2 Corinthians 4:8-9 We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;
This week has not gone as planned. Yes, has not gone according to MY plans… I know…It’s just not about me!
I have a grandmother dying in the hospital. She is 99. In 14 days she will turn 100. The doctors however have only given her 5-6 days to live. The family is making arrangements for those days to be filled with love, care, comfort and peace, but I know that as a faithful servant of Christ, she is ready to see face to face The One she has loved and served all these years. After all, we are talking about a woman who taught adult ladies Sunday School until she was 92 and quit then because she said “they had to be tired of listening to her by now”. I doubt it. I’m not. My one regret is that I have only known her a few years, and do not know her more, but what I do know is her Lord has never forsaken her.
I was to go on a mission trip to Paraguay in September, and due to some health issues, that is not going to be able to happen at this time. I must take some time to get my health under control before flying to a third world country to have a heart attack! I even tried to manipulate it by going to a doctor (before my appointment with the heart specialist later this month) who I knew was big on missions to see if he would tell me I could postpone this whole heart doctor thing for a while and go. After he told me no…I knew it matched the still small voice in my head I was trying to ignore, but praise His Holy Name, even when I don’t listen the first time, He has never forsaken me.
Both of these got me to thinking. In this summer of my plans giving way to God’s timing, and this week of it just not being about me…neither is the issue of never being forsaken...it just not about me.
It is not because of me that I have never been forsaken, or because of Miss Norma either. She is a great lady, and has loved and served the Lord a LONG time, but it is still not by anything she has done that the Lord has never forsaken her. Why? All over the Old Testament the Lord DID forsake his people, because they forsook Him in disobedience, idols, pride, and sin. I’m quite sure she and I both have waded into those ourselves, yet the last time we see God forsaking anyone is in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark as Jesus hung on the cross. Matthew 27:46 says, “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Christ took on our sin, and suffered the worst death He could experience, separation from God, being forsaken, so that you and I will never have to.
What an incredible blessing. How precious to know that a Savior came and was forsaken so that by trusting in Him for our eternal salvation, we might never know what it was.
That is why Miss Norma, you, and I can all know that even when things do not go the way we had them planned, when they are just plain hard to understand and harder still to endure, those of us who have trusted Christ as Savior and Lord of our lives can live with the promise that we are NEVER FORSAKEN.
Do you have that assurance?
