From A Step Further, J.E. Tada
I sometimes shudder to think where I woould be today if I had not broken my neck. I couldn't see at first why God would possibly allow it, but I sure do now. He has gotten so much mre glory through my paralysis than through my health.
the idea of God getting glory through my suffering makes me mildly happy--probably would more so if at the moment my pain medication was not waning, and throbbing aches are shooting through arms, legs, hands, feet...and if my chest was not being crushed by intercostal rib irritation making each breath a stiff, painful activity. I write each of the passages that I put on this blog in a notebook...followed by Bible verses I read, and sometimes prayers. When I originally wrote that passage in my notebook, it delighted me. So I know it will delight me when my pain is again under more control.
It takes real humility and self-denial to put our pleas for healing before God and then willingly leave the answer with Him.
Do you remember being a child, and asking for something? Anything? It was nearly impossible to not ask and demand and bounce and wiggle and do all the other childish things that we did as children...It is hard to ask God something and wait for an answer, whether it is healing or what job to take. Sometimes it is all about giving God glory and waiting, sometimes it is about giving God glory and picking the job oneself. The main thing is to worship God and try to wait patiently, and ask Him for help with the waiting.
Job 40:1, 7-8. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job+40&version=NIV God understood that when Job demanded why, he was really asking God to be accountable to him. It seems so innocent, but in a sense, to insist such answers from God is to set oneself over God. How absurd! We, like Job, often think God is not treating us fairly. We act as if there were some imaginary court in the sky where God must answer to something called "fairness". But what we forget is that God Himself is the court; and He invented fairness. What made me think that even if He explained all His ways to me I would be able to understand them?
This idea was horrifying to me...but as I mulled it over, I think it is the attitude involved too. Am I being disrespectful when I sometimes ask, with tears on my face, why? I don't think so, and I don't think God is offended...I do not feel disquiet in my soul. And it is true that likely if God gave me the answer, or any of us, we wouldn't understand it. When we try to explain to a two year old why something is, rarely do they comprehend what we tell them...even if they listen all the way through, which they hardly ever do. Something will distract and they miss the point we are telling them. And for that matter....Jesus Himself asked God why He had forsaken Him. I think the point of Job there was showing how little we could understand anyway. I think we are free to ask why, but we still may not get an answer.
When we meet Him face to face, our suffering will have given us at least a tiny taste of what He went through to purchase our redemption.
But to all who did receive Him, who believed His Name, He gave the right to become children of God. John 1:12
For from His Fullness we have all received grace upon grace. John 1:16
And He said to Him, "Truly, truly I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. John 1: 51
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