NOVEMBER 26 “WATCHING THE ONE WE LOVE SUFFER”

For sake of argument, let’s say David wrote this Psalm(choices are David, Ezra or Daniel). David writes, “I am worn out waiting for your rescue”. Well, if David is sick and down why wouldn't God come to the rescue right away? “When will you comfort me?” There is not even any comfort for David either. Unless you have suffered or watched others suffer than this scripture means nothing to you yet, until one day you experience this situation. I have experienced this watching my wife suffer. She had one ailment, that was very bad, went to emergency was prescribed the wrong drugs, after a few days of that she went to another doctor who prescribed a new medication that she ended up being allergic to and have a horrible reaction, fever, swelling, her skin literally looked burned from the high fever she carried for 3-4 days. I prayed for her every night as she lay there crying, often in pain. My powers were impotent, as far as I could tell. I prayed for her in the morning, her fever raging, no difference and then headed over to church for morning prayer, as is my custom. I sat there at church perplexed about even praying. I was angry and confused. This was a severe illness and if not any other day or time, this is when we desperately needed God to help us and He wasn’t. And so I would rally my faith, pray, go to work and then “believe” that when I got home she would be better and when I arrived home she was worse! We decided it had peeked and we needed to take action. We went to Urgent Care, 3 hour wait, they sent us to another. We arrived at the other Urgent Care and they would not accept our Insurance, they recommended another Urgent Care and that one was closed. And as far as the Emergency Room, that is where she was misdiagnosed and we were given a $500.00 co-pay. We ended up back home and I prayed again, to no avail. I woke up in the morning, prayed again and headed off to prayer at our church. Once again I sat there dumbfounded and angry. David writes in verse 84, “how long must I wait”. David goes on to write in verse 87, “but I refused to abandon your commandments”. This is the temptation that comes when we face suffering and have no relief from God. Those that don’t serve God expect nothing back from God. We who serve him, obey his commands expect that when things get bad, He will intervene and when He doesn’t, when He remains silent it is an awful struggle we go through and the temptation is “why then, even follow your commands”. I know this, I will show much more empathy, in the future, towards the individual that tells me they are not serving God anymore because they watched their wife (or anyone they loved) suffer and die of cancer while they prayed everyday and “believed” God to heal them, but they just got worse, suffered more, cried in pain, etc…..” This is very hard to watch and then go to church on Sunday and act as if everything is “okay” between you and God, when it is not! If the Christian is known for having a flame of fire inside them then I would describe these events as the enemy unleashing a serious fire hose at our fire. I have seen the most on fire Christians go through something like this and walk into church completely lifeless, not even knowing why they are in church that morning. You will never know the depth of your allegiance to God and Faith until you watch someone suffer you love or you yourself suffer and have no relief and hear absolutely nothing from this God that you serve. It’s rough to go through but we must all come to the place these 3 men came to. We know David endures through, we know Job said, “though he slay me yet I will praise Him” and we know Peter said, “Lord to whom and where would we go?” and each of us in our journey will come to a crossroads where we will have to make a decision to either; come to the same conclusions or not; if we choose to accept, we move on, if we choose not to we now embark on a journey of a spiritual unraveling of faith that leads us to a slow, spiritual decline and death.

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