A PERSONAL MESSAGE OF TRUSTING GOD

Several months ago while visiting Grand Junction Baptist Church, Pastor Danny Rachel shared the following testimony of a father who just learned his 6 year old son had a brain tumor. It is a powerful testimony about what it means to truly trust the Lord in ALL things. I pray it will bless you as much as it blessed me.


A Personal Message of Trusting God

It’s now been more than two weeks since this trial began. God has been so good to us. Probably 90% of you who have joined this group, I’ve never met. Thank you so much for this great outpouring of love.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve done a lot of thinking about what God might be teaching us through this. We’ve received many comments from people who have admired our faith through this trial.

I’ve always been a little uncomfortable with those comments. As I’ve thought about why that makes uncomfortable, I’ve come up with two reasons.

First of all, I’m unsure about what kind of faith is being talked about. I’ve never been sure that it is God’s will that our Gideon be brought back to full health. Now, when I say that, I’m not saying that I don’t think God could do that nor do I want you do think that I don’t desire that. I just don’t think that is the way God always works. However, I do know that God does work all things out for Him to get the maximum glory.

Now, many of you may ask "how can God get glory unless he heals Gideon?" My response would be that he definitely gets glory by healing Gideon, but He gets even more glory when we have our full satisfaction in Him and Him alone!
God isn’t all satisfying and worthy of my praise because he makes us healthy and wealthy. He isn’t worthy because He heals my little boy. He is all satisfying because He is God and He always does what is right! He is all satisfying because he rescued me from my biggest problem.

Our greatest problem isn’t poverty, lack of self-esteem, or brain tumors. Our biggest problem is we have sinned against a holy, righteous God. He has saved me from my sin, and for that reason alone he is all satisfying. He is enough.
Yes, we have faith in our God, but our faith is that He will do what’s right and what is best…even if that meant taking Gideon from us.

Psalm 73:25-28 says it best: [NIV]

Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.
Those who are far from you will perish;
You destroy all who are unfaithful to you.
But as for me, it is good to be near God.
I have made the Sovereign LORD my refuge;
I will tell of all your deeds.

The other reason I’m uncomfortable for praise of our faith is because this faith isn’t something of our own doing. This isn’t something that we "tried" and found it to work so we went with it. This faith we have is a gift from God. We cannot take any credit for our trust and faith in God during this trial.

The great news is that there is nothing that disqualifies any of you reading this from having this same faith. No amount of sin disqualifies you. I can say this because I know that I’m probably a greater sinner than any of you and God has been so kind to give me this faith.

Many of you reading this I know are in one of two places. Some of you think that you are a believer, but you aren’t. Some of you know that you aren’t a Christian.
To each of you, I would like to ask you the question-How do you feel right now about your sin? Do you hate it? Are there things that you are treasuring more than Christ?

Maybe you’re treasuring wealth. Maybe it’s sex. Maybe it’s your home. Maybe it’s your children. If you couldn’t do without any of these things, then you have every reason to doubt you are a Christian.

Jesus is the only way to heaven. No one can be good enough to get there. God demands perfection and we just can’t come close to attaining that. That’s why we need Jesus. He lived a sinless life and then became the substitute for His children’s sins.

If you are now seeing your sin in a different light…if you are now seeing how bad your sin is, perhaps you are one of His and He is now calling you into His family.
Plead with Him to save you and He will. He is so satisfying, friends! I’ve never known it as strongly as I have in the last couple weeks. He really is ALL that we need.

I would be happy to talk to any of you who have questions. Feel free to send me a message. (Note: John mentioned this for those on the Facebook Group.)
–John Jordan (copied from Mark "Here I Blog" Nov. 19, 2009)