“Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” Genesis 3:1
The way it usually works with Satan is that he tries to make us second guess what our Father’s purpose is for our lives. Hath God said was his question to Eve, and those three little words packed such a powerful punch that it literally separated us from the One Who truly has our best interest at heart.
Recently a friend of mine had written about the prophet Jeremiah, and just hearing about him immediately brought a verse from that book to my mind. You see, in the first few years of this disease, the enemy practically had me eating out of his hand… he had me questioning God’s love for me. I was pondering that maybe God was bent on making me miserable. LIES! ALL LIES! Did I mention my disease led me to ask some hard questions of God, and asking those questions guided me straight into His arms. So I was a relatively new Christian, all the while being totally confident in, and assuming that God very soon would touch my body and make me physically whole again. That wasn’t God’s plan. It’s now twelve years later, and my Muscular Dystrophy is still here. In fact, it has slowly progressed. That brings up something else… Many people believe that when they surrender their life to Jesus, there will also be a free “Get out of Jail” card tucked inside the flap of their new Bible. Just the opposite is true! You now become a threat to the kingdom of hell. Anyway, this verse gave me a new perspective, and that new perspective is PURPOSE…
“If you have run with the footmen, and they have wearied you, then how can you contend with horses? And if in the land of peace, in which you trusted, they wearied you, Then how will you do in the floodplain of the Jordan?” Jeremiah 12:5
God spoke to my spirit when I first read that. It was a turning point for me. This verse had made me entertain the thought and really understand that God allowed my illness for the purpose of making me strong – so I wouldn’t sweat the small things. I needed to be strong in my crisis,so I can help someone in their crisis; I needed to be strong so that I wouldn’t fall apart when the going gets tough. As I write this, I am thinking back to when I first started blogging, and one of my friends commented on the strength of trees on the edge of a forest, how they are forced to take on the stress from weather and wind, they are the strongest and once fully grown, are used to be strong for those behind them that are yet growing and weak (If you’d like to read this, here’s the link… A Friend’s Comment Lifted Me Back Up).
This truth has been my message ever since. I’ve won a hard ruby of wisdom in these past twelve years: When God wants to make a person, He puts him into some storm. The history of No one is complete until he has been out into the surge of the storm and has found the glorious fulfillment of the prayer “O God, take me, break me, make me.” Amen?