As we continue on with this month's posts about LOVE, today's blog post is one you do not want to miss!  We're featuring guest blogger Kittie Trail today, and boy does she have some great words of insight for us.  Check out the post below to read the personal journey Kittie has walked in the past year, and what she has to tell us about loving those that are hurting.  

One year ago this month, I experienced a new dimension of hurting and suffering when I was diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer.  After a year of treatments, including radiation, two series of chemotherapy and two surgeries, I have been declared NED (No Evidence of Disease). I am cancer free!! Praise God!  I am rejoicing but also have a new understanding and perspective of those who are hurting and suffering.  I had never had much more than a cold in my life and really didn’t know what it was like to be in pain or to suffer.  The Lord has walked with me every step of the way on this amazing journey that has been blessed beyond measure.  I didn’t say it was “pleasant” or “without frustration” but very “blessed”.

Looking back over the past year I have seen the mighty healing power of our awesome God.  However, not everyone who is hurting or suffering experiences that result.  That doesn’t mean there is a lack of faith or that God can’t heal or bring relief.  He can do whatever He chooses to do.  There is a great deal of false theology floating around that says, “If you just have faith you will be healed or you won’t have to suffer”.  That does not line up with the teaching of Scripture.

In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul talks about being “given a thorn in the flesh”—he was suffering.  He pleaded with the Lord three times to take it away.  But God chose not to remove it.  Instead the Lord said to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Did Paul lack faith?  No, Paul said, “I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardship, in persecutions, in difficulties.  For when I am weak, then I am strong.”  Strong’s Greek Lexicon describes weakness as feebleness of health or sickness.   Paul was well acquainted with hurting and suffering yet chose to “delight” in what he was going through.  He experienced God’s grace in the midst of his suffering.

When I was going through treatment, I never thought I would find myself saying, “Thank you God for cancer”, or that I would find any joy on the journey.  But somewhere in the midst of the illness and treatments, there was no other response than gratitude for God’s grace.  One of the reasons is because I was surrounded with people who knew how to love me during some of the most difficult days of my life. 

When we announced my diagnosis to family and friends, it was like the flood gates of blessings began to pour in.  I got texts, email messages, phone calls and literally hundreds of cards from all over the world.  I wanted to keep each card that arrived, so I bought a really large decorative box.  I call it my “Blessing Box” because it is full of over 200 cards of encouragement, Scripture, handmade notes, and hundreds of promises of prayers.  

On Valentine’s Day, my first day of chemo and radiation treatments began.  Special friends decorated our house with posters, cards, candy and more messages.  When I came home from the hospital, it was like walking into a room full of love. 

Four very dear sisters in the Lord who lived on three different continents managed to piece together a quilt for me. I was literally wrapped with their love and prayers.  Another group of friends showed up one day with a new chest freezer full of frozen homemade dinners.  They knew my husband doesn’t cook and that nutrition would be essential to my healing.  Flowers, more meals, friends cleaning my house and doing yard work just kept coming for 11 months.  The body of Christ showed up with a healing balm that was an amazing display of being the hands and feet of Christ Himself.  There was no other appropriate response to cancer but gratitude.

One day I was checking into the hospital for a treatment.  The receptionist always asked, “Is there someone with you?”  My sweet husband never let me go alone to a treatment.  If he couldn’t go with me, he made sure someone else was there.  I was very saddened one day as an older gentlemen came for treatment by his self.  His response to the nurse’s question was, “No, I’m all alone.”  My heart broke to think that he was suffering all alone.  I met another lady who came to treatment on the public bus, all alone.  I was never alone.  The Lord was always there, and He surrounded me with friends and family from all over the world to encourage and pray for me…..people who knew how to love when it hurts. 

Hurting usually involves some sort of loss.  Loss can come in many forms other than death---loss of a job, loss of a home and community due to a move, loss of good health, or loss of a relationship.  Whatever the loss, there is usually hurt or suffering. 

