When a woman is pregnant, she is given a “due date.” How often is that baby born on that exact date? When the baby doesn’t come, does she decide that means she no longer wants it? Does she give up on it ever coming? No, of course not.
And yet, that is what we do to God, when He gives us a promise. It puts us in a place of expecting, but for some reason we think that promise should be delivered in our timing instead of His.
And we are so good at getting upset with Him for taking too long, to the point of either giving up on it, or trying to make it happen our way.
There are all kinds of examples of people in the Bible who were given promises by God, and it took a lot longer for those promises to take effect than what the person thought it would. Some people waited patiently, and some people tried to do things their own way, making a mess of things.
- The Israelites, who were led out of Egypt by Moses, ended up wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. They themselves did not go in and receive the promise of a new land. It was their children who went in to inherit God’s promise and become the nation of Israel.
- The example that seems to be the most common is Abraham and Sarah. In waiting for God to give them the promise of an heir, Abraham had sexual relations with Sarah’s maid. She conceived, had Ishmael, who was not the heir of God’s promise to Abraham, and we are still dealing with the consequences today.
- What about Noah? He was building an ark at a time where water had never fallen out of the sky. It took 100 years for him to build that ark, and to have the promised rain to fall and flood the earth.
- Even though David was anointed as King of Israel, for many years he was running for his life from Saul, before he actually sat on the throne as the king, fulfilling God’s promise to him.
Have you ever noticed when it is God’s time to 
make good on His promises, He often moves in “suddenlies”? Well, it is sudden to us. He has been busy behind the scenes the whole time, doing whatever needs to be done to keep His promises on track to give to us.
Remember the disciples in the upper room? They were told to wait until the promise came to them (Acts 1:4). And when it came, it was definitely a “suddenly.”
There are people all around you who have experienced God’s “suddenly”; people who have faced a disease or infirmity such as back pain for 5, 10, or 20 years who suddenly get healed. Couples who have been infertile for many years suddenly find themselves expecting a child. People who have needed a job or been in financial hardships suddenly get the job they need.
What about those who don’t get healed, or don’t get pregnant, or don’t get that dream job? I have been hit smack in the face with that question several times.
One time was when our 3 year old daughter had bone cancer, going through nine months of chemo and had her leg amputated. The most recent was when that same daughter died, due to heart damage caused by those chemo drugs that saved her life 26 years earlier.
Believe me, I know the line, “She is healed. She received the ultimate healing and is in heaven now.” Let me just say, that is not usually a comfort to most people who are in the freshest part of deep grief, especially a parent who has so wrongly buried their child (regardless of the age of the child).
When I found myself in that horrible place, I had to ask God once again about this issue of faith and expectation. My daughter had lived 
through multiple life threatening health issues in the last year and a half of her life that should have killed her. It was only by God’s miraculous hand she survived several of the things she did. The goal of her medical team was to get her healthy enough to be able to receive a heart transplant, should a heart become available for her. I believed with every fiber of my being that God was going to either miraculously heal her heart, or she would get that transplant. I had seen miracle after miracle of things she lived through that should have already killed her multiple times.
As sick as she was, I felt very blindsided the night my daughter’s heart just gave out and she left this earth and transferred to her eternal home.
One day in my deep sorrow and anguish, I asked God about this. He reminded me of Hebrews chapter eleven verse six, that “without faith it is impossible to please Him.” In other words, faith brings Him pleasure. He let me know that my faith had brought Him a great amount of pleasure. I realized at that point, that faith is more than just saying what you want and getting it because of making a demand on God and His power. Faith is based on my relationship with God.
Up until that point, I had always seen faith as something I had to somehow reach out and get a hold of. I had to grow that and get more faith by reading my Bible enough, hearing enough messages, finding ways to be around God’s Word to make my faith grow. And it felt like I could just never have as much of it as I needed. And yet at the same time, I knew how much faith I had in God to heal my daughter.
