4 People Who Found the Reason for Their Hurts

Have you ever had one of those days, or better yet one of those years that just kicks your butt. Come to think of it, some of us have one of those lives! You have the absolute worse things happen to you. You are abused as a child either physically, mentally, sexually or all three. You get abused not just by a parent (or grandparent or uncle or step-parent) but by your siblings and/or their friends as well. Your parents are addicts/alcoholics and your mother gets beat all the time. You grow up poor, and the kids at school make fun of you. Everybody you care about either leaves you or dies. Does this sound familiar?

Some of you live in constant fear of what is going to happen to you next. You can never figure out why. You sit by yourself in tears, wallowing in depression and fear, just wishing it would all go away. There are questions and thoughts that always wander into your mind: "Why does my luck always suck?" "Can God see me?" "Does God hate me?" "Maybe I should just end it all." "There can't be a God or He wouldn't let this happen." "Why does this always happen to me?"

At the end of this I am going to play a song that my wife wrote and performs called "There's A Reason" that addresses these questions, but first I would like to share a few stories. Here are stories about 4 people who most would think have been dealt a pretty unfair hand. They could have turned their back on God and just given up, but they didn't!

1. Nick Vujicic is a pastor and motivational speaker who has traveled all over the world. His ministry is called "Life Without Limbs" because Nick was born with no arms and no legs. He has never let that stop him. He has spoken to over 3 million people on 5 continents about hope and finding meaning in their lives. He talks all over the world about how God can use anyone who is willing to do his work no matter their disability. 
2. Ellie is 11 years old today. When she was 7 she was molested by her best friend's step-dad. She came forward a year later. She took that long because she was filled with shame and she thought that her parents would not believe her because he was a friend of the family. Her family pressed charges and other girls came forward too. He was eventually placed in prison. Ellie now goes into churches, schools and prisons to talk about the abuse. She wants children to know that if this is happening to them they should not be afraid or ashamed, because it is not their fault. Because of her conviction to help others many children who were being abused and had never told anyone had the courage to come forward after she spoke. 
3. Harold and Betty Donaldson were hit head on by a drunk driver. He was killed and she was incapacitated for a long time. The Donaldson's children learned how to live without many of the basic necessities that  we take for granted. The local community and churches intervened and made sure that the Donaldson's had food and shelter. The generosity that they were shown not only gave the Donaldson's hope, it also instilled in them a desire to one day help those in need. In 1994 they created Convoy of Hope, which has given over $299 million worth of food and supplies to over 52 million people in more than 100 countries. 
4. I did not have the best of life growing up. I was abused sexually when I was in the 1st grade by a baby sitter. In 5th and 6th grade I lived with a highly abusive grandfather. I went on to abuse drugs and alcohol for 25 years of my life, living a lifestyle that landed me in rehabs, jails and prison. I overdosed 3 times, have been found unconscious in a pool of blood after attempting suicide and have died several other times after a car accident. I was diagnosed Bi-Polar, Anti-Social Personality Disorder, Generalized Anxiety, etc. My life was not alright. Since I turned 30 I have gotten an associate, 2 bachelors and a masters degree off of a GED that I got in prison. I have 3 years clean and sober and live my life working as a substance abuse counselor and sharing the message of recovery, Christ and hope in churches, colleges, youth groups and communities. I am currently forming a non-profit to take that message into groups, communities, churches, colleges, junior high and high schools. 

Why do I tell you all of this. The number one reason is to let you know that you are not alone. Life hurts many of us deeply. Second I want you to know that no matter the abuse you are living through/with or the tragedies and losses that you have suffered; there is hope. I know that you may not want to hear it now, but there is a reason these things have happened. God has a plan that is bigger than you and bigger than me. 

In my life, God has used my hurts and my habits to help others. From my addiction to my mental illnesses to my dad's suicide, everything that has ever happened in my life has been a blessing. They have all given me the passion to do what I do and the drive to do it. Me and the other 3 people that I talked about all had horrific things happen, but today we would all tell you that there was a bless in the mess. 

Life happens and life hurts, sometimes really bad. Life can either make us better or bitter, I choose to let it make me better. When I let it make me bitter it was killing me, and I want to live. I still have a lot of hope to share!!

Songs of Recovery - Blessings

I was listening to some music today, and the song "Blessings" by Laura Story came on. In this song, Laura looks at the things in our lives that we pray for, the things that we do not think are fair. She also looks at how we may come to doubt God if these things happen to us. We may come to doubt the goodness of God, we may doubt that he loves us.

This made me think of how our relationship with God looks sometimes. We come to God all of the time to ask for healing, forgiveness, successful job hunts, to be content, to be happy, protection, etc. We have changed the Our Father Prayer to, "Our Father, who is in heaven, gimme gimme gimme!" Don't get me wrong, I think that healing does happen, and we can ask God for it. I just think that we look more at what we want and less at what God's will is for us. What if we have cancer, or were molested, or have a sick parent. Should we pray to be cured? I think that we should. We may not get our prayers fulfilled. God sees the big picture that we do not. So what if God does not answer our prayers the way that we want him to? Some feel that He should answer, and that He should cure us of our afflictions.

