Toni and I saw the movie “Sound of Freedom” a few weeks ago. If this movie doesn’t move a person to action, I really don’t know what will. Child abduction, abandonment, child sex trafficking, and enslavement are horrible stains on America. I can’t think of anything worse!
The title of my article is a direct quote from the Sound of Freedom. “God’s children are not for sale” is a powerful statement that must be heralded worldwide! Yet, there are other statements just as vital that must also be broadcasted; God’s children are not to be aborted! They are not to be abused! They are not to be abandoned! They are not to be molested!
Several years ago, I was invited to speak at a retreat for underprivileged boys. I enjoyed speaking and sharing my message and testimony to the camp. Anthony Vasquez and Jordan Koester also shared their testimonies. I talked about the Father-heart of God and how to become a redeemed and true son. Our Father-God is no dead-beat-dad. He is faithful and true always. These boys needed a positive message about God’s heart for them.
Lots of prayers went out for these boys and the counselors throughout the rest of that week. Many of them do not have dads. I just wanted to bring them home with me and love them as sons, but I told them that God can love them, heal their pain, and father them in the way they should go.
I asked them all a question:
Which would you rather have, a broken leg or a broken heart?
They all replied loudly:
“I’ll take a broken leg!”
This is because most of these boys, unfortunately, already know the pain of a broken heart and how difficult it is for a broken heart to be healed. Our job that weekend was to reveal to these precious lost boys the Healer and Redeemer of the Brokenhearted, which is none other than Jesus Christ.
I shared with them Isaiah chapter 61 and explained how Jesus Christ proclaimed good news to the poor, that he is the Healer of the brokenhearted, and that He came to set the captives and the prisoners free! And that through Jesus, we can become saved, healed, and restored. How good is God’s Word, and How awesome is our God?
God is good, trustworthy, and true! He never fails and is no dead-beat-dad!
He is a True and Faithful Father to lost Sons and Daughters everywhere!
Jesus did amazing work that weekend. He wants you to join him in doing the same work wherever he sends you. Wherever you work, shop, or play. Lost and broken boys may not be born to you, but they can be mentored or even fathered by you.
It doesn’t take a college degree to be a big brother, mentor, or father-type to a fatherless boy. There are also men in their twenties, thirties, and even in their forties that are in desperate need to be fathered and mentored. These boys and men need good father types to help them triumph over the evil that cursed their lives.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Edmund Burke
Evil can only triumph in lost boys if you and I do nothing. Boys become lost because their dads did nothing, or worse, ran out on them. Let’s stop evil’s triumph as much as we can. One lost boy at a time!
When I get strong, I get lost. When I get busy, I get independent. When I get successful, I get lonely.
I was down and out from October 11th, 2013, through mid-January 2014. Life had been hard and painful, but God has never been closer than he’s been with me through those difficult months. I’ll tell you, my dear friends, I’d rather be laid up and laid out with God by my side than lonely but successful in the world any day.
I had gotten to the point in my suffering that I began to thank God for my injuries and sicknesses. I began to see the blessings and the beautiful breaking to my stubborn heart and the fresh and living water flooding into my dry soul. My pain in a miraculous way allowed God’s voice to become magnified, and the whispers of “I love you son” filled my troubled mind in those long and dark, painful nights.
I truly want God, but he’s not necessarily in my busyness, nor is he in my business. He’s not in my self-imposed deadlines, or in the deadlines of others, which weary my body and mind, and cause me to strain and to force my goals above Gods’. He’s not in the coulda, woulda, or shoulda’s, nor is he in my goals of independence and worldly success. God is definitely not in my confused tantrums, my sulking, or complaining.
God is in the midst of suffering; he’s nearby the crushed and the weary, the sick and the lonely. Our God is with the widowed; he’s with the fatherless and alien. He hears the cries and prayers of the broken, the injured, and the weak.
“He will not crush the weakest reed or put out a flickering candle.” Isaiah 42:3 (NLT)
When I get strong, I get lost. When I get busy, I get independent. When I get successful, I get lonely.