So how do we respond?

• Listen, listen, listen.  Don’t offer advice or solutions, just be there and listen. Quiet presence, especially for the sick is important.  Most of the time, there is nothing you can say to make the pain go away.  Try not to give advice or focus on your own pain. 
• Acts of kindness - Shower people with tangible blessings like meals, offers of house cleaning, taking care of children, rides to doctor’s appointments, etc. Offer specific aid that you know you can deliver.
• Phone calls, written words of encouragement or any gesture that says, “I haven’t forgotten you.”   Life goes on for those who are not in the midst of hurting.  For the hurting, often, one cannot leave their home or be involved in regular activities.  Skype or do Face Time if you can’t be there in person. Loneliness can be intense.
• Pray, pray, pray.  Don’t be afraid to ask your hurting friend, “How can I pray for you?”
• Allowing someone to vent and talk is very therapeutic.  It will help you to know how to be more specific in your prayers.  

Finally, remember to say “I love you” and your heavenly Father loves you even more.  You are not forgotten or ever alone.        
   

 

Kittie Trail has been a missionary with the International Mission Board (IMB) for the past 30 years working mainly in Africa.  She, and her husband, Randy, are on a temporary assignment serving as Assoc Personnel Consultants for IMB and live in Wake Forest, NC.  They have an office on the campus of SEBTS and enjoy walking with students and others in the area who are going the application process to become missionaries.  They have three grown sons who were all raised on the mission field.

1 Samuel 7:12

"Afterward, Samuel took a stone and set it upright between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, explaining, 'The LORD has helped us to this point.'"

Ebenezer means "Stone of Help"

Throughout my life, I have been amazed to see how God has continued to change my heart, to shape my character, and to guide my life even AFTER I gave Him my life.  There are so many moments of growth, and each one becomes an Ebenezer that I can look back on to say, “Thus far has the Lord brought me.”

I became a Christian at a relatively young age.  When I was in the 8^th grade, I read the adult version of the “Left Behind” series by Tim Lahae and Jerry B. Jenkins.  I was alone in my room reading when I realized that I didn’t want to go to hell.  (For those of you who have read the books, I have no idea how a series that rarely mentions hell led me to the conclusion that I was bound for such a place.  I’m sure that the Spirit of the Lord used what I was reading as well as what I was hearing in church at the time to show me my need for a savior.)  It was clear to me that the only way to avoid hell was by allowing Jesus’ sacrifice to cover my sins, so I prayed right then and gave God my life.  Almost immediately, I headed down stairs to call a family meeting.  In my most serious tone, I announced to my parents and siblings, “Some things around here are going to be changing.  I just became a Christian!” Thus far had the Lord brought me.

In all honesty, I had no idea at that moment what I really meant; I just knew that something was different.  Yet God knew my heart that day so much more than I did.  Over the next two years, outside appearances might have led some to believe that I had not really become a Christian that day.  But I have no doubt in my mind that God took me at my word when I said, “I am yours,” and I became His child with that simple prayer of surrender.  I hung out with a group of kids who were into hard drugs, cut themselves, hated their parents, and hung out at the skating rink every Friday night, but God kept me from becoming too immersed in that culture.  By His grace, I continued to attend church and eventually realized that I didn’t hate my parents and that none of my friends were as happy as we all said we were.  I began to sit with a different crowd at lunch, and the spring of my sophomore year I attended the Georgia Christian Youth Convention in Myrtle Beach, SC.  It had been two years since I became a Christian, but at that conference I realized for the first time that God LOVED me.  Though I had accepted His forgiveness and trusted His power to overcome my sin, I had not understood that He chose to save me out of LOVE.  The revelation of God’s love opened new doors in my relationship with Him as I continued to grow.  Thus far had the Lord brought me. 