God began to change my perspective on faith. In the Complete Jewish Bible version, you will never see the word faith. It is always translated as “trust”. So Hebrews 11: 6 reads, “And without trusting, it is impossible to be well pleasing to God, because whoever approaches him must trust 
that he does exist and that he becomes a Rewarder to those who seek him out.”
For me personally, I find it much easier to trust, then to have faith, if that makes sense. I’ve always felt like faith is something I have to conjure up. But trust is something I can just surrender to, and release myself into it. And that is where the relationship comes in. My faith in God is based on my trust in God’s Word, His faithfulness and His goodness. That means, even though my faith did not receive what I was believing for, my trust in God was rooted in my relationship with Him, so my faith was not shaken.
I am in good company. Hebrews chapter eleven is pretty much a list of many people who did not see their faith in the promises of God manifested on this side of eternity.
I have continued to expect God to keep His promises to me. And God has continued to remind me of His goodness, His faithfulness, and how much I can trust Him, with things like the birth of my next granddaughter almost one year exactly after losing my daughter from this earth. He used my sons, who would do things like surprise me with flowers, or send me incredibly encouraging text messages. Since that time, God has also birthed a ministry in me, flowing through me in such a way that I wrote my first book, followed by three more books in the same year!
God truly is good all the time. If He has given you a promise, keep expecting! Keep walking in faith that pleases Him. Trust Him! The answer to your promise can happen any day! Or it might not happen at all this side of eternity. But it WILL happen.
Over the years, we have done a variety of things. We have rented a movie for the kids and huddled in the basement eating pizza with all of the lights off so no one would come to our door. We have been a part of different harvest festival “alternatives,” and for a few years we actually handed out candy with special Halloween tracts (which my youngest son loved doing because he saw himself as a missionary.)
Easter as Christian holidays and know it’s about Jesus. Halloween…not so much. My big issue is Christians who have tried to “sanitize” Halloween by making a Christian version of it with their Fall Festivals and Harvest parties. That’s not redeeming the holiday! That’s NOT taking it back or stealing it from the devil. That’s us hiding our light under a bushel so we don’t have to face the darkness! We just pretend it’s not there… 
You might be interested to know that the music to the old hymn Amazing Grace was once a worldly song sung in the pubs by a bunch of drunks. John Newton put Christian lyrics to it and it became a gospel classic. But no Christians ever complain that we shouldn’t sing Amazing Grace because it was originally an ungodly tavern song sung by heathens. (But then that’s maybe because so many Christians have no issues with bars and taverns any more. But I digress…)
personal “Shatter the Darkness” party on Oct 31. Got my white Christmas tree lights to outline the front of my house. Got a large Styrofoam tombstone that I’m going to break in two with a big poster that says “Jesus Defeated Death.” I’ve got a couple of little internally lit pumpkins and I’m going to put a sign by them that says “Jesus is the light in my heart.” 
…I’m going to pass out lots of candy, I am going to give them a CD copy of my salvation message for kids called the Gospel Pumpkin, and tell them each, “God bless you!” as they leave. I have a male manikin at the Fire Center that I’m going to bring home, dress up like Jesus, and stand him visibly in my dining room window with one of the signs. I also am going to place a boom box outside in the yard and play songs like “God’s Not Dead He’s Surely alive” by the Newsboys.
doing carnivals or “Trunk or Treat” events and such, telling me how we have to be a light in the darkness and offer an alternative to our unsaved neighborhoods, please hear me. The body of believers I am connected to has a very effective carnival every October 31st.
would never see him again on this earth. All the hopes, dreams, and plans for your daughter, both in the next few months and for the rest of her life are now gone forever. You will never see their smile again, never hear them laugh, never be able to give or receive a hug, or hear them say, “I love you.” They will never sleep in their bed again, never again sit at your table for a meal, never celebrate another birthday…it goes on and on and on.
