Tag: Jesus

One Thought for an Age-Old Question

On By jillmhollingsworth6 Comments

Today I’ll give one thought for an age-old question: Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? This is definitely not the only answer, but it is possibly one of many.

A few weeks ago a girlfriend and I got together over coffee. This was a real treat; between both of us we have a handful of toddlers/preschoolers, so uninterrupted time is hard to come by. I’m sure you stay-at-home moms can relate. You may even be hiding in a bathroom right now trying to catch a five-minute breather from the little crazy people that have taken over your home, who knows?

But I digress.

Anyway, most of our time was spent catching up on life, but something that she said as we were leaving struck me. While discussing some of the more painful times in her life, she made this statement: “Before I faced the wave of hardship, I thought I knew God. I thought I had faith, thought I believed Him. But my trials showed me that I really didn’t know Him at all. I knew of Him, but my trials brought me to a place of seeing Him for who He truly is.”

Wow. To see Him. Immediately my mind went to the verse that Job spoke to God after his affliction. Let’s first recap what happened to Job: all of his livestock were either stolen or destroyed by fire, all of his children were killed at the same time in a storm, he was covered with painful sores from head to toe, his own wife and closest friends turned on him, and the people in his community mocked him relentlessly.

Work. Family. Health. Relationships. Reputation. All attacked and destroyed. If you’ve been there with any one of these areas, you know the pain and trauma that can result.  Maybe you, like Job, have even experienced all or several of them at once. What could God possibly hope to accomplish through this?

I believe, for Job, the answer lies in Job 42:5. This is the statement Job made at the end of the book after all of his distress: “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.”

Job was a righteous man. He sought to honor God in every decision. He wasn’t being punished for disobedience or sin. But God longed for Job to have more: to see Him.

If you can relate to Job and know what it’s like for hardship to bring a newfound intimacy with God, then you are confident that these trials are the greatest gift He could ever give. To see Him, to experience Him, is better than any earthly possession.

For those that are currently facing what may feel like excruciating circumstances, may I encourage you with this? First, God knows how to rescue godly men from trials (2 Peter 2:9), and He will do it in His perfect time. Nothing is too difficult for Him. Second, just like He did in Job’s life, God sometimes allows hardship for our good so that we may know Him, not just know of Him (Hebrews 12:10, 14).

How has hardship brought you to a place of knowing God more intimately? I’d love to hear your experiences.

 

 

 

Thoughts Following the Paris Attacks

On By jillmhollingsworth12 Comments

Yesterday morning I didn’t post my usual weekly blog- I just had an unsettled feeling about it. Something in particular has weighed heavy on my mind since the Paris terrorist attacks. My fear in sharing it is that I could forever be thrust into the “crazy” category; however, if what I share could somehow make even one small contribution to strengthening us in the face of this extraordinary evil, it is worth it.

This “one thing” is a dream that I had back in February of this year. Before you throw up a red flag and begin to discount what I’m about to write, please know that I’m probably just as skeptical as you are when people say they have dreams, visions, or prophetic words to share. There is so much hype in the charismatic movement that it’s easy to throw the baby out with the bath water. But it is scriptural that in the last days the Lord will give dreams and visions (Acts 2:17), so although it’s healthy to be cautious, we can’t discount these things altogether.

I am going to share the dream, not because I know or believe that these things will take place specifically, but because I believe God may use it to show us something on a broader scale.

In my dream, I was on an airplane flying to an unknown location. The plane had to emergency land, and the pilot wouldn’t tell us why until the very last minute. He also continuously tried to divert our attention from what was going on by asking us to look out our side windows at an old lady building a fence. As he was talking about this over the intercom, the Statue of Liberty appeared in front of the plane and suddenly blew up into millions of tiny pieces. As the shrapnel came towards the airplane’s windshield, everyone ducked down tightly in their seats. Nothing from the explosion was able to penetrate the plane’s windows, but there was a sense of panic and fear among the passengers. As I was hunched down, I began to sing these lyrics from Israel Houghton’s song, “We Worship You”:

“Lord You are good and Your mercy endureth forever.
Lord You are good and Your mercy endureth forever.