I want God, and therefore, I welcome the pain and suffering so that I might gain all that he has for me through it. This is the process that can get us found in God, which can make us strong in the right things and focus on eternal values, which can bring contentment during our seasons of affliction.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not looking for pain and suffering, only that when it comes, the goodness and presence of God is magnified through it, and therefore, I can revel in it and celebrate because of it. Through it, I have learned that our greatest changes can result from what we suffer. Pain and suffering are powerful for our good!
So, while my body was aching and writhing in pain and anguish, my soul was soaring with God. I worshiped God and thanked him through so much of my illnesses and injuries. The pain still lingers, and the scar, which I now bear on my left leg and knee, will always remind me of God’s faithfulness to me all the way through it.
And so, I thank God for all of it.
One day, I was complaining to my wife, Toni, about a difficult client. I was through and ready to cut the relationship and take a significant loss just to get out of the misery.
Then, Toni pulled the “Book of Job” on me:
“Has not God provided through this person?” she said, and then continued: “Do you really to throw people away because they sometimes cause difficulty?”
Wow! I was called out and convicted. Thank you, Toni!
I had set aside, not only heaven’s provision for me, but I had set aside God’s provision of grace and mercy towards the one whom God set up to bring such needed financial provision.
“Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not also receive evil?” In all this, Job did not sin with his lips. Job 2:10
I am not deformed, but I am being transformed. The more we complain and lay blame, the slower our remaking through our braking goes. In my recent story with my client, God used my wife to get me back on track and with God’s program.
Our complaining always works against God’s transforming work, and so we fail to see how God masters evil for our good. Our complaining and blaming causes us to only see the badness of evil, rather the goodness of God in spite of it and His creative use with it.
“I form the light and create darkness: I make peace and create evil: I The Lord do all these things.” – Isaiah 45:7
Ha, I’ve not heard that verse preached in Church!
So, if God masters light, darkness, peace, and evil, how can we be destroyed in the day of pain, sickness, and disease? How can we lose if what we fear can not keep us from winning? How then shall we live, if even evil and the day of disaster, is under the control of such a loving and caring Heavenly Father?
I’ll tell ya how we should then live – in Total Victory and with an Overcomer’s Spirit!
Hey, there’s power in what we suffer, no matter how miserable or deadly! But you gotta put away the complaining and start the thanksgiving and praising.
I was just a young teenager of 14 years old when I got a hold of a book titled “By What Standard” by the late Dr. Rousas John Rushdoony, the father of Mark Rushdoony.
Like the late Dr. Rushdoony, the life and story of Job, set the standard of who God is and His power over evil. Page 185 through page 205 of By What Standard is what impacted me most in my life as a teenager. The Book of Job established my foundation for all my understanding of the ways of God and the ability of God. The Book of Job became my standard of biblical understanding and godly comfort.
Like Job, it is blind faith and trust in the Almighty, whereby God shall succeed in spite of our lack of understanding and even confusion. Our suffering is not the end of the means, but the means to an end, forewhich Satan’s must comply with God’s will over our lives and our wellbeing.
So, the key is to invest all of your faith and trust into God’s will, and pain and suffering will become allies to your transformation and glorification.
“In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered.” – Hebrews 2:10
Was it not God who invited Satan to consider His servant Job?
Did not God establish the boundaries after he invited Satan to afflict Job?
The Book of Job, chapters one, and two.
God masterfully controlled darkness, sickness, and disease over His servant Job, but He also displayed His power over the Prince of Darkness.
The Book of Job reveals how Satan must obey the very boundaries that God sets up, leaving Satan and all evil under the power of the God of the Universe and Creator of all things. And yes, including all angelic beings, and even those who’ve failed at the Heavenly coup d’état of God’s throne and power, and dare I say, they failed miserably!
‘God spoke to Cain:”Why this tantrum? Why the sulking? If you do well, won’t you be accepted? And if you don’t do well, sin is lying in wait for you, ready to pounce; it’s out to get you; you’ve got to master it.” – Genesis 4:6-7
We can master sin because God has mastered evil, and his Son, Jesus Christ, has vanquished our sin. He destroyed death and conquered the grave! But tantrums and sulking leave you vulnerable, and instead of victory, you’ll end in defeat.
