God's Faithfulness : A Testimony
Be very careful never to forget what you have seen the Lord do for you. Do not let these things escape from your mind as long as you live!
Deuteronomy 4:9
Prompted by a Christian radio presenter to look back and be reminded of God's faithfulness, I checked out my old diaries. For years, although present, my faith was somewhat compartmentalised, and I wasn't recording anything spiritual.
For too long I had been busy trying to control my own life. When I read Remember how the Lord your God led you through the wilderness for forty years, humbling...and testing you...' Deut.8:2, I felt like the Israelites, intermittently grateful for his provision, followed by complacency, drifting sometimes into fear and disobedience.
When I received my first cancer diagnosis, the Lord gave me Psalm 119:71 The suffering you sent was good for me, for it taught me to pay attention to your principles. It was not easy to hear, but it was the beginning of my journey back to reconnecting with God. I recognised this challenge as a gift and started recording what he was revealing to me.
My second cancer was followed by a life-threatening surgical infection. I was afraid. God gave me Isaiah 38:5, about Hezekiah pleading with God to spare his life when he was critically ill and being reassured he would live. For weeks, my brain kept Psalm 23 on a loop as I could remember little else in my toxic state. My lung was rejecting the drain in situ and all my veins had collapsed. But those hours in the valley of the shadow of death resulted in the breakthrough on my journey back to his path for me. In desperate situations everything starts to fall away, except what is important.
I realised all that mattered was my relationship with the Lord and that he wanted all of me, not just more of me. I surrendered. As I mourned the lost time, he reassured me that I would have restored to me the years the locust had eaten. Joel 2:25. Wow! What a promise! We see everything in our human time frame, but people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end. Ecclesiastes 3:11. Fortunately, we know that all things work together for good to those who love God. Romans 8:28.
Fast forward to now and I have advanced cancer. But I no longer fear bad news: my heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord and he is blessing me with such joy and peace! Psalm 112:7.
REMEMBER THE BRETON FISHERMAN'S PRAYER: DEAR GOD, BE GOOD TO ME; THE SEA IS SO WIDE, AND MY BOAT IS SO SMALL.
It's not the inadequacy of our boat, or the vastness of our circumstances, but who is at the helm and who controls the waves.
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.
Lamentations 3:22-23
Written by Jaz Parsons