I’m sharing the following because I believe it’s important for all of us to know that we all have issues in our lives the devil can use to attack and discourage us with. Mine is mainly CCPTSD. I hope the following is a blessing to you in your own walk with Jesus.
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An amazing thing happened last week. I was talking to God about some things and even wondering if I should continue writing and sending out the CJED daily emails. Mainly, I said the following to Him.
“I was suffocating under the weight of shame, guilt and responsibility I thought I must take on as a husband and father. I kept thinking, “Why would God have so many commands in the Bible for husbands and fathers and then not enable me to be able to carry out His wishes?” As a man who was trying to do everything he could to be a good, obedient Christian, was it okay for me to admit to my Heavenly Father that I was unable to obey His Word in the areas of being an appropriate father and husband? “God, I can’t do Your Word in this huge area. Is that okay? Do you still love me? Do You still approve of me? Or, like I felt my parents did, will You reject me as a failure and embarrassment as well? Do You understand how awful it feels to not be able to bless my wife and family by not being able to do Your Word in those roles? God, I think my seeming failure in these roles is why I find it so difficult to believe that You really do love me like You would if I were able to be a good provider, husband and father. God, what are You trying to tell me about all of this? Are You really able to work all this together for good? How? When will I ever really know that it’s all for good so I can stop living under the awful strain of the PTSD symptoms? In all of it, are You merely trying to show me that my salvation really is all grace? That it really isn’t dependent on my performance, my ability to keep your Word? How can that be?”
That’s it, isn’t it? I can’t obey You in my role as provider so I don’t feel You approve of me. This is what’s causing a lot of my PTSD. On the famous BiMart day, when I felt completely free and had no anxiety whatsoever, was it because I felt like I was going to be okay without performing perfectly as a son, father and husband? Did I somehow cross over into grace in a way that meant it was okay not to have to strive to be a perfect Christian? Hmmm. I wonder. I’m not perfect. And, I’m never going to be. Is that okay, God?”
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Well, the next day, I received an email from Dr. Robert Jeffress who is the well known pastor of a Baptist church in Dallas, Texas. His email was a miraculous answer to my talk and prayer to God just the day before. Here is his email from his daily devotional series I receive each day.
Refining Our Humility and Contentment
Behold, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you.
–1 Kings 17:9
Zarephath was a place of refining for Elijah. What did God want to refine in Elijah–and in you and me as well? First, our Zarephath experience refines our humility. God said to Elijah, “Go to Zarephath . . . and stay there; behold, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you” (1 Kings 17:9). Think of the humility that required. God said to this great prophet, “I want you to go to a widow and depend on her for your daily sustenance.” In Elijah’s time, widows were on the bottom rung of Israel’s economic ladder. Widows had very few resources. It was humiliating enough to place yourself as a dependent to a widow. But this wasn’t just any widow; she was a Gentile widow. Gentiles were viewed as scum because they weren’t God’s chosen people. Notice what Jesus said about this in Luke 4:25-26: “There were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land; and yet Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.” Jesus’s point was that God’s plan has always been to incorporate Gentiles as recipients of His blessing. God sent Elijah to a Gentile widow to refine his humility. Don’t be surprised if God makes you go through humbling experiences as well.
Second, God uses our Zarephath to refine our contentment. Look at 1 Kings 17:10-11: “When he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks; and he called to her and said, ‘Please get me a little water in a jar, that I may drink.’ As she was going to get it, he called to her and said, ‘Please bring me a piece of bread in your hand.’” Now, providing food was a problem, because there was a famine in the land. She said, “I have no bread, only a handful of flour in the bowl and a little oil in the jar; and behold, I am gathering a few sticks that I may go in and prepare for me and my son, that we may eat it and die” (v. 12). That’s pretty bleak, isn’t it? You would think Elijah would say, “I’m sorry.” Instead, he told her, “Do not fear; go, do as you have said, but make me a little bread cake from it first and bring it out to me, and afterward you may make one for yourself and for your son. For thus says the Lord God of Israel, ‘The bowl of flour shall not be exhausted, nor shall the jar of oil be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain’” (vv. 13-14). He was saying, “Do what God has commanded, and afterward God will provide you an inexhaustible supply of flour and oil to eat until this famine ends.” What did she do? She “did according to the word of Elijah, and she and her household ate for many days. The bowl of flour was not exhausted nor did the jar of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord” (vv. 15-16).
God wants us to learn to depend on Him. It is hard to be content, isn’t it? We have this insatiable desire for more, better, or different. But that is an illusion. The only way to truly be satisfied is by learning to depend on God for your well-being. Extraordinary people learn the lesson of contentment like Elijah did.
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Today’s devotion is excerpted from “Secret #3: Wait on God’s Timing” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2017.
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God answers prayer, precious people. ☺ And there’s more to come about this…
God bless,
Mark