So, we can thrive in pain and suffering, in loss and betrayal, and evil shall not destroy us. Evil becomes a weapon in the hand of God, disarming our enemy and thwarting evil’s plan for our destruction.
Do you want to disarm the Evil One? Then, praise God in the midst of all that hell has unleashed and bask in the suffering with thanksgiving. Trust fully in the God who knows what He is doing and the limits for which evil must obey.
Can we lose?
“No, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Romans 8:37
Put your faith and trust in God and become transformed and not deformed by all that you suffer.
Your pain may be your breakthrough into victory and validation that you are a true son or daughter of God and not a fatherless victim.
As a victor, you, too, will see The Miraculous Power of Pain and Suffering.
Don’t live with the pain. Time is not the Healer of all wounds; that’s a lie. God is the Healer.
“Keep thy heart more than anything that is guarded; for from it flows the issues of life.” Proverbs 4:23
“A wound where there are no tears is a wound that cannot be healed.” Author, John Eldredge – Ransomed Heart Ministries
A splinter under the skin, if left alone and ignored will eventually fester to a point of infection. Your body is rejecting the foreign object no matter how small it is, the pain calls out for your attention. If you ignore it too long, you could end up in the emergency room.
How about your heart?
Why ignore the pain?
Your heart is more precious than a finger; you can live without a finger, but you cannot live without your heart.
Sometimes we’re strong in the wrong things and at the wrong times, but to be weak in the right things and with a humble heart, can get God’s attention.
If you are hurting, in pain and are crushed in spirit, heart, and soul, you may be at the greatest turning point of your life. You may actually be dwelling with God in a high and protected place, but you must share your tears with God, or you’ll be swallowed up in bitterness and left alone on earth.
Isaiah 57:15
“The high and lofty One who inhabits eternity, the Holy One, says this: I live in that high and holy place where those with contrite, humble spirits dwell; and I refresh the humble and give new courage to those with repentant hearts.”
Psalm 51:17
“The sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit. God, You will not despise a broken and humbled heart.”
Let God encounter your tears, after all, He is the Everlasting Father. Share it with Him as your sacrifice. Come to Him crushed, broken, betrayed; come to Him rejected and despised. His Son, Jesus is well acquainted with all of this and more. He allows it to touch your life, not to destroy you, but to draw you closer to Himself.
God wants to father you…
Simply trust and turn to God and surrender your right to be offended; your anger for being abused; your self hatred for being molested, raped, and violated. God specializes with hurting and wounded people, and He’d rather be with you than with kings and queens.
The moment you offer up to God your tears and pain, you are with Him in spirit and in truth.
Isaiah 42:3
“He will not break the bruised reed, nor quench the dimly burning flame. He will encourage the fainthearted, those tempted to despair. He will see full justice given to all who have been wronged.”
God won’t exploit your bruises. He’ll not snuff out your heart, even if its barely beating and you feel life is over.
God desires to be your daddy…
Give it all over to God. If you do, He’ll see to it that justice is served, and you can give your revenge a proper burial.
Then, you’ll knock down your walls of despair and make them into a dance floor and you’ll dance with your Abba, just as He’s always wanted.
Don’t live with the pain. Time is not the Healer of all wounds, that’s a lie.
God is the Healer of all wounds, and He’s waiting to hear your cries directed towards Him, so that He may act.
“O my people in Jerusalem, you shall weep no more, for he will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. He will answer you.” Isaiah 30:19
Give it up to God. Let it out and drink in God’s presence and love, and so be healed and restored.
Become healed in the name of Jesus! He came to seek out the lost and broken, and there is no one he cannot save or heal.
Isaiah wrote about the mission of Jesus centuries before He arrived:
“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor…
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.” Isaiah 61: 1-3
You see, God wants to do an exchange with you, He’ll give you beauty, joy, and praise for all your ashes, mourning, and despair. It happened with me, and it could happen for you too.
This may be one of your greatest days!
Your heart and soul are God’s specialty. He wants to heal your heart and set you free!
Call To Courage 