Sufficiency In The Midst Of Need

Having grown up in the church I have always been taught about how God takes care of us. If we have enough faith God can and will alter our circumstances. When someone is going through a difficult situation we like to quote the passage in Romans 8 which says, "We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God: those who are called according to His purpose." We would then explain how the circumstances, however difficult, are being pieced together by God to accomplish something good. This was essentially my understanding of the "proper" way to deal with suffering and hardship.

These past two years have shaken my belief system to the very core. It all began in January of 2011 when almost simultaneously my grandpa and 12 year old cousin passed away. This was the token beginning of what was to follow. Almost immediately, upon my graduation from Elim Bible Institute my health began to decline. Over the next two years I battled constant debilititating migraines, severe depression, and plaguing neurological issues. I was hospitilized multiple times, I was referred from one doctor to the next. It was discovered that I was both highly allergic to dozens of plants and animals, and gluten intolerant. But even as I took steps to minimize the effects of these sensitivites my symptoms and depression lingered on. I found myself physically and emotionally drained, I was unable to work consistently, and medical bills had forced me into debt. Exhausted from the sheer effort of doing even the most basic tasks, I found myself losing contact with one friend after another until I rarely talked with anyone other than my immediate family for more than a few minutes.This is where I found myself as months dragged on bringing no change and no hope. I had lost all sense of God's goodness in suffering. I vascillated between pleading with God to bring me some relief and screaming at Him in rage and despair. Both my pleas and my raging was met with the silence that I had grown accustomed to as I sat in the rubble of my shattered life.

In the stillness and loneliness that had become my life, I wrestled. What had I done to deserve this? How could I believe in a God who answered my pleas and cries with silence? Where was the church to encourage me, to pray with me? The simple answer that God was working things for good was completely meaningless to me in the light of the suffering I had endured.

As I lay in bed praying one morning a phrase came to me that would change me at the very deepest level. God is my Sufficiency. I began to ponder these words. I found that I had been looking for an answer in all the wrong places. The answer was not in the suffering, it was not to be found at church, it was not to be coaxed from a doctor or discovered in the circumstances of life. It was in the stillness of my own heart that the Heavenly Father met me. I stopped looking at everything around me and instead looked into my own heart, and what I found there shocked me. I perceived that even as I had fought to change my circumstances, as I had looked for meaning to the suffering and found none, God had been quietly, imperceptably working on my heart.

I discovered pride, resentment, hurt, and anger that I never knew were there. I found that my understanding of manhood, leadership, faith, grief, purity, compassion, weakness, and strength (to name a few) were not entirely accurate, and in some instances completely wrong. These realizations brought me to such a place of humility and inadequacy that I had never before experienced.

This is not to say that my life is to be modeled or that I now have all the answers, but simply to say that God is sufficienct. In the trials of life, in sickness, death, weakness, confusion, persecution, depression or any other travesty, the Lord may answer by dramatically altering circumstances, or He may speak and work in the quietness of the heart to strengthen us in the midst of weakness and sorrow.

I pray that you may be blessed, encouraged and challenged as I have been by these verses which have come to mean so much to me.

"It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth. Let him sit alone and keep silent, because God has laid it on him; let him put his mouth in the dust - there may yet be hope. Let him give his cheek to the one who strikes him, and be full of reproach. For the Lord will not cast off forever. Though He causes grief, yet He will show compassion according to the multitude of His mercies, for He does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the chidlren of men." Lamentations 3:26-33

"But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him." Jeremiah 17:7

"He drew me up out of a horrible pit [a pit of tumult and destruction], out of the miry clay [froth and slime], and set my feet upon the rock, steadying my steps and establishing my goings."
Psalm 40:2