A Collection of Thoughts
A friend sent this to me as a form of encouragement. These are my quotes. She complied them from e-mails I had sent her. I wrote these a while ago... also forgive any typos, as I am sure there are some.
By the grace of God I am going to start focusing on praying that God would get me off these meds, (of course ultimately for healing too).
The purpose of life, as you know, is to bring God glory. The question we should be seeking to answer everyday is not how to fulfill our lives here on this earth, but how can our lives bring God glory and when we get that answer we must do it or else we should not call ourselves Christians. And this I think is the hardest thing to do, in fact I would say it is impossible, but that which is impossible for man, is possible for God.
The bible is an instructional guide on how to glorify God.
A blessing is anything that draws you closer to God and curse is anything that distracts you, pulls you away, or causes you to become lukewarm.
The hardest thing to do I think is to surrender and submit everything to Christ and letting Him fill up your life with His will, whatever that may be---whether that means marriage or no marriage, children or no children, sickness or health, wealth or poverty, and so on.
As for your question I think that we should request everything from God. We should depend on God for everything. We should seek Him for everything in life. God wants us to make requests to Him. Prayer undergirds everything in the christian life.
God is so sovereign.
I find God's glory more in the things that appear bad. Like if I see some one in a wheel chair, or living in a way that the world would pity them, I just think of God's plan and sovereignty and how He is the one that knows what is good and we are the ones that are deceived. I think these people who appear to be suffering are closer to reality than those who are not. The suffering is usually what awakens people from this dream world that we lose ourselves in. When I see people like this I think the path to God is prepared, this person either already has God or at least the path has been cleared of the many deceptions of this life and they may be just that much more prepared or open to God if He chooses to save them. We are so deceived. The problem now for me at least, is fighting against the deception and not giving in to it. The spirit of God is willing, but the flesh is weak.
...That being said it is also the only thing right now that is making cry out God and depend upon Him so it's good in that respect.
Anyway, I liked the story you sent out. It's really awesome! When I finished it though I thought about all the sadness and suffering that God and filled up these peoples lives with. It makes me think about numerous years they suffered being apart, just for God to use them to bring glory to His name. I think when people read stories like this they may overlook the long-suffering and misery these people faced and focus mostly on what God accomplished in bring them back together. The anguish that lasted for decades is sometimes diminished by the fact that it only takes a few seconds to read. The length of a single day can become torturous when they don't know if the other is still alive or where they are. Imagine what a day was like for these people and then multiply it by thousands and this was their life. These people are Romans 9, where God is the potter and they are the pots and God can do anything He wishes with the pots to bring glory to Himself. The thing we have to work on as believers is not only to be prepared to be used by God however he sees fit, but more importantly be spiritually prepared to submit to what God has called us to do or go through. If that means destroying families just to bring them back several decades later or even something worse then we must be willing to submit to that. These trials may seem impossible and sometimes they will be, but that which is impossible for man is possible for God. Amen.
I've been through enough to where my not being worried seems to me to be more from not caring (throwing caution to the wind, what will be will be type of attitude), I guess in a way it is like giving up. I am giving up and you know what I just realized that this could very well be from God. See, I was thinking that maybe God is working through everything to help me not to care so I wouldn't be worried, but more than that I just realized that everything that I have been going through has helped me to give up on trying to control my life, which I think is essential to surrendering to God. I just realized that worry is an issue with control. You want to control circumstances that are outside your ability to control so therefore you worry about the outcome. This is biblical, who can add a day to their life by worrying about it? But anyway my lack of worry is not from my trust in God and that is something I need to work on.
If we want to look at this spiritually God says "I even I am he and there is no God besides me, I kill and I make a alive, I wound and I heal and no one can deliver out of my hand."
And I think one of the things I need to learn from all of this is that my body is rubbish, it is here for but a moment and whatever God wants to do with it that needs to be okay with me otherwise my body and health becomes an idol that perhaps one day may prevent me from taking risks for the sake of the Gospel. Where is our faith? And not faith that God will keep us safe from earthy harm, but faith that God has saved us from eternal destruction and in the end that is all that is suppose to matter, whether I die tonight, am in pain and discomfort for 50 years or live comfortable for a thousand years. But see there is our flesh, our innate instinct to flee from pain and death and sometimes this may conflict with eternity.
