I’m in tears praising God for His presence, faithfulness, and kindness.
This morning in my quiet time, I read 1 Samuel 24-30 about a key time of David’s development. His “Biggest Issue” was that Saul and 3000 of his best warriors were chasing him to kill him due to Saul’s misplaced jealousy. And at this point, David had already proven unequivocally that he was not trying to kill Saul and in fact was completely loyal to him, and had received Saul’s assurance he would stop trying to kill him! It’s telling that this period in David’s life was what drove his writing a number of the Psalms.
With David’s “Biggest Issue” in the background, it’s really cool that God designed a little life lesson to remind him that He could and would vindicate him at the right time. 1 Samuel 25 contains the story of David’s interaction with Nabal, a rich man who David and his small band of warriors apparently served as a protective guard for some period of time. When David asked Nabal for food for his companions, Nabal refused. And as David was apt to do in those days, he gathered up his 600 troops and went to kill Nabal and take the food had requested, plus everything else.
Nabal’s wife Abigail (an “intelligent and beautiful” woman) heard what her worthless husband had done and that David was on his way to kill him. She quickly gathered a huge feast worth of food and drink and loaded up her donkeys to try to stop David and his men before they found Nabal. She found him, and her excellent persuasive speech and demeanor turned David’s anger, and even prompted him to bless her for her wise behavior and her stopping him from the mistake of taking the matter into his own hand.
Abigail left David and found her husband, who was hosting (and fully participating in) a big party. The next morning she told him what had happened, and the impact of what Abigail had saved him from stunned him into unconsciousness. Ten days later, he died.
In the bigger flow of David’s story, this could be seen as an irrelevant sideshow. But as you read David’s response in verse 39, you see that David saw God’s hand in his life, protecting him, vindicating him, and teaching him.
In reading this story in the bigger context, I realized that God was showing / reminding David that He was present with him, helping him, and could handle David’s concerns without him taking them into his own hands. And David learned the lesson, as evidenced in his next encounter with Saul’s army in the following chapter.
God used this smaller issue to help David deal with his “Biggest Issue”!
It’s not often that God not only gives me some sort of insight into His Word in my quiet time, but then nearly immediately plays it out in my own life. Today he did.
Like David, I have a “Biggest Issue”, as we probably all do. It feels incessant, intractable, and interminable. I often wonder if God will ever intervene, even for a moment of relief. Sometimes there is little hope it will ever go away.
Well, a little while after my quiet time, within four minutes of each other, I received a phone call and a text that instantly resolved two separate big issues I have been struggling with for over 1.5 years in one case, and two months in the other.
My immediate response to God was, “God, how do you do this?” He is so amazing in His power – and His timing! Even to the point that as I was beginning to praise God out loud for these two miracles, the song “Egypt” that happened to be playing on my computer confirmed, “You’re the God who fights for me, Lord of every victory, Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” I can’t express my joy and gratitude!
And then God brought it home for me like he did for David. “I’m here! I’m able! If I can handle these matters in a moment as if they were nothing, I can handle your ‘Biggest Issue’, too. It’s just not time yet.”
Our class decided it would be cool to change our tack a bit and do a Bible book study instead of our typical topical studies. I’m not sure they’re still glad they did because we (I) are taking quite a bit of time going through, and I’ve gotten a bit too technical in the presentation. I think we’re doing well with a better balance of background, application, and velocity in Chapter 2. Here are the notes divided into sections.
In our class times together, passages and themes from the book of James kept coming up and we decided it would be cool to change our tack a bit and do a Bible book study instead of our typical topical studies. I’m not sure they’re still glad they did because we are (I am) taking quite a bit of time going through, and I’ve gotten a bit too technical in the presentation. You’ll notice as we get close to the end of chapter 1 that I started doing better with that, and I think we’re doing quite well with a better balance of background, application, and velocity in Chapter 2 (next post). Here are the notes divided into four sections along with a bonus (no extra charge!) simple worksheet that I created for my kids since we are studying it with them in parallel.
James Introduction (Pt. 1 of 2) – March 13, 2016 – AAC, 42 min., 21MB
BTW, if you’re interested in the discussion in the introduction about the actual name of the author of the book of James, you should also listen to the first eight or nine minutes of the Palm Sunday lesson, since that topic came up at the beginning of our time together that next week.
