My treasures…my children

"So love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, and strength. Memorize his laws and tell them to your children over and over again. Talk about them all the time, whether you're at home or walking along the road or going to bed at night, or getting up in the morning. (Deuteronomy 6:5-7 CEV)"

My son broke down when he overheard me talking to a friend about the lay-off, the 'not-fired, but no longer employed' term that has left me and my family a week away from utter poverty. He cried because he saw the dream of not living in my sister's basement but having his own room in a house of our own evaporate like the morning dew under a hot sun. Bitterness, coming from a long year of disappointments, allowed those tears to flow and each sob crushed my heart even as I wrapped him in my arms and told him we would be okay, we would be together and Dad would find another job. I reminded him about all the times that God has provided for us; money from friends, gifts from others….we haven't had much in the last year to claim as our own, but what we have has come from those who care and love the Lord….and passed blessings on to us.

My daughter sat in the back seat and said nothing. She is too much like me, quietly observing a world that seems bent on opposing this little band and defiantly staring it down in the face. She began to echo my words to her older brother…"Casey, Dad said it will be alright….Casey, its okay, Dad said so." She has had her own rough year, spent with her mother instead of with us….and she has a longer road back to the peace and comfort that family once meant in this life.

I believe what I tell my children. God has proven Himself a respecter of no man, but a loving Father to His children. He does not utter simplistic things to pacify His children but moves in the most effective and logical way towards the delivery of the promises He has made throughout the generations. He, more than I have ever been able to deliver, comes through each and every time. He blesses both the righteous and the wicked; not because He doesn't care whether you are His or not…but because He has a plan for each. He will never demand our obedience or our lives…but will continue to knock at the door to our hearts until we open it with our own free will and invite Him inside.

Another day has passed, tomorrow at 4:30pm it will officially be a week since I received the news that no longer would I be working at the job I've known for five and a half years…..day in and day out, through the marriage and divorce, through the custody and the allowing my daughter to live with her mother. The friends who have come and gone, some of their own free will and others because they had no choice. Another day will be spent filling out applications for positions that I know I can do, but I have no degree for…another day trying to find the funds to maybe go back to school and get that degree…another day of taking my daughter and my niece to school….another day closer to the end of the severance I was given.

I tell my children each day that God is going to provide….because I can hear Him whispering through the tears I have cried in the worry that sometimes creeps in to the heart when I get distracted by the Enemy's attacks and fall back..."Jim, it will be okay. Your Dad said so."

I know that I am not the only one facing these problems in these perilous times…some 4,000 alone in the building I once worked in were summarily let go after years and years of working when they showed up in the morning one day….the funds for 'no worker left behind' are running out because people are using them to return to school for hope….obtaining state/federal aid for food and shelter are three months awaiting time….and the demand for higher degrees are hidden in the simplest of job descriptions…

My son thinks it's funny that his 'old man' needs to take a math course before he can go back to school, if the funding and the provisioning come through for that…He no longer worries about when Dad will get a job but how much time Dad can spend maybe coming to school and volunteering….the same with my daughter. She said, in the solemn voice of an eleven year old, that I should become a police officer or a homeland security officer….failing that, I should become a teacher. And then her ten-year old niece said in equally solemn tones "I didn't know Christians could be police officers." As I read stories of children dying from cancer, of families torn asunder by divorce and job loss and look into my daughter's confident smile and see my son's bright, gentle glance, I thank the Lord that I can have this time, even with the prospects growing smaller and smaller, to spend in the delight of my children.

And I go outside each night and spend my time with my Heavenly Father…..crying out my heart to Him that I not 'screw-up' the blessings that He has given me with my children, that I can have more time with them, to show them that even in the midst of the enemy's arrows flying like a blanket of death around me, that I will stand faithfully with my sword and shield and rely on my Father's strength, promise and mercy to see me through….

Shouting His praises even in the midst of the storm……confidently daring the waves and shaking my fist at the enemy……because my duty to my children, to show them God and teach them the way of living as a child of His doesn't end like the job did…..there are no budget cuts in the coffers of God's treasure house, there is 'no longer a position for you' in the ledgers of His accounting. My duty is to show my children a real and living God…….and my confident faith in His word, His deeds and His promises. So I look at going back to school, and continue to fill out the resumes for the secular jobs that I think I can at least have a chance for as my heart longs to be in the church as a pastor or on my way to Australia to be a men's pastor to the men of the outback……

Because my children have faith in their father….and their father has faith in the Heavenly Father…….

"It will be okay….because my DADDY tells me so…….."

 

 

Suffering

"Dear friends, do not be surprised by the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. Instead, because you are participating in the sufferings of Christ; keep on rejoicing, so that you may be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed. (1 Peter 4:12-13 ISV)"

I can remember the humor that flooded my being as God spoke to me that October day in 2004, telling me that He was calling me to be a pastor. Me, redeemed surely by the blood of Christ, and yet still bracketed by the consequences and struggles of a life lived in direct opposition to the Lord of Host…not merely living in darkness but taking up arms against the Army of the Lord in my foolish pride….my anger and pain, to be a pastor…to speak of God to those in the pews before me…to speak God's words to His people and those who were in the process of seeking Him. Right! It must've been just indigestion or a funny mushroom that seeped into the food I ate the previous day. He's a funny guy, our God….

Seriously.

I left the conference and went outside, walking through the little wooded area that lies on the Willow Creek's massive grounds….pacing…wandering…and offering up one valid excuse after another for why I, above all people, wasn't "that guy" that God wanted to be associated with. Finally, almost as a flippant remark, I said, "Fine, I'll tell my pastor and You can do what You need to do to make it a done deal."

