Grief, Unanswered Prayer, and Restoration

This year many people have faced unusual and challenging circumstances. Today, I heard from one of them. One of our followers wrote to us and asked how God can be real when we pray over and over for years without answer. I happen to have walked through this very question all year as I battled resentment around unanswered prayers. Earlier this year I lost my dad unexpectedly to a complicated death. This caused me to sit back and ask the Lord, “when will this pain be over?” “Did you hear me for the past 16 years?” “What were you thinking?” Often, we cry out to God, and He answers. But, sometimes it feels like He does not answer. Sometimes His answers are quiet. Sometimes they are hard. Sometimes they are not what we want, so it feels like He doesn’t answer. This leads us to ask how God can be real.

When my dad passed away, it felt like years of prayer did too. For 16 years I begged the Lord to heal my dad from his battles with mental illness and addiction. I asked for restoration. When he died, my trust in the Lord wavered. I learned that God hadn’t answered my prayers the way that I wanted, and it made me doubt that He was real. After all, how could my good God take my dad before the restoration I had begged Him for? Surely God didn’t answer me that way. Instead, He must not exist. Could God just ignore me? I expected my prayers to be answered with the healing of my dad and a beautiful life watching him as a grandfather. Instead, he was gone. In an instant. No restoration to my knowledge. So, perhaps, maybe no God?

Because he died before I got to experience his healing, I closed myself off to God. I didn’t open my Bible for months unless it was for church or work. My personal communication with the Lord felt like a desert. I refused to dive into God’s Word believing it would bring pain, and the Lord would make me work through my despair. In my mind, God either was cruel or not real. It is funny the realities about God we can so easily craft. God is real and kind.

God is kind. He did not force me into grief. When I finally faced the reality of my unanswered prayers, the Lord quietly walked beside me. He simply gave me comfort. He didn’t teach me a lesson in mocking anger like I anticipated. He allowed me to set the pace with my grief, my processing, and my newfound trust in Him. He showed me that He heard every one of my prayers.

It took time, but I finally processed my unanswered prayers and saw that they were in fact answered. Though the answer was not what I wanted, God knew that my dad needed to be called to Heaven. First, I learned that my dad’s death was an accident. This was a gift to me. I had always felt immense fear that my dad would take His own life, but the Lord graciously brought Him home before that point. Second, I found out that my dad had been struggling financially much more than I knew. When he passed away, I discovered he had just run out of money. He would have been destitute - increasing his emotional and physical struggles. Of course, I thought that God could have fixed that rather than call him home, but God knew better. God removed the burden of money and gave Him perfect provisions in Heaven. Third, my dad was battling addiction at the time of his death. It was affecting his life secretly and causing him to isolate. When he died, God restored him through death and ended his addiction. So, although my prayers were not answered as I wanted, they were answered.

When God called my dad home to Heaven, He rewrote my dad’s legacy. Instead of a broken human filled with despair, my dad was a broken human that was set free. His battles were completely removed, and he became perfect and complete in Christ. Then my dad’s death was used to tell others about Jesus. This would have been the greatest joy to him. Although he struggled a lot during his time on earth, he had a gift of evangelism. This gift continued through his memorial service. I stood in front of hundreds of people and told them that my dad loved Jesus. I spoke about how Jesus is God who came to earth as a man, lived a perfect life, and died to pay for our mistakes. Jesus defeated death by rising from the dead and offers every one of us new life if we simply accept it. My dad amidst his struggles understood the Gospel, and His death is being used to proclaim it over and over.

Overall, I learned through my grief that every prayer is answered. Sometimes we must pause and really look to see that answer though. I had to be willing to hear the answer. My dad is in heaven now, and my broken relationship with him is healed. I did find restoration. God did answer my prayer. My dad is never going to hurt again. He will never struggle. He will never feel like a failure. I will never again feel like I wasn’t good enough to fix the situation with my dad. Instead, I will remember the wonderful times I had with him. I will tell his grandchildren about how funny he was and how dearly he loved them. I will tell them how he is restored.

Every prayer was answered and all conflict was resolved in February when my dad entered the gates of heaven. Jesus looked at him and said, “well done.” “Well done” because my dad had in his broken and confused life chosen to follow Jesus. For that reason, I will declare my dad’s legacy as this, “Broken people are never enough, but Jesus is.” Like all humans my dad struggled. His life was messy, which makes the fact that He knew Jesus even better. All the mess my dad made Jesus fixed on the cross. Nothing my dad could do would fix his mistakes, but everything Jesus did restored them. My dad’s struggles after giving His life to Christ did not affect His salvation. The Lord knows that our world is filled with sin, and we will never be perfect. Jesus doesn’t expect perfection from us even after we accept His gift. He simply wants our love. Jesus will make us more and more like Him as our love for Him grows. And if we struggle our whole lives, like my dad, Jesus’ love will never waver.