James Introduction (Pt. 2 of 2) – March 27, 2017 – AAC, 39 min., 19MB
This lesson was written for the men of our class while the ladies were away celebrating Mother’s Day. It highlights mistakes made by the first three kings of Israel and how we can both see ourselves in those mistakes and how we can avoid them. Not to end on a negative note, the fourth king considered is Hezekiah and how we can follow his example of trust in God even when we face the impossible.
I was listening early these last two mornings to the message by Henry Blackaby I mentioned a few blog posts ago. Wow what a great great message. A statement he made (@39:22) really hit me:
“The greatest tragedy of our day is unbelief.”
As I listened to his message, and especially that statement, I couldn’t help think of our Bible study series from 2007 titled “Another Look at Faith”
Why can we not believe that “all the promises of God in Him are yes, and in Him amen?” (2 Cor. 1:20)
News: Kathryn Scarlett Bingham. Due 4/21/07. Born 2/22/07. 3 lbs. 11 oz. Mother and daughter both doing very well.
We shared with very few people the extent of the challenges we faced with this pregnancy. But the high (low) points include being given a better than 50% chance of major birth defects, ruptured amniotic sac and therefore extremely low fluid levels with constant leaking, and multiple emergency hospital visits, being sent home from one being told to prepare for an imminent miscarriage. The summary prognosis at that time was less than 10% chance we would ever deliver a live baby, and if we did, a less than 5% chance she would be normal.
Each time, the doctors’ recommendations would begin with, “Well, you’ve already told us that you will not terminate this pregnancy, so that takes care of option number one. …”
We rented a fetal heart monitor so that we wouldn’t have to go to the doctor or hospital each time Trenna started bleeding heavily – to check and see if this was finally the time the doctors told us would come.
Many people were praying for us, and God gave us grace that carried us through. In December, something happened that no one can explain. Our perinatologist, the lead physician at the largest baby factory in the US, told Trenna, “This looks like a completely different pregnancy.” From that time on both he and her OB would say things like, “You are a walking miracle,” “You are proof of the power of prayer,” and last week from the perinatologist, “You rank up there among my most amazing cases!”
To be honest, I’ve never wanted to be a miracle patient.
Trenna was leaking nearly constantly, reminding her over and over that things weren’t OK. Certainly she bore the heaviest load. Each visit to the hospital showed just enough fluid for the baby to develop, but not enough to do any further investigation about the birth defect – so we could at least know what we were facing. We finally just decided that God was doing a work in us that required complete patience to the end. We would find out in His time. But the perinatologist assured us that he saw no “soft markers” of any kind in the high resolution sonograms that would indicate any concern of birth defect.
Every time she would go in for a visit with either doctor, the first thing out of their mouths would be, “I can’t believe you’re still pregnant.” When we hit 20 weeks, Trenna’s OB talked with us for the first time about the possibility of having a live baby – a discussion he never expected to have. He told us the next hurdle was to make it to 30 weeks, after which the baby could come at any time and have a great chance of survival.
That date would be critical, because it came just about a week before I was to leave for a two and a half week long mission trip literally on the other side of the planet. Knowing that we would be clear by the time I left was a big relief.
Once we made it to 30 weeks there was one final step. The baby needed to flip and assume crash position. When there is little fluid it was unlikely to be possible for the baby, and therefore the doctor started talking to Trenna about a c-section. Trenna really really did not want to have a c-section, so we and many others began praying about that. Wednesday 2/21 was Trenna’s visit to the perinatologist to see if the baby had flipped. She was very disappointed to learn that it hadn’t. It looked inevitable that she would have to have a c-section.
One of the things I’m learning about God is that He not only loves to do the impossible, He often does it in impossible ways. The next step in this story is a great example.
I called Trenna from Cambodia that evening (her time) and she was discouraged. Later she began feeling like she had the flu or something. She tried to sleep, but couldn’t. And the leaking increased dramatically. She called her OB office and found that her OB was the one on call. He called her and told her to wait until morning and come in if she didn’t feel any better. At about 5AM or so she began wondering if she was in labor. She called her friend Lisa a little before 6AM, who told her she had better go to the hospital just in case. She called her friend Elmarie and asked her to take her to the hospital and for her husband Pieter to pick up the girls.
