Monday, August 30, 2010

Total Faith and Surrender

Before my Life in Texas began three years ago, we lived in Salt Lake City, Utah. We moved there from Michigan in 2004 with about 20 other families and single people to start a new life and a new church, which has since become known as K2: The Church.

The tagline of this church says, "Go on an adventure with God," and at no time in my life have I felt so much on an adventure as I did during the years we were part of that group. I count the privilege of having a front-row seat to witness God's amazing transforming power every week in that church as one of the greatest blessings of my life.

Paula was one of my co-adventurers, being married to one of the original staff members of the leadership team and a fellow transplant from Michigan. We worked together with a small team at building the children's ministry program.

Last week, Paula was diagnosed with an inoperable cancer that has invaded her body.

On Sunday, just a few days later, she and her husband shared with the church, the first chapter of their new journey.



Paula and Eric just got front-row seats to the craziest adventure of their lives. They share in this video how they found great meaning in the lyrics of a song the other day:

Stop the world
I want to get off
I just want to spend more time with you

They also share about an amazing faith that has brought them through the week already past. Paula reveals that for years she has been struggling with a sense of loneliness. Eric realizes through this week's events that Paula has been higher in importance to him than Jesus, because his greatest fear is that the family could not survive the loss of either one of them.

Their God, my God, is known as the Great Healer. In this week, he has already shown Paula that her loneliness has been a lie of the enemy to make her feel isolated. Paula has been healed of the sin of self-imposed loneliness.

Eric has had to come to the point of being willing to release Paula to God's care, to trust that God will care for her far better than he can. In the moment of being thrust into his greatest nightmare of possible family separation, Eric has been healed of his sin of Paula worship.

Our God heals. We pray for him to be shown powerful through a complete physical healing of Paula's body. But we also know he doesn't always choose to show his power in ways we fully understand.

In another time, another place, three young men stood before an angry monarch. The king insisted they worship the statue he had built, but the three refused because they knew the power of the one they worshiped was far greater than this king. He threatened to throw them in a pit of fire, to burn to death, as consequence for disobeying their king.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego responded, "O king, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up" (Daniel 3:16-18).

"Even if he does not." I find those words some of the most powerful in all of scripture.

Even if he does not physically heal my friend Paula, God has already healed her heart. He has already healed her husband's heart. And he is already showing the strength of his hand in the number of people profoundly affected by her story.

Father God, Great Healer, thank you for being so real today. Thank you for working in Paula's life to reach an audience that includes me, to remind us that you are in control of each moment. Thank you for the faith that has already carried her through the start of this new journey.

I add my voice, my prayer to those going up all over the world, that you would choose to heal Paula's body, and be shown powerful by the lack of any other ways to explain her healing.

But even if you do not choose to physically heal her, even if her journey takes her to you sooner than anyone expected, thank you for the healing you have already done in Paula's and Eric's hearts. Please continue to bring that kind of healing to people all over the world.

Amen.

3 comments:

  1. As Amy King said recently, "Cancer can suck it."

    Ugly, dirty, sin filled, painful, messed up world. Cancer is near the top of that heap.

    Praying with you.

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  2. powerfully said..."Even if he does not physically heal my friend Paula, God has already healed her heart." Thank you for sharing their journey with us. I'll be thinking of Paula today and putting her at His feet.

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  3. Life can certainly change in an instant, but God is ever faithful and unchanging. I was healed of cancer in 1973, but it was just the mercies of God, and nothing good that I had done. On the flip side of that, my dear father-in-law lost his battle with cancer at the young age of 58, so we just never know what God will do. His ways are past finding out. I do know, however, that He can heal and nothing is too hard for Him.

    I will keep Paula and Eric in my prayers.

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