I know that I will sometimes struggle with why God couldn’t have restored my dad on this side of Heaven. But, I now see that God knows everything and knows what was needed to heal my dad. God knew that there were specific people who needed to have a reality check when my dad passed away. God knew the people who needed to be in the church and hear the Gospel at the funeral. God knows who needs to read this and be reminded that even the most broken people can take a breath of relief knowing they don’t have to fix themselves. My dad didn’t, Jesus did. Jesus is enough. He is the Savior, and He answers every prayer.

 Written By: Elizabeth Keith

Christian Hoarding

Hoarding isn’t just a grotesque curiosity for TV voyeurs. It’s a real and present danger for Christ’s Church.

 C.S. Lewis once said, “The safest road to hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” In today’s prosperous America, we’ve made hoarding just as easy, and the danger to our souls is just as real.

A new article in The Atlantic by Alana Semuels lays out the grim details. In 2017, Americans spent $240 billion on jewelry, watches, books, luggage, telephones, and related communication equipment—twice as much in inflation-adjusted dollars as in 2002. During the same time, the population grew only 13 percent. Spending on personal care products also doubled.

To hold all this stuff, we’re supersizing our houses and storage facilities. Last year, the average size of a single family home in the U.S. was 2,426 square feet—a 23 percent increase from 20 years ago. Meanwhile, two decades ago there were 26,000 self-storage units around the country. Today there are 52,000 of them!

All this acquisitiveness, Semuels says, is because online retailers such as Amazon have made buying stuff so easy, and because the global economy has made stuff so cheap. I’m sure that’s partly true, but I think the cause is deeper.

Too many of us, and this includes Christians, have bought into the lie that the pursuit of happiness necessarily includes the pursuit of stuff. “We are all accumulating mountains of things,” says Mark A. Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. “Americans have become a society of hoarders.”

And what about the harm of all this sludge to our souls? I’m uncomfortably reminded of Jesus’ parable of the rich fool in Luke 12. This man had received an abundant harvest, and what did he do? He built bigger barns to store it all and said to himself, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But what did God say to him? “Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” The man couldn’t even enjoy all his earthly treasures.

And just so we wouldn’t miss the point, Jesus administered the sobering coup de grâce: “So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.” The problem wasn’t that the man was rich—many of the Lord’s choicest saints have been abundantly blessed with the world’s goods. It wasn’t that he had stuff, but that his stuff had him, and that he wasn’t rich toward God.

Are we, who have been blessed far more abundantly than most of God’s servants around the world, as rich toward God as we need to be? I cannot tell you an amount that you must share if you don’t want to be a Christian hoarder—that’s between you, the Lord, and perhaps a wise Christian friend or financial adviser. What I can tell you is that, if our giving doesn’t hurt at least a little bit, if it doesn’t curb our seemingly insatiable urge to hoard, then it probably isn’t enough.

And in this time of material abundance, a lot of worthy churches and ministries face a chronic shortage of funds. Why is that? According to nonprofitsource.com, Christians today give only 2.5 percent of their income; during the Great Depression, it was 3.3 percent. The average giving by adults who attend Protestant churches in America is about $17 a week, and 37 percent of regular church attendees and evangelicals don’t give any money to church.

There are all kinds of Christians in this world, but the category “Christian hoarders” doesn’t exist in God’s economy. Let’s check our hearts, and our wallets, and set aside more treasure in heaven.

Written By: Eric Metaxas

Source: BreakPoint

Until The Whole World Hears

Jesus said something to his disciples that seemed an impossibility until it happened.

It was Tuesday afternoon and Jesus had just left the temple gates. He was walking past the stone walls that were used to construct the temple when he told his disciples, “Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down” (Matthew 24:2). 

Some of the stones Jesus was speaking of weighed as much as a 747 jet. The disciples were confused because, to them, what he was suggesting seemed physically impossible. It also seemed spiritually impossible. Why would God allow his dwelling place on earth to be destroyed? 

Yet, in AD 70, Jesus’ prediction came to pass. 

Jesus took his disciples to the Mount of Olives, where he told them something that seemed an impossibility, until now. 

Jesus told them dark days of tribulation would occur in the future. Then he said, “This gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14).  

Jesus said that after the gospel was proclaimed to the world, to all nations, at some point the end would come—and Jesus always keeps his word. 

Why is 2030 being discussed as a significant year?

CNET published an article in 2019 that is worth considering. I read several other articles that agree with their thinking as well. The year 2030 is the worldwide goal of several nations and companies. 

