Tag Archives: Trusting God

Take the Next Step

27 Monday May 2024

Posted by in Personal Essays, Writing

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In the sixth chapter of Ephesians, the Apostle Paul describes the Whole Armor of God.  In verse 14, we read; “Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth…”  The truth with which we gird our waists is Jesus Christ Himself and I’ve spent the last few weeks thinking about how the truth He is manifests in our lives.

I had a minor surgical procedure last week.  It was minor but did still require a few days recovery so I had no opportunity to complete the study I had planned.  I thought about skipping this week’s post but I have been pondering truth over the last several days so thought I would share some of my conclusions. 

I have been thinking of the truth that is Jesus Christ in terms of healing.  If there is one subject I wish I understood, it is the healing that is supposedly ours in Christ Jesus.  I say “supposedly” because I look for my healing to be manifested in my body to no avail.  I am now going through my third round of tests and it is looking like another surgery is in my near future.  I would love for all of my health problems to miraculously go away and would especially love to never have surgery again.  But, that doesn’t appear to be how the Holy Spirit is at work in my body.

There is a passage in Isaiah 53:5 which I have heard often quoted as proof that our healing is found in Jesus: “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.”  This passage does seem to be straight forward: by His stripes we are healed.  What is the answer then, if we are not healed?  Even as I sit and write this, I am in so much pain it takes my breath away.  What is the truth of Jesus Christ in the midst of my circumstances right now?  What is the truth about healing when everything I feel at this moment tells me I am not at all healed?

I have to say, I don’t have an answer. 

There is so much I don’t understand.  My family and I subscribe to the Guideposts and I have read a couple of different stories by the same woman.  This woman lived the majority of her life with painful growths on her face.  She endured pain and shame and multiple procedures only to have the growths come back until the day came she experienced a miraculous healing.  You’d think that would be the end of it but the latest story this woman shared was about experiencing an entirely new health problem that had her shuttling from one waiting room to another as various doctors conducted tests.  She doesn’t understand why she was healed then and not now but her eyes were opened to see her fellow human beings sitting with her in the waiting room.  She began to wonder about them and their suffering and asked for ways to touch their lives which is a prayer God answered.

I have only had one experience of miraculous healing.  My right arm was damaged in my car accident and so my left arm has had to compensate a great deal over the years.  A few years ago, I had burning pain in the muscles of my left side.  The pain reached from my collarbone all the way to my hip and any movement of my left arm caused considerable agony.  With both arms out of commission, I was looking at a severe diminishment of what mobility I had left.  During this time, I felt it was important to be part of an online prayer group.  I wasn’t sure why but I chose to be obedient to what I believed the Holy Spirit was telling me.  I had attended for days wondering what in the world I was doing when, one afternoon, the host of the prayer group stopped his prayer and began praying for healing.  He prayed for another person who shared my name and then prayed for healing for all disabled people.  At that moment, the pain melted out of my collarbone and shoulder, down my left side, and out of my body.  It has never returned.

I did not experience any healing in my right arm.  None of the other injuries resulting from my car accident were healed at that same time.  Later that year, I had my second surgery and I am now looking at a third.  Why?  Why heal the pain in my left arm and not anything else?  Why heal that woman’s growths and yet not heal whatever health situation she is now experiencing?  I don’t know.

I do know the Greek word aletheia which is translated as “truth” means truth, sometimes faithfulness.  Aletheia is related to alethes which means true, sincere, real, correct, faithful, trustworthy, genuine, and veracious.  I know all of these words are an accurate description of Jesus Christ who does not ever leave us or forsake us.  I know He is with us, inside of our circumstances, experiencing them with us, no matter what our circumstances might be.

His presence is with me through all of this in a tangible way.  As I said, there is so much I don’t understand-especially about healing-but I have experienced Jesus Christ as my very life enough to know that He is with me no matter what I have to go through.  I trust His revelation to Isaiah is still true today and pertains to me: by His stripes I am healed. I trust Him enough that I don’t have any expectations as to what healing looks like.  I know what I would prefer but, if it comes to another surgery, I know I won’t go through it alone.

I don’t have an answer on how to receive your healing from God.  I wish I did.  What I do have is an unshakable conviction that Jesus Christ dwells in each one of us going through our circumstances with us and has made a way through them for each of us.  With this in mind, I’ll close with a story from last week’s procedure.

I mentioned the story from the Guideposts and how the woman began to seek for ways to reach those sharing the waiting room with her.  I had that in mind as I entered a waiting room of my own.  There was an exchange of smiles but no opening for starting a conversation with anyone.  I wasn’t in the waiting room long before an administrator called me aside and said my surgeon had been called away on an emergency.  They could either reschedule my procedure or I could wait two hours on the chance the surgeon would be able to return.

Now, anyone who has undergone surgery knows the truly unpleasant preparation required the day before.  I had made it through hours of unpleasant prep.  I had been hours with no food or drink.  The last thing I wanted to do was reschedule and have to undergo all of it again.  Plus, there was a timing issue.  I needed to get this surgery out of the way because I already had Doctor’s appointments scheduled for an entirely different health problem I was certain would result in another surgery and I wanted to put as much time between undergoing anesthetic as possible.  I elected to wait.