Immediately Trenna began to feel very strong and painful contractions. Elmarie picked her up and they began the drive (in AM rush hour traffic) to the hospital. Trenna was curled up in a ball in the passenger seat having strong contractions every two minutes. Dear Elmarie sped, ran stop lights, and went through packed intersections honking to get there, but they finally made it at 7AM.
At first, the nurses weren’t very concerned. They had her try to fill out paperwork. One commented, “You seem to be in a lot of pain.” Finally, a nurse checked her and then shouted, “She’s fully dilated!” Finally some action! Trenna caught her to tell her that the baby was breach. Then things really started to fly!
Trenna’s OB’s shift ended at 7AM, too, and he was nearly to his car when they paged him. Although he didn’t have to, he returned and met her in the OR, ready to do an emergency c-section at 7:20. Before he had time to do anything, he realized the baby was coming out – breach – and there wasn’t time to do anything about it. (Neither had there been time to give Trenna any pain medicine of any kind. Not even a Tylenol!!!) He told her to push, and three minutes later Kathryn Scarlett Bingham was born.
No c-section. Breach. Our OB. We couldn’t have imagined and never could have planned the sequence of events that had to happen to make it possible, but God knew, and He orchestrated it to the minute.
Trenna recovered nearly immediately and was released Friday afternoon. She’s doing great!
I returned from the mission trip early and surprised Trenna Saturday evening.
When Scarlett was born, the doctors noted three new “soft markers” that could indicate the birth defect. Even after all of this, we still weren’t free of that possibility. They did the blood test and told us we would know by early the next week.
God had given us a promise years ago that applied to this situation, as well. During all of this time we had clung to the promise by faith, and God had given us hope through it. For some reason, the last few days of waiting nearly did me in. I guess being severely jet-lagged didn’t help, but I just could not seem to bring my thoughts and anxiety captive. It was a very very difficult few days.
But Trenna did much better.
Finally, early Wednesday evening, we received the call from the hospital. The test results came back and indicated everything was normal! It was the most important and greatest news I have ever received!!!
We are going to celebrate what God has done and have already had many opportunities to encourage others about God’s faithfulness and His ability to do the impossible. I pray that our experience will prove God’s power and reality to those who don’t believe. I pray that our experience will open up new doors of ministry to those who are in similar dark times and need encouragement and faith. I pray that our experience will renew my walk with God, my commitment to live by faith, and my effectiveness in ministry.
I’ve said it to a few in private, but need to note again that this situation has been the most difficult thing I have ever been through, but I am thankful to God for it because of the work that He has done in my heart through it. I would never have gotten to where I am today spiritually any other way.
Thanks to all who have prayed for us.
All glory to our mighty and merciful God!
Related topics include: Nuchal translucency AFP Down Syndrome Trisomy 21
(Preface – the idea that “the just shall live by faith” is one that has the rare honor of being declared no less than four specific times in Scripture: Hab. 2:4, Rom. 1:17, Gal. 3:11, and Heb. 10:38.)
As some of you know, we’ve been facing some pretty hefty challenges over the last four or five months. The trials have forced me to live by faith, a condition expected in Scripture, but not common in a culture where everything is going so well in all aspects of life.
This forced me to face the fact that I have not had to live by faith in a long, long time.
Why is that?
Well, I guess it is because I live in one of the more prestigious, well-to-do counties in the most prosperous country in the world, and everything has been going just fine. I have a decent (well, actually, compared to the rest of the world, ludicrous) income. We live in a nice house (we think it’s way too small, but most of the world’s population would think it was a mansion). We have everything we need and all but the most extravagant things we desire. And even the infrequent difficulties we face are common elsewhere.
So when we faced the challenge and realized that we had not felt any great need at all to live by faith since the last (distant) challenge we had seen, I had to ask myself the question, “How does a Christian who lives in the U.S. with few real problems keep living by faith?”
An honest question, but one that probably disgusts God.
I prayed about it and was given at least one answer. (Maybe just one is all that’s needed.)
When I asked God, “How can a Christian live by faith when you everything is going fine?” He said immediately and clearly, “What makes you think everything is fine?”
Good point…
“…when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” Luke 18:8
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