When your faith doesn't change your circumstances...

Faith.

 

Really what's the purpose for it?

 

(My bag of mustard seeds)

Having faith and God's will don't always mesh together. And recently, I have wondered if they even have a relationship at all.   In the Bible, Matthew 17:20 talks about having the faith of a mustard seed and you can have the ability to move mountains.  If you haven't seen a mustard seed lately, it's so small and really easy to miss.  I know... I KNOW when praying for Galen's results to come back negative that I had at least the conviction of a mustard seed.  I'll even be so bold to say I had confidence bigger than that.  Maybe the size of a watermelon. So why didn't it change the outcome?  Faith can move mountains, but not change the diagnosis of cancer?

 

This is hard to describe because while I prayed for healing, believing in the power of God to repair Galen's chromosomes, I can truly rest in His will for allowing Galen and I to go through cancer.

 

But that being said, I wanted to know, why do I need faith if it doesn't change the outcome?  What does it matter really?  Why should I have faith?  I put myself out there and I don't regret being as bold as I was because I still believe in my God's power to heal.

 

But God why do You put verses in the Bible like Matthew 17:20?   Does it ever intersect with Your will?  Does a person's faith EVER change the outcome in our lives?

 

First of all, it takes a change of mindset.  My God is not my genie, a servant of mine, or some mystical object with powers that I own.  I don't have three wishes, and I don't go to Him demanding things be done.  And even if I did, it doesn't get me anywhere anyway.   My God is a father and anyone who is a parent knows that while parents love to bless their children, there are also necessary times to say no or not yet.  As a child, I remember feeling like my parents were holding out on me.  Wasn't that the first sin in this world anyway?  Eve was deceived by the serpent to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because she believed God was holding out on her.  What a mess that caused.

 

Anyway, as a parent, I can see the bigger picture of why no is necessary.  No, you may not have another bowl of ice cream.  No, you may not stay out as late as you want.  No, you may not go to an unsupervised party. No seemed like the most unfair statement I'd ever heard and now as a parent, I am thankful for a lot of the no's I heard as it spared me from a lot of heartache.  And that temporary pain I experienced was nothing in comparison to a longer pain I could've felt had my parents allowed me to do whatever I wanted.  This isn't a blanket statement.  It doesn't fit every situation.  However, I do see the parallel and believe it's relevant to what I am going through right now.

 

I've said it already, but being a Christian doesn't exclude you from hardship, in fact the Bible talks frequently about finding joy in the midst of our pain, our trials, our disappointments, our bad news, and even our husband's diagnosis of cancer. Romans 5:3 -4 says, "Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;

 

⁴ perseverance, character; and character, hope." I won't speak for you, but this is very unnatural... we should glory in our sufferings? If you continue on in Romans you find this verse also, "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. " (8:18 NIV)  Our sufferings are not worth comparing to the glory we will get later?  What?!  Not going to lie.  That's tough.

 

 

 

My attempt during this whole time is to spend time in God's Word every day.  And as I read His Word, my heart is not only open to His Word, but I am biting at the bit to answer my question.  Why does faith matter?

And then in my devotional time, I come across the book of Hebrews which talks about men and women whose faith I greatly admire.   

³⁵ So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded.

³⁶ You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. ³⁷ For,

“In just a little while,
    he who is coming will come
    and will not delay.”

³⁸ And,

“But my righteous one will live by faith.
    And I take no pleasure
    in the one who shrinks back.”

³⁹ But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved. (Hebrews 10:35-39).

Faith isn't about getting what I want, and it isn't about manipulating the Creator of the Universe into performing my desires.  Faith is believing in something greater than my circumstances.  Faith is saying there is hope even in the midst of my husband's cancer.  Faith is saying there is something greater than my biggest fear.  And if I have to choose between fear and faith, I'd rather CHOOSE faith.  And I chose faith because of the blessing that it comes with.

I read verses like Proverbs 16:20b where it says, "blessed is he who trusts in the LORD." 

 

So what is the blessing?  I'm guilty of wanting to call healing my blessing, when actually God may call blessing by the name of peace.  I am thankful for the tranquility that has filled my heart in these past few days and weeks.  I have an inner calm that I cannot explain.  It doesn't mean I like what we are going through, but I do not spend my nights playing the "what if" game.  I could go there, but I don't, because of the peace in my heart. 

 

"And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:7).

 

You have my permission to call me a bold faced liar if you thought I was holding this together on my own.  Because I am not.  A couple of weeks ago, my heart was so heavy, so burdened and so overwhelmed.  The day after we found out about Galen's cancer diagnosis, I have no better way to describe how I felt other than saying I felt like someone had run me over with a truck.  I wept and I wept some more.  I finally turned on some worship music. I didn't even have the strength to sing the words, but the powerful truths swept over me and the tears stopped.  For the entirety of the day, I had to have the music on because when I didn't, the tears and the heaviness returned.   It was a reminder that when I keep my eyes on Jesus, I won't be overwhelmed by the waves of worry and fear that tries to consume me.  John 10:10 says, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."  The fear is very real, but my God is greater than any fear I may face. 

 

So faith gives me peace, but there is also this part of me that says if I believe God raised Jesus from the dead, then why can't He heal my husband of this cancer? Well, He can.  Will He?  I honestly don't know.

 

But I feel called to continue to pray, believing that He will restore my husband's body.  A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my call to pursue my fast even after we got confirmation that the biopsy was positive for chronic leukemia. After those ten days, and "that phone call" God didn't release me from fasting. I felt God ask me to change it in a couple of ways.  One alteration was for me to get up every morning to spend time in God's Word and to spend time in prayer.  While I continue to pray for Galen's healing and remind God that He has the power to do it, I don't believe that's my purpose for spending time with Him.  Mark Batterson, author of The Circlemaker, wrote it this way, "I learned we shouldn't seek answers as much as we seek God. We get over anxious. We try to microwave our own answers instead of trusting God's timing... If you seek answers, you won't find them, but if you seek God the answers will find you."

 

I don't know if God will choose to heal my husband.  But He can.  So in the meantime, while I wait, for however long He chooses, I will ask God to change me to be more like Him.  As I seek His face, may He change my heart. 

 

And lastly, what if this miracle is 100 days in the making?  Forty years in the making?  I can't give up now.  There is too much invested.  And like I said before, I'm going all in on Jesus because my return on investment, whether here on earth or when I get to heaven, is going to be more than I could fathom.

 

"Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him."  (James 1:12)

 

And I'm banking on it.