Melinda Gates runs the Gates Foundation. She and Alibaba CEO Jack Ma are optimistic that they can help bring about the international cooperation needed to accomplish the goal. The article said, “The hope is that global collaboration will help connect every adult to a ‘digital network’ by 2030.” 

I’ve never been one to speculate about the end times. Scripture makes it very clear that no one knows the day or the hour when Jesus will return (Matthew 24:36). But, Jesus said that when the gospel had been proclaimed to the world, the end would come. 

Everyone who has access to the internet has access to the gospel message. Could it be possible that Jesus’ promise to his disciples on the Mount of Olives will be accomplished because of the internet? 

Until The Whole World Hears

Books that speculate on the “last days” or “end times” have been around for a long time. That subject was keenly important to Christian preachers and authors in the years that followed World War II. That was a time when many were convinced Christ’s return was imminent. 

Yet, we are still here. The gospel has not yet been presented and proclaimed to “all nations.” 

Our ministry is an internet ministry. We have felt for some time that our digital ministry has the potential to reach far more people for the Lord than we could have accomplished from a pulpit, platform, classroom, or series of books. The internet is the most potent mission field we have ever seen. 

It has been our privilege to provide many Christian leaders of many nations with tools to share biblical truth with their people. We would never speculate or proclaim that we know Christ is returning soon. We can say that, for the first time in human history, we can see that it could be possible, maybe even in our lifetimes. 

I have written and taught Bible studies for almost forty years. This year’s Bible study is titled Until the Whole World Hears. It is a series of studies that can be described as “last words” from several biblical authors. There are twenty lessons from Scripture because I think the only words that should create our theology about the end times should be those we find in God’s word. 

The lessons are mostly instruction about how God wants us to live, as faithful witnesses throughout our lives. They are the words of Jesus, Micah, James, Paul, and John that God made sure to preserve for us as Scripture, his perfect truth. They are lessons that you and I need to consider if we want to serve the Lord and his purpose in this world. 

I have created written and video lessons that anyone can receive. Simply go to FoundationsBibleStudies.org to sign up for the study, choose Until the Whole World Hears and click the “sign up for free” button on the checkout page (this is where you will create your login if this is your first study). If you have signed up for other studies, you will be redirected to sign in to your account and then hit the sign up button. Once a video releases, you can access it whenever you want, and it will stay in your library indefinitely.

Will the world be presented the gospel in our lifetime?

It is an interesting thought. More importantly, it is a thought that should prompt God’s people to live the kind of lives that our biblical authors encouraged. That is why I wrote this year’s study, and I hope you will want to study along with us. 

What if Melinda Gates and others will be able to connect the population of our world in the next decade? What if all of us, who present God’s word to people via the internet, are able to help accomplish Matthew 24:14? 

Interestingly, the articles, blogs, Bible studies, and more can live long past us on the internet. And God’s truth is unchanging.  

The Bible studies I write today will still be valid truth one hundred years from now, if the Lord tarries. 

I don’t know what God has planned for the world. Jesus didn’t know when he would return, and I know I have no idea. Nor am I claiming that he must come back as soon as the entire world has access to the internet. 

But, I do know this: Jesus never makes a promise that isn’t fulfilled. He can’t speak something that isn’t truth. 

And Jesus said, “This gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14).  

Sign up, study, think, and pray

I would love to work through these important “last words” with all of you this year. I hope you will consider being a part of this study. 

I believe God wants the Remnant, those who are set apart for Christ, to be strengthened in his word. I know God wants us to put feet to our faith and share the gospel message with our culture. It isn’t hard to recognize people’s great need of the Lord when we consider our culture and our world. 

The study is free to anyone who would like it. It costs quite a bit to produce, so if you can make a donation of any size to help reimburse our costs, we would be grateful. 

Our goal is to encourage and inspire a digital awakening and help God’s people live the gospel truth in their daily lives. We were called to change the world. God wouldn’t have called us without equipping us for that call. 

Is Matthew 24:14 possible in our lifetime? 

I think so. 

Please, God, help us to live like we think so.

Amen?

Written By: Janet Denison

Source: Foundations With Janet

A Prayer For Restoration

“Come, and let us return to the Lord; for He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up.” - Hosea 6:1 NKJV 

The moment sin reared its ugly head, in the form of a snake, in the garden of Eden in Genesis 3, brokenness entered the scene. Undoubtedly, we live in a broken world full of broken systems, situations, and people. Sin leaves a ripple effect that continues year after year, generation after generation. It affects every individual. You cannot walk through life unscathed.

This is no different for Christians as it is for non-Christians. Matthew 5:45 says, "…He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." Just because we are Christians doesn't mean we are exempt from trials and heartache. We Sometimes we've chosen a destructive path. Other times, God makes us dwell in darkness (Lamentations 3:6). It’s not uncommon to forget God can still restore you when you're in the muck and the mire of a trial. Our situations sometimes cloud our view of all God is. 