It was one of those, "Be careful what you say" moments that now, five years later, I realize what God heard when I said it…..the journey hasn't been the most pleasant or enjoyable, but God has been doing what He needed to do to make such a thing happen.

And in His time, it will happen.

Not just a simple pastorship in a church where I can hide behind the lights and the stage productions…..not even going back to the simple chapel full of saints as an ordained chaplain…..but something I surely would've ran from years ago. Ran because where that will take me is far beyond any comfortable place I would want to be and places me squarely in the firing sights of anyone and everyone. I have found, as I've been shaped and molded by God's will, that the Christian Army is one of its worst enemies…..eating their own wounded.

"If you are going to be used by God, He will take you through a multitude of experiences that are not meant for you at all, they are meant to make you useful in His hands, and to enable you to understand what transpires in other souls so that you will never be surprised at what you come across." Oswald Chambers writes in My Utmost for His Highest. "The sufferings of Christ are not those of ordinary men. He suffered "according to the will of God"………."

The Hindus say that it is a result of our past lives….'karma'. The Buddhist says it is merely an illusion. Islam says it doesn't matter; just submit to the will of Allah. Even atheists tell us that suffering is a random chance event, though I wouldn't try and tell a mother of a five year old cancer patient who is dying that randomness, illusions or something in the child's past life have cause him to suffer this and through him, the parents, family and friends. I wouldn't even say "It doesn't matter" because in the pain and agony of the moment is very real, very direct and very personal.

I remember Hurricane Katrina…..how God arranged for me to go down with the Church I was attending at the last minute and the return to a place where I had once called home. From the rest of the country, far removed from the life and times of the people living in Louisiana, and the other states hit by this hurricane….aid and comfort came; supplies and people, not motivated by governmental jobs but a kinship to the citizens who survived and those who didn't. The physical needs of a people were overwhelmly met….but there was a lesser known or realized need that would never be filled again, but could only be adapted and reshaped. Community. Friends. Family.

There were some, even in the midst of handing out food and water, expressed how it was the sinfulness of New Orleans and Marti Gras that caused the devastation or the wickedness of the US in its worldly involvements and petty wars. "Even if nature or Satan unleashed the deadly tidal wave, one word from Jesus would've stopped it. He did not speak it." John Piper says "This means that there is a design in the suffering." It is possible that God ordained or allowed this to happen in the coastal area of the United States….for the sake of redeeming a people or nation that have fallen away from God.

But it doesn't matter if this was just nature or God moving….the call is the same; nurture and compassion to a people suffering.

For five and a half years, I 'lived' under the shaky employment that has become the automotive industry. Every year, every quarter I would wonder if this was the time that I would find myself on the unemployment line. Then, November 8^th, I received a call from my HR representative. Despite the fact that Ford posted surprising profits for the last quarter, it still wasn't enough for the projected "One Ford" plan and budget cuts were made. Myself and two other members of the team I worked on were being laid-off or retired. I was the one to be laid off. The one remark that the HR rep said to my boss and a coworker was that he was glad I was a man of faith. Surely, in the economic climate I would need this faith that he had seen displayed in each moment he interacted with me on the job.

As with the Katrina disaster, God is glorified in the suffering of His people. Countless churches, missionary groups and faith-based organizations moved with quickness and intent to reach those countless thousands who were stranded and abandoned in the coastal areas affected by the devastation. Far ahead of the Federal Government and with more direct effectiveness. Driven by compassion and mercy, those countless thousands have not given just food and water to the residents in those areas but something far greater….a connection to community, the nation as a whole. As one dear lady asked me, "Why, all the way from Michigan, are you here in the midst of this?" I told her because I've lived in Lousiana that I knew how much suffering lie beneath the surface of the physical…..the devastating loss of community and I wanted her to know that she was not alone…we were united in our grief, bound in our sorrows and would climb out of it hand in hand because we were family…the family of the United States of America.

In this place of unemployment that I find myself in now, even here God can be glorified….in the movement and provisions that He has promised me and all those who suffer this stressful season. God's provision and movement will be undeniable. As I have spent the last few days going over the 'classified' ads, seeing job after job requiring more experience than I have or a degree I do not, I am a bit disheartened. My two week severance is going to run out too quickly and my ability to go back to school is seriously hampered by financial restrains. But, as I spend time with God each morning I remember and am instilled with hopeful peace because He has provisioned me in countless ways in a timing perfectly His own, through methods that I would have not thought possible through His direction and built my faith through the trial and tribulations of this life. God will provide and that provision will be undeniably His.

"It is only when we are related to Jesus Christ that we can understand what God is after in His dealings with us. It is part of the Christian culture to know what God's aim is." Chambers continues, "In the history of the Christian Church the tendency has been to evade being identified with the sufferings of Jesus Christ; men have sought to procure the carrying out of God's order by a short cut of their own. God's way is always the way of suffering, the way of the 'long, long trail.'"

It has been a long, long trail as God has delivered upon the promise He made when He first called me out to go into direct ministry for His kingdom. Much has been lost, much more has been learned through the brutal examples of what Church is in the post-modern Western culture and much more has been given for the strengthening and equipping for a life of service under His guidance. Suffering isn't as hard when it is taken under the context of sharing in the suffering of Jesus Christ, as we can experience in the reading of the Bible and hold up to the light of God's righteousness for clarity.

This could be the time that God has brought me to where the calling is realized or this may just be a step towards His ultimate goal of apostleship to a nation down under……

I will sit still and listen to the instructions of my God and be ready to pack up my tent to follow without firm idea the cloud of His presence into the desert. Knowing that:

"If we will not bear suffering for Christ now, we must bear eternal sufferings hereafter."