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I am not ashamed to say that God has blessed me. I’m not anything special. I have done nothing to make myself deserving. I’m nothing but just an ordinary guy. But God is the source of all blessings, and He bestows them as He wills. . .
He has blessed me by placing me with godly parents who have been the truest examples of what it means to follow Christ that I have ever seen. I would credit them with my upbringing if I did not know that they would simply deflect it upwards towards the One who changed them from the inside-out and honed them into mighty warriors, officers really, in His army to bring forth and train new warriors to serve their Commander. I am blessed to be one of those warriors.
When I hear people talk, or even see for myself, how their parents reared them or taught them, it brings me to tears in gratefulness to God that He would place me in the home that He did. It makes me ask: “Why, Father? Why would you bless me with such wonderful parents?”
He has blessed me by surrounding me with loving, accepting brothers and sisters, six in all, who are in every respect my closest and most enduring friends. When the friends outside the home have let me down, disappointed me, even deliberately hurt me, my brothers and sisters have comforted me, encouraged me, and picked me back up. Each one of them is a gift and a blessing of God, and I could not imagine what life would be like without a single one of them.
When I hear of, or see for myself the siblings of others, how they are their worst enemies, not their best friends, it brings a crushing weight of gratefulness upon my heart, making me ask: “Why, Father? Why would you bless me with such a family?”
This past year especially has been a testament to God’s faithfulness and goodness to little Andrew Beck. He led me to a wonderful school full of wonderful people that launched a career that is still astonishing me with the way it fits so perfectly to my life and to me as a person. That could only be God’s doing, because I had NO clue that this is what I would be doing for work even a year ago!
One area of blessing that God has only just recently been revealing to me is the “bad” things that happened to me. The woundings that I have received in this past year were more than I thought I could ever endure.
I have been made to ache with burdens for friends and loved ones who I know are not walking with God. That is some of the hardest pain to endure, because you know that eternity is at stake in these peoples lives, and to think that they are heading for an eternity without God is often enough to weep in agony. If you don’t know the feeling, I cannot explain it to you much more than that.
And then there was that biting cold morning in the early Spring. . . where I was torn-apart by the destructive termination of a close relationship, one that I had thought for a year would result in being bound in matrimony to my beloved best friend for the rest of my days. With a ring in my pocket, I was awakened to the fact that I was not loved as I loved. . . that I was not to her as she was to me. Words and actions were misunderstood, misjudged, and misread, leaving a wall of confusion and contention between us. I thought that perhaps all of that stuff may have been the cause of the relationship’s meltdown, but after the dust settled, after the wall was broken down, the truth was finally seen, and the truth was that things were not right.
Marriage is a union of two who sacrificially lay down their lives for each other, not the slave-like love and devotion of one to another, who’s ambitions, dreams, and desires are too important to be even partially laid down for another.
Children cannot be dreaded as though they were some sort of curse because they get in the way of their parents’ “freedom.”
The Word of God must unify, not divide a marriage. If it does, it shows that there is not spiritual unity, and that one or both of the partners are not simply resisting their partner, but are resisting the Holy Spirit.
This is not how any marriage should be, and this is why my marriage never was.
Of course the break-up hurt. Worse than anything I have ever experienced. My father, who was with me when it happened, told me how he remembers seeing me laying on a bed in a state of what he called: “emotional shock.” I can barely remember all that happened. . . it is like a very vivid nightmare, where I remember feeling more than seeing or thinking. . .
I should’ve seen it coming, I know, but I had been wearing the rose-colored glasses of love, and could not imagine that she could make an even gradual 180 degree turn in her heart towards me. The cause of that “shock” was due simply to the trauma of having the rose-colored glasses torn off my face and seeing true colors for the first time.
Now I’m not telling you all this for you to feel sympathy for me or anything like that. I’m telling you this because I consider it to be one of the great blessings of God in the life of little Andrew Beck. I cannot tell you how much I thank Him that He spared me, my children, and even my potential wife from a life of continual heartache, distress, and discontentment.
It was God, not her, that initialized the break-up, even if He was not the cause. He was not wearing rose-colored glasses as Andrew Beck was. He saw her heart as it was and saw that it had grown cold to me, so instead of letting me get what I wanted, (or what I thought I wanted) He prompted her to tear it away.
It didn’t happen because God does not want to bless me with a wife, but because He does indeed! He knew and still knows better than I what is best for me, and He wants met to have His best. He wants me to be joined to a woman after His own heart who will love me as I will love her, not one that will bring me heartache.
When I see the heartache and discouragement of men married to grievous wives, and the joy and happiness of those joined to mighty women of God; mothers, counselors, and helpmeets, I cannot help but ask the Lord with tears of gratefulness: “Why, Father? Why would you bless me by wounding me now to spare me a lifetime of wounds?”
Never view “blessings” as only “good” things. No trial or suffering is pleasant when you are right in the middle of it, but if you turn to God for comfort and strength and endure it without falling, He will reveal to you when you are on the other side that it was for your ultimate good. And when that happens, there will be a glorious joy in your heart that no one but you will be able to fully understand!
Oh the goodness of God towards those who love and fear Him! How wonderful it is to be the son of a Father who watches out for me in protective jealousy because of the zealous love He has towards me!
He has shown me His lovingkindness not just in things that He has given me in His goodness; my parents, my family, my career. . . but in the things that He has taken away in His mercy, with the promise to restore them a hundredfold if I abide in Him.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever. - Psalm 23:6
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| | Posted 10/13/2008 1:07 PM - 124 Views - 11 eProps - 7 comments
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