Despite the fact that I was operating out of obligation rather than love for the first two years of my walk with Christ, there has never been a separation in my mind between my salvation and my service to the Lord.  From the day I first gave my life to Him (in 8^th grade so that I wouldn’t have to go to hell), I knew that it meant that my life would be spent in service to Him.  As I headed for college, I began to sort through what a life of service would look like.  I handed over to God a love of theater and discovered a love for languages.  I became an international business major thinking that it would allow me to learn more languages (it didn’t) and be a wonderful platform for mission work in closed countries.

However, God proved once again that He knows me better than I do when He showed me that my heart for mission work was not nearly as philanthropic as I believed.  Spring semester of my second year at the University of South Carolina, I studied abroad in Spain.  The trip was not quite what I had hoped it would be, and I returned saying, “If God says Spain, I say no!”  I spent the next three years living with fears that I had developed while overseas, including the fear that God would make me go to Spain simply because it was a hard place.  I had once again forgotten that God loved me, and I was certain that He sent His followers to the most difficult places to test and refine them.  Yet He was still at work in my life! 

My three years spent living in fear were one of the most intense times of struggle that I had yet faced. While I trusted God's ability and power, I had again forgotten His mercy and love. As a result, I found myself feeling trapped in my relationship with Him; He was the only one with the power to save, so I HAD to trust Him for salvation, but I had begun to wonder why there was no other option and to be angry that He was my only way to truly have a good/successful/happy life. Sometimes, I found myself enormously frustrated, thinking, “Of course I want to have the best possible life! But You never really gave me a choice about how to go about it!  A real choice would let me have my best life without God!” I was the pot saying to the potter "Why did you make me like this?" (Rom 9:20). "What if I didn't want You? What if I wanted my best life on my own?" I was finally able to vocalize all of this to Him one morning in a discipleship program called GoDisciple that my church hosts, and I realized that this desire was the root of my deepest struggles. Thus far had the Lord brought me.

In His grace, God did not turn me over to the desires of my heart at the moment when I was screaming, “I want something different.”  He has always known my true desires better than I ever could. Instead, through prayer and my time in the Word and with other believers, I realized yet again that I had lost track of the nature of God's love.  I spent time on my face before Him seeking to understand His love more deeply.  I studied God's character and what a life of surrender really meant.  And He showed me mercy and allowed my heart to grow in love for Him.  He restored me to Himself. Thus far had the Lord brought me.

As I had been running from Spain and international missions, I still knew that I would be serving God with my life, so I began to look for a new area of passion.  I had worked with children for as long as I could remember, and I spent some time working in the children’s ministry at my church to see if children’s ministry might be a fit for me.  Through that experience, I ended up in seminary pursuing a degree in Christian education.  It was while in seminary that I participated in GoDisciple and was confronted with my rebellious, prideful heart and God’s good, loving character once again.  Every step in my life has served to bring me closer to Him.  We still have a long way to go together, and even in my current season as an engaged seminary graduate with two part-time jobs that I love, He has continued to refine my heart.  Thus far has the Lord brought me, and I can’t wait to see where else we go.

Here I raise mine Ebenezer;

Hither by Thine help I’m come.

And I hope by Thy good pleasure

Safely to arrive at home!

Megan is a recent graduate of Southeastern Seminary with a Master of Arts in Christian Education.  She is spending this summer preparing to marry a truly wonderful man and working in the Women’s Life Office and as an assistant editor for Treasuring Christ Curriculum.  She is thrilled that her South Carolina Gamecocks are in the College World Series and hopes that they will win it for the third straight year.

 

After reading the previous blog posted by Nicole Whitacre, I am able to completely relate to having fears that overwhelm my thoughts and paralyze me spiritually. Even though I am not a mother, there are fears of my own that take on a similar power.

Now that we are looking ahead to 2011, there are fears and hopes inside us all – countless questions in our heads.

Something I have to confess is that often when a desire for 2011 crosses my mind, I disregard it. I don’t want to hope in something because I cannot handle the thought of being disappointed. Hope is vulnerable. Being as pessimistic as possible seems to be a MUCH safer route, right?

