This morning I was reading in Jerry Bridge's book, "Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate" a chapter on anxiety and frustration. It was talking about how anxiety is really a "lack of acceptance of God's providence in our lives". He used the example of trying to make connecting flights, and possibly missing them altogether and not arriving at a certain destination. This is the paragraph that stuck out to me:
"So my agenda is to arrive at my destination city on time and get comfortably settled before I am to speak. What if God's agenda is different? What if God's agenda is for me to be late for that meeting, or miss it altogether? Will I succumb to the temptation of anxiety and fret and fume, or will I believe that God is in sovereign control of my travel and accept His agenda, whatever that may be? As I have struggled with anxiety in this area of my life. I have come to the conclusion that my anxiety is triggered not so much by a distrust in God as by my unwillingness to submit to and cheerfully accept His agenda for me"
Fast forward a couple of hours…..my oldest daughter and I had dental appointments in a city an hour away. We arrive and give the receptionist our names. She kind of gets this horrified look on her face, and asks me when I scheduled the appointment. She then explains that there was a computer problem and they lost all the data that was entered in 2008, and that they didn't have space for us today. Now, this situation had the potential to make me really, really frustrated….to drive all that way, have Jason take the day off work to watch J.J. etc……but I wasn't…I felt really sick about Jason taking the day off work, and now he'll have to take another day….but other than that it wasn't a big deal. But it could've gotten ugly….I could've gotten really angry and made a bad situation worse. Instead Jess and I had a lovely day "in the city"….doing all the girly things we like to do together and getting some much needed shopping done…..it was a day I needed to spend with her not the dentist!! Today it was evident that His agenda was different than my agenda!!!
5 comments:
I fully believe in God's soveriegnty as well, and it is truly a doctrine of peace and comfort, but don't forget God is not the only one with an agenda for us. Our enemy, the devil, goes around seeing who he can devour. When Jesus was on earth he went about healing the sick, casting out demons, cleansing lepers, all activity that was called destroying the works of the devil. So we should pray for discernment and not ever accept the agenda of the devil in our lives. Sickness and disease in never ever God's agenda, you never saw Jesus even once refuse to heal anyone who asked, or ever put sickness on a healthy person. In that he demonstrated the perfect will or agenda of our father in heaven. Why don't we see healing more? I wish I knew, but I think in the case of your son with diabetes we should always pray and remain hopeful that we can receive the healing that Jesus paid for on the cross. Do you believe that if you could have brought him to Jesus while he was on earth that he would have been refused? I don't! In no way is this meant to be condemning or critical of what you wrote, hope I'm not coming across that way. My daughter has a medical problem with her eyes, certainly not as serious and as difficult as diabetes, but we have not been able to recieve healing for her. I don't know why, but I think the problem is with us and our limited understanding of it all. And I'm not saying that if we don't see healing that it's due to our sin either, that would be old covenant thinking. All that to say I'll be praying for you and your family, and yes, of course he takes care of us even without healing and imparts peace and joy in the midst of hard things. But his heart is true supernatural peace, shalom--which mean nothing broken, nothing missing...
Also thanks for commenting on my blog, will be pondering an answer and post it over there! (feel free not to post my very lengthy comment on your blog! sometimes I'm long handed...or whatever you would call it.)
Also, have you heard of coconut flour? It's supposed to help keep blood sugar stable and it's really tasty. I bake with it all the time, and many recipes in the book I use have low sugar versions using stevia. It's called cooking with coconut flour by bruce fife. Here's a link to a site where you can read more about it, or buy it or the book if you're interested.
http://www.tropicaltraditions.com/organic_coconut_flour.htm
God Bless.
Jul,
Thanks for your comment. It sparks an age old theological debate, that obviously we cannot fully cover on a comment section of a blog It’s definitely not an easy one to understand and I don’t know that we’ll fully comprehend all of it on this side of heaven. So I’ll leave you to the theologians…of which I’m not.
I guess my thrust of this blog post is that I will accept this disease and walk through it with the Lord, knowing He knows, He sees, He’s in control, and He loves us. And I should not be full of anxiety over this circumstance in my life because God has allowed it, just as HE allowed Job to be buffeted by Satan and HE allowed Satan to give Paul a “thorn in the flesh”. So in a sense we are both right, I just chose to write about God’s complete sovereign control of everything in our lives….which does include… on this earth, because of the Fall…. suffering.
Do I believe God could heal my son? Of course I believe He could (Ps. 103:3)!!! And if I lived at the time of Jesus? I believe if Jesus wanted my son to be healed he would’ve been. But Jesus obviously didn’t heal everyone on earth while He was here. That wasn’t part of His plan(agenda). He had another mission to accomplish…..saving the world….kind of a biggy!!J
I hope that clarifies my intent of the post. God allows both good and bad to come to our lives (Lamentations 3:38), and how I respond is so important….I need to, with God’s enabling, keep anxiety, anger and frustration at bay. But if you’d like to continue the discussion, please feel free to e-mail me through my profile page.
Jul,
No, I haven't heard of coconut flour...we're so new at this... but I'll check it out. Thanks for the link!!
Lynnea,
You have such a great attitude about this & that is so important.
Even though it didn't seem like it at first, I'm glad you and your daughter got to spend some fun time together.
My daughter is always reminding me to not fret about traffic jams or obstacles in my way that make me get to work later than I want. She says it may just be because God was keeping something bad from happening to me or someone else. He knows all; we don't.
Thanks for the reminder.
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