In fact, as I have recently been reading in Charisma magazine, there are some who feel that God performs miracles all of the time here in America. The problem is that we do not have enough faith in God, or we would be able to be cured of all ailments both mentally and physically. Bethel Church was in the magazine, and one of their church leaders said that that the problem is not that we ask for too much. The problem is that we don't ask for enough. It is not enough to accomplish worldly goals such as building churches in South America or digging wells in Africa. We should be curing the blind and making the lame walk, that is the the power of God and the power of the Holy Spirit according to the article written in Charisma magazine.

I do not know how I feel about that. I feel that God cures people sometimes, other times He gives us the ability to persevere. Iron is used to make steel. Steel is nothing more than iron that has had an impurity, carbon, added to it and then is remade in the fire. I feel that we too are made stronger in our fires. Even more than that, I feel that our fires can make those around us stronger too. How many of the Christians that have been executed over the years have brought non-believers to faith, not through their deliverance from death, but from their faith and compassion that never wavered when they were executed.

In the song Blessings, the song looks at how God's greatest gifts just might be the trials of this life, the illnesses, the loss, the spent tears, the persecution. We grow through adversity and hardships. When do not get strength and our faith is seldom bolstered if life is lemondrops and lollipops. We grow not on the mountain tops, but in the valleys. What if we are supposed to feel pain and hurt. What if every time that we work through this it makes our faith even stronger, makes our resolve to worship even greater and brings those around us closer to Christ? What if we are made how we are because that is how God wants us?

Psalms 139:14: "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."

God made me, and because He made me I should be happy with where I am in life. I should make the most of my opportunities. I think of one of my favorite inspirational speakers, Nick Vujicic. His ministry is called "No Limbs, No Limits." Nick was born with no arms and no legs. He does not ask God to cure him of his "handicap." He does not see it as a handicap. Instead, he is able to reach thousands of people and let them know that faith in Christ will allow you to accomplish all that you need.

My wife is legally blind. She was taken to a healing conference by her youth pastor so that her vision could be fully restored, and she was not cured. She was told by some people that it was because she did not have enough faith in God. Wow, how that had to hurt a legally blind teenager. "God did not cure you because you do not love Him enough," she was told. She, on the other hand, did not think that healing was what God had in mind for her.

Today she works at Global University (an Assembly of God missionary college) as their video editor.......a legally blind video editor. She has been to multiple countries to film Christians all over the world. To hear her talk about her "disability", she feels that God created her to do what she does, "I can see better through the lens of a video camera than I can with the eyes I was born with." Does she need to be healed? I think that she is wonderfully made!!

I do not know about you, but I feel that many Christians come to a point where we feel that God owes us something. I believe in God, I tithe, I attend faithfully so He should cure me. If trials pop-up, if I get sick, God should make it go away. I just do not feel that is true. God made me the way that He wanted me. This world to many may be full of sin and disappointment, but what if that is what makes us realize that there has to be more than just this world we now live in? I yearn for something that I know I cannot have on this Earth, but that I know I desire and I know exists. I yearn for hope and happiness. Where do I find that?

One of the most influential people that I ever met was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. He was given 3 months to live by the specialist. He told people not to pray for him to be cured, but to pray for God's will to be done. He died with a smile on his face, and got to meet his heavenly father. That is what he talked about in his final days. He was consumed by pain that the opiates could not touch, but he lay in bed and would talk to us about how lucky he was to be going home. He died in pain, but he remained positive and peaceful.

His death was the instrumental piece that brought his estranged son, who was an atheist and a drug addict, to Christ. His son was by his side for the first time in over a decade when he died. His son came to Christ less than a month after his father's death. If his father would not have died as happy and hope-filled as he did, his son would not have been redeemed. He told me this. I was was not friends with the man who died, I was a friend of his sons. But that is his testimony, not mine.

I am saying that if he would have been cured, his son would not have gotten saved. I know women who have been raped and beaten that have turned their experience into a ministry to help others going through the same experience. I am a former convict and drug addict who works with convicts and drug addicts. I am proud of all that I have been delivered from. But there are also things that I have not been delivered from. I no longer obsess over drugs, but I desire them on occasion. I am okay with that. The Holy Spirit allows me to work through the desire. I have been transformed, I have been healed but not cured.

Cured is a medical term to me as a clinician that means something has been beaten or suppressed. Healed on the other hand could mean that the pain was embraced and that we moved forward from it. Curing asks, "what needs to be fixed?" Healing asks, "how can I grow?" My friends dad may not have been cured, but he was healed and allowed his son to be healed through his death. Why are we often not cured?
2 Corinthians 12: 7-10, "To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." You see, God can grow in the face of  illnesses, weaknesses, trials and tribulations whether they are cured or simply healed.

I am no greater than Paul was. God spoke to him personally. He saw Jesus in the flesh. He wrote 13 books in the New Testament. If he was allowed to live with a handicap and not be healed, a man who talked to Jesus face to face, than who am I to expect more? I thank God for the mercies in my life that came disguised as hardships. In the end, they have made me stronger and brought me closer to Christ!