I wasn’t kept in the waiting room long.  The nurses came to get me and brought me to a curtained off section of room where I got to change into the oh-so-comfortable gown and hair net.  They prepped me as much as they could but I did have a two and a half hour wait before they knew for certain my procedure was going to go forward.  I was uncomfortable.  It was not easy to find a position on the narrow bed where I was not in pain. I also knew I had a choice.

I could hear the nurses making calls to all of the patients scheduled after me.  I could hear them apologizing for a situation that was entirely out of everyone’s control.  I could hear how stressed out they were as they asked each other if anyone had heard from the surgeon and knew what was going to happen.  I was a bit stressed myself.  My family had their own appointments they needed to keep that day and I couldn’t know whether my decision to wait was the correct one.  ‘What if” questions kept turning over in my mind and I didn’t have answers.  I did know I wasn’t alone and I chose to trust whatever was happening affected us both and would be turned to my benefit.  I did not have to add to the nurses’ stress with questions or complaints of my own.  I relaxed as much as I could under the warm blankets the nurses gave me and trusted God loved me and would take care of me.

He did.  I came through the procedure with no problems.  I had no nausea from the anesthetic which I have to say is a miracle.  The delay meant the timing of the day was perfect.  My family received the call that I was finished just as they were wrapping up their own appointments so they didn’t have to be stressed out either.

I would of course prefer all my of my health problems would just go away.  And yet, I have another experience of the God who is love carrying me through a difficult circumstance.  I have another Doctor’s appointment tomorrow and I face it without fear because I know that, whatever happens, God loves me and will take care of me.

That is the truth I know.  Maybe you are in a situation where you need a miracle-whether healing or something else-but you aren’t seeing it.  I don’t have an answer for you.  I wish I did.  What I do know is our God is closer to us than our very breath.  He dwells inside of us and there isn’t anything that happens to us that doesn’t also happen to Him.  He is on the inside of our circumstance and is not idle: He is working all things for our good.  Perhaps it will be the miracle we long for.  Perhaps it will be His presence during a recovery.  Whatever it is we face, He is faithful.  Let us trust Him and take the next step.

Unless noted otherwise, all Scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

References

Brown, Colin, The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Volume 3, Regency Reference Library, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1967, 1971, Page 874

Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1990

Ex Nihilo

19 Monday Sep 2022

Posted by in Isaiah 45:7, Studies

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Image by Frantisek Krejci from Pixabay

Hello and welcome to another week and another post on Renaissance Woman.

I am moving on from studying “peace” for now and am beginning to look at “I create evil”.  Different Bible translations have different words here: the KJV has “evil” as does the Amplified although that translation expands evil’s definition to “calamity”.  Calamity is the word in the NKJV and New American Standard while the New International has “disaster”.  Whichever word is used, it does feel as though we’ve reached a point in the study where we have all the ammunition we need to prove God is untrustworthy.  After all, doesn’t He say it Himself?  Evil exists because He created it. 

The Genesis account does seem to confirm this-sort of.  God certainly planted the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden so, while the Genesis account does not ever show Him actually creating evil, He certainly allowed the potential of it.  The word in Isaiah is not “allow” though: it is bara in the Hebrew and is the same word translated “create” and “created” in the Genesis account.  This ought to make the passage in Isaiah clear but, as I looked up the definition for bara, I found it was anything but.

I do not know if I have ever come across a more confusing definition in the Strong’s Concordance.  The definition for bara (H1254) is; “to create, to cut down (a wood), select, feed (as formative processes):-choose, create (creator), cut down, dispatch, do, make (fat).”  The word is translated these different ways in scripture.  The majority of the time it is translated “create” or “creator” but Ezekiel 21:19 translates it twice as “choose”, Joshua 17:15 translates it “cut down”, Ezekiel 23:47 has “dispatch”, Exodus 34:10 translates it “done”, and 1 Samuel 2:29 does indeed translate bara as “make (yourselves) fat.”  With all these different options to choose from, I wonder why the Bible translators choose “create”?  Wouldn’t it make more sense for God to have said He dispatches or cuts down evil?  Whatever my personal preferences might be, they matter not because “create” is the word agreed upon by the translators and so the question I ask myself this week is; what does it mean to create?

In search of an answer, I turn to Genesis where verse One states, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”  Strong’s definition aside, all experts seem to agree that creating means to bring something out of nothing.  In his book The Universe Next Door, James W. Sire expresses this almost universally held Christian worldview:  “God created the cosmos ex nihilo.  God is He Who Is, and thus he is the source of all else.  Still, it is important to understand that God did not make the universe out of Himself.  Rather, God spoke it into existence.  It came into being by his word: “God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light” (Gen 1:3).  Theologians thus say God “created” (Gen 1:1) the cosmos ex nihilo-out of nothing, not out of himself or from some preexistent chaos (for if it were really “preexistent”, it would be as eternal as God).”1

As I think about it, I suppose Mr. Sire expresses what was also once my worldview or, at least if I didn’t hold to this belief buckle and thong, I never questioned it.  I do so now.  Mr. Sire insists creation is ex nihilo-out of nothing-and that it is important to understand God did not make the universe out of Himself.  If that is so, then I do wonder at the meanings of John 1:1-3, Colossians 1:16-17, Romans 11:36, and Ephesians 1:22-23.  The first verses of John we are all familiar with: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.”  The passage in Colossians states, “For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers.  All things were created through Him and for Him.  And He is before all things and in Him all things consist” and the passage in Romans is, “For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever”.  