People from every nation and tongue
From generation to generation

We worship You, hallelujah! Hallelujah!
We worship You for who You are
You are good!”

Here is what I make of the dream: I believe the pilot represents the leaders of our nation; as the pilot tried to distract the passengers by drawing their attention to division (the fence), there is an attempt on our leaders’ behalf to deceive and distract us from a very dangerous reality.

I believe that the Statue of Liberty represents our freedom, a freedom that is under attack. This attack will create fear, just like it did in the dream as all of the terrified passengers ducked down in their seats.

Just as the distress and ultimate protection of the passengers led to praise and worship for the one true God, I pray and firmly believe that God will use any and all plans for evil against us to bring revival and spiritual awakening to our nation.

This is my burden for the American Church: We are in a spiritual stupor. Our comfort has drugged us into oblivion, and I’m as guilty as the rest. In 100 years, it’s not going to matter what name-brand clothes we or our children wore, the house we lived in, the car we drove, or who we hung out with on Saturday night. What will matter is that we lived fully “for such a time as this” (Esther 4:14).

 “Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.” (Joel 2:13)

“Blessed is the nation whose God is Yahweh—the people He has chosen to be His own possession.” (Psalm 33:12)

Fortunately we know how this all will end- people from every nation and tongue will bow and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

The Gift of Failure

On By jillmhollingsworth4 Comments

One of the greatest gifts God has ever given me is failure. Sounds crazy, I know, so let me explain. During my adolescence and early adulthood, I had most anything I could want: a stable family, strong and supportive friendships, a long-term boyfriend, good grades in a safe school, the respect of my peers, a nice car… you get the picture. There was not much that I wanted that I didn’t have. And the success brought about an unreal amount of arrogance.

In the book of Revelation, Jesus addresses an entire church of people like this: “You say, ‘I am rich; I have everything I want. I don’t need a thing.’ And you don’t realize that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.” (Rev. 3:17) I was spiritually bankrupt.

Fast forward to my first two years of college. There I was, a small fish in a very big pond. I was several hours away from home with no close friends nearby. My relationship was over, and no matter how much I filled my calendar to stay busy and feel important, I couldn’t shake a completely debilitating anxiety. It was a sense of dread and intense worry that wouldn’t let up. I hope and pray that someone reading this post can relate and be encouraged today with this: Hold on, friend. God humbles us by showing us our need and then giving us a far better and more lasting way to fill it. This is exactly what He did for me, and it’s what He has done throughout time for His children.

Deuteronomy 8 summarizes how this worked with the Israelites. Although Egypt was no cake walk for God’s people, they at least had shelter and their fill of food and drink. But when God rescued them from slavery there, he led them in the desert for forty years.

News flash: Deserts ain’t the Hilton. Water is hard to find, food is scarce, and the heat is scorching. And I’m still puzzled as to how reliable their shelter could’ve been given their wandering. To say they felt their need is an understatement. Exodus 16:3 records their dramatic complaint against God’s chosen leaders, Moses and Aaron: “If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” Although I’d bet the majority of those reading this blog have never felt a physical hunger they couldn’t satisfy, most everyone has felt a chronic heart hunger.

So this begs the question: Why in the world would God rescue His people from slavery only to put them in a seemingly worse condition than before? And why would He allow them to experience a trial in which they despaired even of life (see 2 Corinthians 1:8-9)? I believe the answer lies in Deuteronomy 8:3.

“He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”

There it is. He causes us to hunger so that we can be filled by what He alone provides. Manna was food from heaven. The Israelites could do absolutely nothing to produce it. They had to depend on God alone. The same is true of our trials. They teach us a dependence on God and His Word that we would never learn otherwise. And why is God so set on us knowing and living by His Word? Well, you’ll have to wait on my next blog post for that. There are too many encouraging truths to limit it to the very few words I have left!

Please share! How has God taught you a deeper dependence on Him and His Word through your hardships?