Be Blessed Today!

 “Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfil His promises to her.” My Bible sticker called out to me with this promise from Luke 1:45.

 

But what exactly has the Lord promised ME?

 

As I looked back on my journey with the Lord, I realized that in the beginning of our relationship, His promises to me were all comforting: promises that He has good plans for me (Jeremiah 29:11), promises that He will renew my strength (Isaiah 40:31), promises that His grace is sufficient for me (2 Corinthians 12:9). And indeed, true to His character, God has kept all these promises to me, all the time.

 

But in recent years, His biblical promises that seemed to hit home most deeply have been the not so comforting ones:

 

1.  Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. (1 Peter 4:12)

2.  In this world, you will have trouble. (John 16:33)

3.  He has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for Him as well.

(Phil 1:29)

4.  Share in suffering like a good soldier of Christ Jesus.

(2 Timothy 2:3)

5.  Remember the word that I said to you, ‘Servants are not greater than their master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. (John 15:20)

 

Wow. Some very clear promises there.

And to top it all, we are instructed to turn the other cheek, pray for our persecutors, bless them, do good to them and to count it all joy while we are at it!

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the very clear, consistent message that not only is it impossible for a disciple to escape suffering, but suffering is indeed a necessary, life long process for anyone who is committed to following Jesus Christ all the way to heaven.

 

For years, I resented this necessary tool of suffering that God used to keep chipping me into the shape of His heart. I could not understand why I seemed to be the only one in my inner circle of family and friends who was continuously suffering from one thing or another. I hated being the ‘sick one’ and hated being taunted for it even more. But most of all I hated it that some people who looked at me suffering and still following Jesus came to the conclusion that Jesus doesn’t really exist or love me or at the very least is not interested in healing me. I felt like because I was continuously suffering, I was giving Jesus a bad reputation as a Healer who could not or would not heal me.

 

Oh, how I longed for some retrospect when I could look back on that time and finally understand what the whole thing was about! But there was no end in sight. I suffered physically from the same incurable, untreatable, unmanageable disease from the age of 11.5 to age 35: a total of 23 years and 9 months to be precise! At some point, I resigned myself to this life of physical pain, emotional pain being mocked for being sick by those in my family who did not follow Jesus and spiritual pain being completely clueless what it was all for.

 

At no point in those 23 years and 9 months, did Jesus ever promise me healing. In fact, He once told a faithful, praying friend to stop asking for my healing. Honestly, I wasn’t surprised when she told me that because I had stopped praying for my own healing long before that.

 

So, it really came as a total shock to me when Jesus healed me of endometriosis while I was standing alone in my bathroom, leaving me with physical proof of my healing that I am still too embarrassed to share with general public. A sonography soon thereafter confirmed my healing and managed to shock my radiologist and gynaecologist too. What followed was even more confusing because it seemed to ‘reappear’ and then go back forever, never to return in the last 8 years.

 

The truth is I have no idea why Jesus decided to heal me, because He had never promised to heal me and I certainly had done nothing to ‘bring on’ the healing in any way.

 

The only thing that makes some sense is that just when I had decided to be content with what God gave me (two amazing children through adoption) and accepted the challenge of raising them along with the chronic pain of this incurable disease, Jesus seemed to think the lesson had been learned and that particular teaching aid was no longer needed!

 

Am I all fit and dandy since then? Far from it. Trouble, hardship, physical pain and persecution from my ‘hometown’ are still my Teacher’s favourite teaching methods. The huge difference is that now that I have irrevocable proof that He can heal and deliver because He did it for me when I had completely given up on any hope of it, I am far more inclined to approaching every new pain with the intention of learning from it rather than merely bidding my time through it.

 

Based on my experience, I can tell you with certainty:

1.  I know Jesus loves me, not because He healed me but because He persevered in teaching me what I needed to learn inspite of the fact that I was determined to sulk and not learn for a majority of the time. I have never met anyone who has persisted to love me into a better version of myself like that, except Jesus.

 

2.  I can trust Jesus because in the end, it’s never only about what happens in this life, anyways. Only He knows what lessons I need to learn for my eternal life and since I’m convinced, I want to spend all eternity with Him, I’m open to whatever course He takes me through in order to get there.

 

3.  A life full of pain is a very long life to live when you think about the pain, but it goes by very quickly when you think about the gain. I’m still learning to focus on Jesus when the storms rock my boat hard, but I know that no matter what hardships comes, it will be very very worth the lessons I learn and the yet unviewable eternal repercussions of me offering that pain up for someone else’s salvation. No pain is ever wasted in Jesus’s hands.

 

Until very recently, I used to think that every day I spent in pain is a wasted day. It is our very own Indian St. Alphonsa who changed my mind when she said: “I consider a day in which I have not suffered as a day lost to me.”

 

God has promised me that denying myself, picking up my cross and following Him is a sure way to be His disciple for all eternity and I am blessed to believe that He will fulfil this promise to me!