Find Us Faithful

Christmas, travels, and busyness has kept me from blogging for a little while, but I’m back. Today I spent 9 hours writing! It was wonderful. I think it must be like exercise. For SOME people I understand that getting back to exercise after a brief hiatus is like a breathe of fresh air. I’m not one of those people, mind you. For me exercise is painful…all the time. But writing…now that’s another story. I feel like the Energizer bunny tonight.

I’m really posting for two purposes:

First, I want to direct you to two other websites. Both of these are for women I have had the privilege of carrying to the Lord in prayer for a while now. The first is Charity George. I wrote about Charity several times back in May (and perhaps June and July). God is working a miracle in her life and it is with great rejoicing that we continue to pray for her. My faith has grown in the last several months as I’ve met Charity’s family and followed her progress via the internet after she left Mayo Clinic.  Please check out her website.

The second woman I want you to meet is Kristy Dyke. I have never had the pleasure of meeting Kristy personally, but I have “known” her via the internet for over a year as we belong to a couple of the same Christian writers groups. Kristy is a speaker, writer, wife, mother, grandmother, a Sister in Christ, and she has a brain tumor. Every day I read the postings that she and her husband leave as they journey through this life changing experience and, again, my faith is strengthened. Please check out Kristy’s blog and pray for a miraculous healing.

 The second reason I’m posting tonight is because I want all of us to be challenged. Charity and Kristy have been given unbelievable circumstances in which they, and their family and friends, are learning grace lessons. Many (perhaps most) of us will never experience anything like what these women are going through, but God will give us our own trials. He will place mountains in our paths so that our eyes will be turned toward Him and He can test our faithfulness.

James 1:2, in the Message, says, “Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.”

I’m reminded of an old song from my college days by Steve Green’s album (People Need the Lord). It was called “Find Us Faithful.” My prayer is that as each of us encounter different opportunities in our lifetimes to learn grace lessons, that those who come behind us will find us faithful.

We’re pilgrims on the journey
Of the narrow road
And those who’ve gone before us line the way
Cheering on the faithful, encouraging the weary
Their lives a stirring testament to God’s sustaining grace

Surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses
Let us run the race not only for the prize
But as those who’ve gone before us
Let us leave to those behind us
The heritage of faithfulness passed on through godly lives

Oh may all who come behind us find us faithful
May the fire of our devotion light their way
May the footprints that we leave
Lead them to believe
And the lives we live inspire them to obey
Oh may all who come behind us find us faithful

After all our hopes and dreams have come and gone
And our children sift though all we’ve left behind
May the clues that they discover and the memories they uncover
Become the light that leads them to the road we each must find

“Ask faith to look through the keyhole of the promise and tell
you what it sees there laid up for him that overcomes; ask it to
listen and tell you whether it cannot hear the shout of those
crowned saints receiving the reward of all their services and
sufferings here on earth. And do you stand on the other side
afraid to wet your foot with those sufferings and temptations,
which, like a little trickle of water, run between you and
glory?” (William Gurnall in “The Christian In Complete Armour)