I don't know what you may be facing today, but I want to remind you God is still in the business of restoring! He can still restore a broken relationship, shattered marriage, limp body, prodigal child, tattered heart, and scrambled mind. With man, it is impossible, but with God, all things are possible (Matthew 19:26). God doesn't always restore the things we have in mind. Instead, He restores our peace, joy, hope, and contentment, despite our uncertain situations. Regardless of what God chooses, He still restores!

In addition to this, let's never forget God has the final say. When He speaks, the storm is silent, the seas part, the lame are healed, and the blind see. He has the authority over everything because He is the creator of all things. If you're going through a tough season, keep pouring your heart out to God. He is not weary of your tears. He knows the words you cannot seem to utter. He sees the pain no one else can see. But also remind yourself God can still do exceedingly abundantly more than you can ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20). 

Let's pray:
Dear Father,

Thank You for Your fatherly care for us. Father, nothing is hidden from You. You know what each one of Your kids is going through. Father, when we are in the thick of a trial and feel too broken to be of use, would You remind us You still work all things together for good? Remind us You have good plans for our lives — that You are our hope and future. Please hold all our broken pieces together and keep us close to You. 

Father, You see everything. You see behind every closed door. You hear every whispered comment. You know what no one else may know. Please be our advocate. Please fight for us when we cannot fight for ourselves. Please be our shield and our protector. Please restore to us the years the locusts have eaten (Joel 2:25). Father, I ask that You would make us glad according to the days in which You have afflicted us, the years in which we have seen evil" (Psalm 90:15). I ask that if we are in a season of weeping, that joy will come in the morning (Psalm 30:5). Father, I ask that You would restore us to the joy of our salvation and uphold us with your generous Spirit (Psalm 51:12).

Father, we need You. We are lost without You. We know that apart from You, there is no good in us. Please do not forsake the works of Your hands (Psalm 138:8). the Father, help us to be patient during the season You have us in. I pray we will look more like You in everything we do and say. Thank You for loving us. Thank You for being a God who restores. Amen! 

Written By: Christine Perry 

Source: Crosswalk.com

Work For The Lord

Work for the Lord

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.” - Colossians 3:23 NIV

The drawer precariously teetered as I put my daughter’s laundry away. Let’s just say I was not thinking positive thoughts about her as I pulled crumpled piles of shirts out to re-fold. Out of the corner of my eye, a colorful card she had attached to her mirror caught my eye. It read:

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart …”

It reminds her to connect the motivations of her heart to the goals she sets in life, and I was reminded to go easy on her for the crumpled-up piles of shirts.

The motivation behind our motions matters. In all things, we are called to work hard for the glory of God. When we are timid about our talents and doubtful of our dreams, God calls us we to have confidence in his purposes. If he sets out to accomplish something in our lives through the gifts, dreams and talents he has planted in us, there is nothing that will stop him. Thoughts like, I can’t do this, and this is impossible can steal the full life God intends to bless us with.

Sometimes I fear I miss the point of the full life Jesus died to give me, and instead allow the enemy to kill, steal, and destroy the good things God is working in my life. (John 10:10) I find myself complaining about how hard motherhood is, instead of embracing the gift I prayed so long for… to be a mom! My full calendar can cause a flood of anxiety, but I pray daily for community!

God is calling us to a higher mentality and work ethic by using the analogy of slavery in Colossians 3:23. When Paul wrote this letter, slavery was not the oppressive form we rightly fight to end, but a state of servanthood. It did not discriminate ethnically, nor was the servant to be degraded by their master. In fact, slaves were often freed after ten years. People could choose to work off a debt to a creditor via servitude.

Paul’s prose challenged both slave and master to see past themselves and work for the Lord, in fairness and justice. God is judge. He knows our motives. When we work for the Lord with all we have, the dreams we chase after and talents we hone lead us to “more than we can ask for or imagine.” Our goals and dreams do more than accomplish Kingdom purposes, they sanctify our souls! We are not only blessed by the favor of God on this earth, but rewarded in heaven! 

Our actions on this earth do not affect our eternal status as believers in Christ. We cannot, in any way, earn our salvation by anything we do on this earth. But God notices our obedience and hard work… and he faithfully blesses and rewards us, here and in heaven.

In the grit of every journey, God encourages us. Jesus, in the Parable of the Talents, told of the servant who wisely invested his Talents: “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share in your master’s happiness!” (Matthew 25:21 NIV) It’s a joy to work for the Kingdom of God. 

If we are working with all of our hearts, for God’s glory over our own, he will fully achieve the purpose he has willed for our lives. Trust him, it is good.

Written By: Meg Bucher

Source: Crosswalk