How God Provided an Opportunity to Know Him More

* I am getting ready to give a testimony at our ladies tea next week. This is the talk I'm working on. If you're going to the tea, and don't want to read my story first, skip this post! Otherwise if you have any suggestions I would welcome the feedback.

How God Provided an Opportunity to Know Him More

About three years ago, when I was pregnant with our third child, Emily, I spent 6 months
on complete bed rest. We knew that was going to happen when God put it on our hearts to have a third child. But we were ready. Evan and Amy were now old enough to help out. We were home-schooling so they just brought their school books to the couch for me to help them. We hired a housecleaner. And we had a wonderful and loving church family and extended family for support. Even though the church was big, we were involved in smaller groups for accountability and care. Several of the women sincerely wanted to help. And I was counting on them being there!

Everything seemed great. ….But God was going to show me that I put too much hope and dependence on men and not enough on Him.


When I was 12 weeks pregnant, I needed to have my cervix stitched closed to keep Emily “in” for the next six months. The night that I went into the hospital for this procedure the group of ladies who were my closest friends, that I had met with regularly for prayer and accountability, had a major fight and split. Unfortunately, this affected how they related to me. Also the church we had been going to for the past 10 years had been in the process of some major changes as well. The Sunday School group that we had been a part of since we were married had been disbanded a year before. Most of our friends were in that group and while we thought we still had close ties with many of the people there, logistically, we didn’t see many of them very often.


So, at a time when I was counting on friends for support, God allowed for me to lose most of them. During the 6 months of bed rest, very few friends called me or came to visit.


During that time, Sean, in addition to working full time, mostly nights, making meals, and doing laundry, was building a 960 sq. feet addition on to our house. This kept him busy without much time or energy to sit and “visit” with me!


As I cried out to God during this lonely time, He helped me to trust Him rather than other people. But I still didn’t quite get it.


After Emily was born, I thought that I would be able to jump right back into the life that I had before. I could go to church now, with a cute baby, the addition was just about finished, and Sean went back to the day shift.


However, God again had other plans. He didn’t take me through the “valley” he had chosen for me, to come up again the same person. It was at this time that Sean and I both felt that the changes at church reached a point that we could no longer stay there. We actually came to Cornerstone the first time when Emily was just a few months old, but it would be over a year later that God would lead us back to call this church our home. (And I’m so glad he did!)


So now, I was church “homeless” for the first time in my life! During the search for a new church, I was very lonely. Many Sundays I would take Emily in her stroller for long one and two hour walks where I could cry and talk to God. God was helping me to wrestle with some bigger ideas about Himself (otherwise known as Theology). I also had quite a bit of time to read. Between bedrest, not having a church family, and sitting down to nurse, I had a lot of time to read! I started reading books by men and women who where passionate about God and His glory. One day I read this,


“God created us to live with a single passion to joyfully display his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life. The wasted life is the life without this passion. God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work not to be made much of, but to make much of Him in every part of our lives”. -John Piper “Don’t Waste Your Life” (emphasis mine)


This stumped me, because as ugly as it sounded, if I was truthful with my self, I thought I would be happy if people made “much of me.” This was a new thought, that I would be happy if I made “much of God.”


And as I started learning more about the sovereignty of God, I realized that God could have brought friends into my life if it was His will and what was best for me. As I learned more about who God is and what He is like, I began to experience that He alone was enough whether He brought me friends or not. I became more satisfied in Him. And I realized that I was no longer so lonely or unhappy. God had brought me joy, not from friends, but in knowing and loving Him.


Looking back I can see how I misused the gift of friendship. I put more trust in the gift, than in the giver of that good gift, God Himself. So, now as God is bringing friends back into my life, I have a different perspective. Rather than loving people because I want to make sure that they love me back, or to make sure that they don’t reject me (or I lose their friendship), I can love people out of a thankful heart, out of love for Christ.


I am actually thankful that God took away my friends for a time, because He gave me something more, a deeper knowledge of Himself.

“And now come, broken, to the cross,
Where Christ embraced all human loss,
And let us bow before the throne
Of God, who gives and takes his own,
And promises – whatever toll
He takes – to satisfy our soul.
Come, learn the lesson of the rod:
The treasure that we have in God.
He is not poor nor much enticed
Who loses everything but Christ.”

-John Piper from “The Misery of Job and the Mercy of God"