Believing the truth

How many of us truly believe we are loved by God? Disasters come upon us… losses, heartaches, ruined relationships or ill health. Do we pop up from these experiences believing God loves us when we don’t feel in his favor?

Yet he presses on through our self-doubt and crushed spirits at this time of year saying, “Rejoice in the Lord always! And again I say, Rejoice!” (Phil 4:4)

I love the book of Job. Disaster fell swiftly upon Job’s lavish, wonderful life. He lost everything he loved: his home, family, health (to the point of boils) and reputation.

His well-intentioned friends even strung him up publicly, saying such loses were his own fault as he must have sinned against God for such turmoil to overtake him.

All the while it was his stellar faith that was being tested in fire, the outcome of which was that everything was restored to him in greater measure.

In Job we are reminded to be patient in light of our struggles and wait on the Lord.

We can trust in the fact that we were made perfectly in his image and that he loves us dearly as his own sons and daughters (Psalm 139). He looks upon us in the same way we gaze upon our own children, with love that is beyond comprehension.

We must trust that all will be restored, if not in this life, then the next… and in greater measure! That is faith – why we pray and must always trust in his perfect will for us. We are called to trudge on through all the disappointments of life, doing good, pondering the heavens for God coming to restore us in every way.

Keep in mind the circumstances and wonder of Jesus’ birth, the tragic horror of his death and his triumphant resurrection over the grave which has forever changed history and can change our distressed hearts too, if we trust.

Traditionally, at this time of year, I read an Advent devotional by Henri Nouwen.

I love Henri. His writing is deep like a well which invokes the feeling of an old friend sitting on the end of your bed speaking to you of hope in time of need. He understood heartache and pain and wrote from the depth of an enlightened soul.

“Life is ‘a little while’ (John 16:16), a short moment of waiting. But life is not empty waiting. It is to wait in full expectation. The knowledge that God will indeed offer us a ‘new heaven and a new earth’ makes the waiting exciting.

“We can already see the beginning of the fulfillment. Nature speaks of it every spring; people speak of it whenever they smile; the sun, the moon, and the stars speak of it when they offer us light and beauty; and all of history speaks of it when amid all devastation and chaos, men and women arise who reveal the hope that lives within them.

“This ‘little time’ is a precious time. It is a time of purification and sanctification, a time to be prepared for the great passage to the permanent house of God. I do not want to complain about this passing world but to focus on the eternal that lights up amid the temporal. I yearn to create space where it can be celebrated!”

“Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” (Psalm 37:4)