The same Greek words occur in these three passages.  Through is dia (G1223) and denotes the channel of an act.  By is en (G1722) and denotes a “fixed position (in place, time, or state), instrumentality”.  Of is ex (G1537) and means “origin”.  To and For are the same word in the Greek.  That word is eis (G1519) and means “to or into (indicating the point reached or entered) of place, time, or purpose.” Consist is the word sunistao (G4921) and means “strengthened, set together, constitute”.  And then there is before which is the Greed word pro (G4253) and it means “in front of, superior, prior, above, before”. 

As I ponder all of these words together, I am reminded of what I read in one of my Physics books: “The deeper explanation for forces acting on objects is explained in physics with another imaginary concept called energy.  Energy is an abstract idea that can’t be seen or detected directly, but we do see the effect it has on things when it is transferred from one place to another.  Despite the fact it is imaginary, energy is a powerful idea that is important in every field of physics.  Energy is like a force field, a mathematical idea that doesn’t physically exist.  We cannot hold energy or see it directly, only the changes in things when energy is transferred.  Energy is like momentum, a conserved quantity in nature.  The amount we start any event with will always equal the amount we end with.  It can never be created or destroyed, but can be transferred into different forms.  If we can determine the energy of a group of objects before an event has happened, then we know they will have the same energy afterward.  The event, whatever it was, will have transferred energy, so that afterward it is stored in different ways and shared out differently across the objects.  Taking this law of conservation to the extreme tells us that all of the energy in our universe today came from one place, the Big Bang.  No extra energy has been made and none of it lost since the start of time, it has only been shared out among different forms.”2

I have to point out the contradiction: first it is stated that energy can never be created or destroyed but then all energy in existence today came from the Big Bang.  How can all energy in existence coming from the Big Bang be possible if energy cannot be created or destroyed?  Thoughts for another time.  Dr. Still then writes, “It is thought our universe started with a Big Bang.  Before this event, there was nothing, including no space for things to move in, or time to grow old by.  At some point, some quantum fluctuation triggered energy, space, and time to be unleashed…in the moments that followed, energy was converted into different forms, including the mass of many fundamental particles.”3 I find that riveting.  Energy is at the very heart of the particles that bind together to form all that exists.

The God who John’s gospel declares is Spirit cannot be compared with the scientific concept of energy: words cannot express the vastness of the gulf that separates the reality of who God is from the idea of energy as described.  Yet I do see a parallel in the description of energy to the picture painted in the scriptures.  God, the Self-Existent One, cannot be created or destroyed.  He is before all things.  He is the source of all things.  He spoke and His Word is the By and the Through and the To and the Of and the For of creation. 

I am not prepared to agree with those who state God created the universe out of Himself but neither do I agree He created out of nothing.  I do agree that all things came into existence because He declared them to be so and yet I see He is not separate from His creation.  In Him, that is the Lord Jesus Christ, all things consist or hold together.  I like the Amplified version of Romans 11:36: “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things-For all things originate with Him and come from Him; all things live through Him, and all things center in and tend to consummate and to end in Him.  To Him be glory forever! Amen-so be it.”  I also wonder if all things existing In Christ isn’t what the Apostle Paul is expressing when he writes, “And He put all things under His feet and gave Him to be head over all things to the church which is His body the fullness of Him who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:22-23, Emphasis mine). 

 What does it mean to create?  I haven’t the least idea.  I think it’s far too early in my study of bara to begin drawing conclusions.  That being said, I do not think the passage in Isaiah 45:7 can be interpreted as evil exists because God created it.  Perhaps when God says “I create evil” He is promising there is nowhere we can go from His Spirit and no where we can flee from His presence.  We can ascend into heaven and we will find He is there.  We can make our beds in hell and we will find Him there was well.  We can take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea and still His hand will lead us and His right hand will hold us (Psalm 139: 7-10).  Perhaps “I create evil” is His assurance that we need not fear any evil for He is with us.  (Psalm 23:4).

To Be Continued…

Unless noted otherwise, all Scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

1. Sire, James W., The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog, Fourth Edition, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 2004, Page 29

2. Still, Dr. Ben, Mind Maps: Physics, Unipress Books Limited, 2020, Pages 32-33,

3. Ibid., Page 124

Other References

H1254 – bārā’ – Strong’s Hebrew Lexicon (kjv) (blueletterbible.org)

The Amplified Bible, Expanded Edition, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, The Lockman Foundation, 1954,1987

Green, Jay P. Sr., The Interlinear Bible: Hebrew, Greek, English, Volume 2, Authors For Christ, Inc., Lafayette, Indiana, 1985

Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1990