FAITH II

FAITH II

Climb the highest mountain you can find, and there is probably snow on the top.  Ease your way down and stop to look at the melted snow that has become a beautiful waterfall.  Follow the water down the mountain and you will come upon the pool at the bottom of the waterfall.  The pool can either be shallow or deep.  Continuing downward you will see a rush of water falling over jagged rocks and dumping into a wide river.  The river continues downward yet it doesn’t seem to be going down until you reach a meadow and the river is narrow and moving very slowly.  The water doesn’t stop here because there are creeks and ditches to fill before you arrive at a large lake. This is where the water finds a place to reside.

This is how faith can work and the journey will seem endless yet you know that you know that you cannot stop trusting God.  May I share a story of faith in my life?

My Mother was involved in an automobile accident and her back was injured.  It seemed like forever but the physician finally performed surgery to correct the problem. One afternoon my brother and I were with her in her hospital room.  After surgery her back was not healing and we were anxious to see the surgeon and understand why.  To our surprise the physician who visited was not the back surgeon but a specialist who was searching for answers to the failure of the internal incisions to heal.  He explained that she was in later stages of Hep C and this news crushed our hearts. The Oncologists searched every available avenue to understand.  Mother had contracted hepatitis when she was a younger woman supposedly through blood transfusions.  There would be no recourse or healing and she was not a candidate for a liver transplant.  

Our faith in God was our recourse.  We prayed, and we struggled with understanding why God was not healing her.  Her health deteriated to the point that her Primary physician decided to move her to a swing bed unit across from the hospital, and after the move the years crept along.

One afternoon at my home in Kentucky I stood looking out the back door while tears coursed down my face and I verbalized my agonizing prayer to God.

“God why, “ I cried, “why can’t you just take her home.  She is tired and the family is tired and God, hasn’t she suffered enough?”

His voice to my heart was kind, yet strong, as he told me, “That is not your decision.”

Several days later as I dressed to attend a prayer conference being held at the Catholic sister’s retirement village, I sat down on the side of my bed and I whined to God.

“God I cannot go to this today.  I think my faith is worn out so I cannot do this.”

I closed my eyes and wept.  The room became soundless and still and God showed me in my mind a picture of my Mother in a field of wild flowers.  She was wearing a big hat and she was dancing among those flowers.  Oh, she was so happy.

With a peaceful heart I stood, wiped my face and went to the prayer conference to have my faith stretched a little more.  I walked the beautiful grounds of the village and thanked God for his wisdom.

Mother did go home and the day she left us I was holding her when the nurse came into the room and gave her an injection.  A very young nurse placed her arm around my waist as I stood and I looked at her and said, “Her spirit has left us.”  She replied with a smile, “Yes it has.”  I went to my brother’s house and almost as soon as I lay down on the bed my sister called to tell us that Mother’s heart had ceased.  I smiled because I knew that God was in charge of all of it.

We cannot ever give up on our faith and we can never stop trusting God.  He knows when, where, how and why.  Just as the snow from the mountain top, melts, finds a way down the mountain through many different avenues, so does our faith find a way to completion.  Be still and know that He is God and He has given us enough faith to complete the journey.  I praise only you, God.

Good morning friends and family.  There have been questions rolling around concerning “Faith”.  We all have faith in something or someone.  If your existence is depending on another person then your faith is in that person.  If your existence is depending on a religion then your faith is in that religion.  If your existence is depending on a church then your faith is in that church.  If your existence is depending on yourself then you only have faith in yourself.  May I share a story, a true story, of excerpts of one person’s journey of faith?

I was in about 3^rd or 4^th grade at Terry Consolidated School.  My father was a sharecropper and my Mother had recently begun working in a pants factory or shirt factory (I cannot remember which) in Crystal Springs.  The winters were cold and icy, snow, and wind.  Ugggh!  I remember well being so cold.  I slept with siblings in a big bed in front of the main fireplace and Mother warmed bricks and Daddy placed them at the foot of that bed to keep us warm.  We could not move because the quilts were piled high and they were heavy.  Mother and Daddy slept in the room next to us.  There was not heat in that room and I vividly remember Mother’s flannel gown and Daddy sleeping in his long johns. At night he would kneel beside that old bed and pray aloud.  I heard him ask God to prosper us and meet specific needs that we had and as a child this was a really big deal for me.  I watched as God answered those prayers.  There was no internet and no way of spreading that need in a large prayer circle.  It was just a sharecropper in the middle of winter with seven children to feed and rent to pay.  God answered those prayers over and over and over again.

Advance forward to an older woman who had the rug I stood on literally jerked out from under me without any warning. The depth of heart pain and hurt that followed that is impossible for me to describe.  I was homeless and during the course of being rescued, loved, and once again housed I hit a major low point.  My faith was totally dependent on God or I would have just ended my miserable life.  Only satan can bring a person to that low depth and only Faith In God, our creator and our Savior, and our ever present help in times of need, can sustain a person in that low depth.

I have no idea what you need to sustain the life style that God placed you in, nor do you know what I need.  God does and He, and He alone, will find the way or ways of providing these needs when my faith is in Him alone.  Faith?????

During these days of pain and despair God brought a group of strong, faith in God prayer warriors into my life.  He is bringing my family back to him one person at a time at this point.  How absolutely amazing is that kind of FAITH!!!!!!!!!

Now. With all of this said, I praise Him and Him alone and sometimes I will tell you another one or two faith stories.  My life has been amazing and if I tried to understand it I would be forever baffled.  God knows and my faith is in Him.

It is not about me and it is not about you.  It is about having faith that God will redeem people from sin and provide all of the prosperity they need to spread his love and care.

I can still see in my minds camera, my Mother standing in the kitchen with a paring knife in one hand and a potato in the other and looking me in the eye as she says, “Young lady, if you keep your own doorstep swept clean, you will not have time to worry about your neighbor’s doorstep.”

Regardless of your situation, ALWAYS KEEP YOUR FAITH IN OUR FATHER GOD, for He never sleeps and He always listens for as long as you want to talk to Him.