Have you ever known anyone who experienced something new and wonderful, and embraced it as something that was meant to be? All of us expect good things to happen. In fact we believe they are supposed to happen. Every young couple in love insists that their union was meant to be. Nearly every religion and philosophy known recognizes some aspect of fate. Everyone readily accepts the good things that fate brings. However, difficult things beyond our control usually produce nothing but complaint.
I was raised in a Christian home and came to know the Lord at the age of seven. Church and worship of the Lord were central to my family, and the church’s youth ministry played an influential role during my teen years. As a graduating high-school senior I answered what I thought was God’s call to preach. After one year of college preparing for ministry, “fate” came calling. My father had a heart attack. I returned home hoping to get back in school as soon as his health improved. Instead, within a year, Dad asked me to take over part of his business. He had been my hero. I had seen him at times when he walked away from profitable business just because he was asked to compromise his integrity. My Dad loved the Lord more than money, and I admired him for that. With his health failing, the Lord seemed to be closing the door to my education. I started to work in the family business, and before long I was married with my family’s blessing. All along I was beginning to reason that it was just as acceptable to be a Christian businessman, like my father, and serve the Lord that way.
After thirteen years of marriage, “fate” visited again. My wife’s behavior became suspicious. She had begun staying out late. She was making ridiculous excuses to “visit her friends.” When I confronted her, she confessed. She was in love with another woman. She refused to go to counseling. She would not reconsider. She wanted a divorce. Attorneys' fees quickly consumed everything we had built together. The home, furniture and business were sold. I went to work for someone else. There was a great deal of anger within me. I was experiencing pent up anger toward her, toward life and worst of all, I was even angry with the Lord. All my life I thought I had been a good Christian. I thought I had been faithful enough. How could this have happened to me? Didn’t He love me? Didn’t He care?
As I re-established a home of my own, I struggled to heal, and at the same time meet financial obligations. There weren’t enough hours in the day to earn money to pay off the debts. Each time I gained a bit, something unexpected would take it away…until I couldn’t even afford to pay the rent. I was not just angry and bitter. I was desperate. I felt like I had to have it out with God. After arriving home one cold February evening, I took my electric saw and began cutting up the furniture. I turned out the lights and used the pieces of furniture as firewood, and I began to pray. God was going to tell me why! Life was not fair! The Lord hadn’t been fair! I wanted to know why. For hours I cut up furniture, feeding the fireplace piece by piece while I wept and prayed. I can’t say they were very holy prayers either.
In the early hours of the morning, as the embers from the last piece of my desk glowed in the fireplace, I was on my back on the living room floor exhausted, and without an answer. Suddenly there was a still small voice. One phrase clear and concise slew me and shamed me in an instant. “I love you no matter what. Love Me no matter what.” From my exhaustion, tears again began to flow. Suddenly I was penitent, begging forgiveness. Instantly everything was clear. The insight given through that one brief answer revealed that all of the pain and loss finally had a purpose. It never was mere fate, but His divine providence. He hadn’t abandoned me.
From that day on, life had no burden. I was in love with the Lord again. And I began to feel the call to preach that once was neglected. But how could it happen now, after all that had happened? I couldn’t afford to go to school. I had to work eighty hours a week. I gave the call back to the Lord, not in rebellion but prayerfully. If it were to happen, He would have to make it happen. Certainly, He could do anything. Perhaps Ed McMahon would come knock on my door with a big sweeps stakes check! It didn’t happen that way, but it did happen quickly. While at work one day, my left hand was amputated by my printing press. At that moment, through the pain and shock of losing that hand, my first fear was of bleeding to death, but the Lord had the ambulance and crew waiting one block away buying coffee at a convenience store. When 911 was called, the response was less than two minutes. Was that fate, was it coincidence, or was it
During the next year, God blessed tremendously. He began to restore, and it didn’t come through physical healing alone. He sent His blessing through a wedding and the love shared with a new bride. Within that year I had also been fitted with a prosthetic device and was back in school finishing undergraduate work preparing for ministry. The Lord certainly does provide, but in very unexpected ways. We all tend to avoid or reject the difficult trials in favor of easier paths. We all quickly praise God for the good things, assured that they are “meant to be,” but what about the trials? What about pain that comes our way? In a recent issue of World Magazine, one of their senior writers made reference to C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. “Shall we not take the adventure that Aslan hands us?” As Christians, we cannot excuse unexpected, undesirable changes in life to mere fate. Nothing is unexpected with God. He will use the painful circumstances in life itself to test, chastise and correct. He wants each one of us obedient to His call. He wants each of us to love Him no matter what.
Jeremiah 29:11- 13
“For I know the plans that I have for you,” declares the LORD, “ plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.”
