learn about faith and prayer, but I am so very thankful for the lesson I learned this last year. I think I’ll let Josh and Brittney get her through potty-training before I start praying in the next baby!

(By the way, I asked Brittney to read this and give her permission for me to publish it. She agreed to let me share it, but she told me that I didn’t have to wait to start praying in that next baby! Feel free to start praying in agreement with me. 😊 )