Now, under that heaviness, how do you feel being told you should be honored that your child died a martyr’s (or a hero’s) death and that it is an inspiration to others? You might graciously tell them thank you, and your mind knows that is true, but your heart is too shocked and heavy to be able to accept the truth of it. It’s easy to tell a parent something like that, and see it clearly when it is someone else’s child, but chances are actually pretty good being told something like that so soon after your own child’s death (they haven’t even had any funerals yet) will make you internally angry. Sadly, you are not being shown compassion – which is acknowledging and validating how you do feel about your deep and intense pain that your child is no longer on this earth; not telling you how you should feel. You are also not being allowed time to process the nightmare itself that has totally shattered your world. Instead, you are being “pumped up” by those around you who have never experienced the death of their child, being a cheerleader in a way that makes you feel like you are supposed to glide right on past the trauma and be grateful for the good fruit that will come from it in the lives of others.
nightmare they cannot wake up from, does not bring comfort to the raw and deep grief of those parents, no matter how noble their child’s death was. The moment of the death of our child plays in our minds over and over and over again (whether we actually saw it, or we are imagining what our child’s last moments on earth were like). So to have someone remind us, even if it was meant to encourage us by telling us how noble of a death it was, can actually be very painful, as we are already fighting seeing that image in our heads. We end up being somewhat forced to put on the thankful face people think we should have, while crumbling on the inside.
who we are with that part of us now gone. But our children are our legacy. They are our future. They are supposed to outlive us, get married, bless us with grandchildren, be one of our best friends in their adult years… It is unnatural and so very wrong to bury your child. Working through the grief of the death of a loved one can take months, or even years. Working through the grief of the death of our child (no matter their age) takes a lifetime.
doing something wrong, you cannot have joy. That includes not doing something you know God has told you to do. Disobedience brings guilt. Guilt brings condemnation. The Holy Spirit does not bring condemnation (He brings conviction) but guilt does. When we are feeling guilty, joy is going to be missing from our lives. This seems pretty obvious here in black-and-white, but not so much in our day-to-day living. When we repent and receive forgiveness, that guilt is washed away. When we are in obedience, there is a fullness of joy that comes with it. Our conscious is clean before God, and that lightness in our hearts has a natural result of joy.
If we are walking in faith, child-like faith that our Daddy is taking care of us and taking care of what we can’t see, no matter how bad the situation is, we will be in freedom and joy. I am handing it all over to Him, and releasing it to Him, which means it is no longer my burden, and it is up to Him to take care of and fix. Child-like faith doesn’t mean I am going to get my way. It means Hs is going to do what is right in the big picture, and believe me when I say I know first-hand how extremely painful that can be at times. But God has never entered a battle and come out the loser. He is always victorious, so I know that in Him, I will be victorious also, which gives me joy! It releases in me a child-like awe and wonderment. I am free to go about my life, believing things are going to be okay, which brings joy.
We all know great relationships take work. It takes a purposeful effort to spend time together, whether it is a person, or your Father in heaven, because life gets busy. So spending time in His Word to hear from Him, spending time in prayer talking to Him, and spending time in worship, which brings His very presence into our personal world, are all ways to grow in your relationship with God. And the better our relationship with God, the deeper the joy it releases in our lives.
Then there is the issue of thankfulness. We know thankfulness lifts our hearts. Many of us get so stuck in the rut of living, that we forget how blessed we are. Taking time to sit and list out the things we have to be thankful for, both in our minds and on paper, brings joy to our hears because it opens our eyes and gives us a renewed revelation of the good things God has brought into our lives. Focusing on the negative brings darkness. Focusing on the positive brings light. Light shatters the darkness and heaviness, allowing joy to break through.
it was a huge relief! I don’t have to manufacture or make sure I have joy (based on my love or my happiness in God) to have strength. My strength comes from knowing He is crazy in love with me! Wow! (Remember Zephaniah 3:17, how He is rejoicing over us with gladness and singing?) His joy over me is what makes me strong. His joy about me creates joy in me. Now there is a seed of hope to plant in your life for sure!
How many of you like oranges? Imagine I have an orange and start peeling it. It smells so good! I bite into a section and you can see how juicy it is. Do you want a piece? Wait a minute… I also have some candy. Would you rather have a piece of my orange or my candy?
right away, but keeps you from God’s blessings, and may even be harmful for you in ways you can’t see at the time.