Most of us can't see how fulfilling and sustaining God is and therefore we feel a lack or incompleteness and therefore we turn to our flesh (something tangible, something in front of us) to fill the void in our lives.
You know Brian Hesson's mentor once said "A sinning man stops praying, a praying man stops sinning" which is basically true, for the most part. The more time you spend immersed with and seeking God the less you will sin. Put God on the sidelines, where you can still see Him, but you are not involved with Him, do that for a week or a month and see how easy it is for you to sin.
As far as my health I am still waiting on guidance from the Lord, I think the outcome of all this is that I am going to learn how to earnestly, honestly seek the Lord's heart without all the fluff that we sometimes have the tendency to put into our walk.
I am thinking about doing some topical studies of stuff I have been thinking about and things I struggle with, like how to not make your life an idol and not grow weary, patience. Our lives being idols is a big topic, so unless something else comes up I will start there.
Today I almost didn't go pray because I feel like nothing changes, well at least nothing seems to get better, but I reminded myself that that is not the point of walking with Christ and not the point of prayer.
You know, I love Paul who suffered so much in the flesh to the point that he despaired of everything in this life and he says that was God's purpose in his sufferings that he would despair of everything in this life. We hold on to this life too much. Jesus said whoever loves his life loses it and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
Look to Job, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord! Now it's easy to say yes, that's right, but how many of us can be in Job's position and not only say that but truly mean it with all our heart? Think about it what if everything and everybody you loved were destroyed, all your plans and hopes--gone, you have nothing and nobody on this earth to live for (except God of course), could you still have the same hope and joy in God and your eternal salvation? If yes, is your life reflective of that attitude right now? Do you live as if all that stuff doesn't matter and all you need is God?
First off, we are suppose to be sad and mourn. And Job is an example because he still had a strong relationship with God. His hope in God was not for the physical, but for the spiritual.
A lot of times it is our flesh that groans and desires. And remember it is our nature to feed the flesh, but as Christians we have been reborn into the spirit, and therefore we should be working toward feeding the spirit and working away from feeding the flesh. God desires worship in the spirit, we can't commune with God in our flesh, God is spirit. Now the world gets a crazy grip on us, on our flesh, and even deceives or weakens our spirit (at times). I think Jesus knows the fight we are in for...I just think because of our flesh we need to be careful how we walk, making sure we walk in the spirit.
Finally I think I mentioned before how I consistently pray for my salvation, and for God to keep me, to hem me in. My prayers are more along the lines of "keep me on that straight and narrow path, keep me from sin, etc." Things that I equate with being born again. So to pray for fruit I see as a way of praying for your salvation.
Now I also think you should have a confidence in your salvation, and our confidence should come from our daily seeking of God and salvation, but I think more of the time than not we take our salvation for granted and assume it is a given, when I don't think any of us should assume it is a given (because perhaps we're deceived), and I think a purpose for that is because once we start thinking it is a given our human nature takes over and we may become complacent or even comfortable in our walks and with our sin.
With all that said, I think it's good to take a step out of our Christian worldview from time to time. We need to remind ourselves that constantly thinking about God and praying each and everyday is not a common thing, and the fact that we do this is a testament of the Holy Spirit. Don't lose touch with the world and how most of the world never prays, never thinks of God, they only think of themselves and totally forget about God and to them anything different (like the way we live) is so weird.
Anyway, it comes down to the fact that God being our first love and motivation should supercede everything else.
Yet, with God all things are possible.
We are to pursue God and Godly attributes will come.
I do believe that God heals and that He can do that through people and their prayers.
But then I realized that I do believe going through a trial and coming out of it will make you stronger (after you come out of it) but while you are going through it, it most likely will make you weaker, if it is a true trial, because that is the point, I think.
And so the story of Job ends with him being restored.