But then of course, I get smacked in the face with the truth of Proverbs 13:12 “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” (ESV)

What do you do with that?? Do you DARE to hope? How do you know that a desire will be fulfilled? What if it’s not fulfilled?

Then there is Psalm 20:4 “May he grant you your heart’s desire and fulfill all your plans!”

Psalm 37:4-5, “Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act.”

This is the Word of God! Our Father is a God of hope, He is a God of desires.

Psalm 119:81, “My soul longs for your salvation; I hope in your word.”

Psalm 39:7, “And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you.”

Sometimes the things that we fear feel far more tangible than the hope that scripture is calling us to have.

Our God is not a God of fluffy-puff comfort, though. May that not be mistaken!  Job had to cry out in chapter 13 verse 15: “Though he slay me, I will hope in him…”

God often calls us to a refiner’s fire. We may perhaps experience great sorrow in 2011. But no matter what we SEE in front of us, even if the pain is more real than the hope at the present time, there is more that we cannot see: “…Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” (Romans 24-25)

Yahweh is still our comfort in all trials – 2 Corinthians 1:3-11. We share in affliction as we share in comfort through Jesus Christ.

And in the trial itself we remember: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church,” (Colossians 1:24). We can know that suffering is a joy for it is fulfilling Christ’s death, bringing Him glory, and furthering the Kingdom.

All this to say, there is no reason to fear hope. Hope that is Jesus Christ conquers even death. Our Father has great things ahead for His glory. But EVEN IF our life is full of tribulation (which we are actually guaranteed), we need not ever succumb to fear. God has not given us a spirit of fear.  Let us hope in what is bigger than us.

“And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” Romans 5:5 (NASB)   

Hannah Griffin is a freshman in the College at SEBTS.  She is pursuing a degree in English.  Hannah attends Green Pines Baptist Church in Knightdale, NC.  She works at Dick's Sporting Goods, and enjoys chapel choir here at SEBTS, and hopes to be a part of the intramural sports this semester!

Reblogged from girltalk
1.6.11  |   by Nicole Whitacre 

Sometimes, when battling fear, I am unable to effectively speak truth to myself. I try, but it just doesn't stick. In such cases, I need others to talk to me. So I tell them about my fears and ask them to speak appropriate biblical truth to those fears.

God anticipates our need for community in fighting unbelief: "Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end" (Heb 3:13-14).

I need those who "have come to share in Christ" to help me "hold [my] original confidence firm to the end."

It isn't always easy to confess fear. We might fear what others will think of our fear! We might not want to appear weak. But in the very act of asking for help, we are opening the door of humility through which God promises His grace will always come rushing in (James 4:6).


So if you feel as if you are losing your battle against fear today, enlist an ally in the fight. Ask a friend who "shares in Christ" to help you hold fast to gospel truth.

Click to see the Part 1 and Part 2 of the Fear Fighting Counsel posts from girltalk. 

Reblogged from Justin Taylor, The Gospel Coalition

Lost from HistoryMaker on Vimeo.

Reblogged from girltalk

Part I
12.2.2010 at 3:39 pm   |   by Nicole Whitacre

“Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?" Martyn Lloyd-Jones

This is revolutionary, biblical, fear-fighting counsel for mothers. And it comes in two parts:

1. Stop listening to yourself
2. Start speaking to yourself

First, we must stop listening to our fears. We must not give them any "air time."

The critical moment is when a fearful thought first strikes our soul: "What if _________happens to my child?" or "What if my child never___________?"

If we listen--even for a moment, if we give this fear any attention, consider its potential, wonder at its source, soon we begin to believe it might be true. The more we ponder this possibility, the more believable the fear becomes. Soon it is joined by other, more fearsome, thoughts; and before we know it, we're overwhelmed by hopelessness and dread.

A wise pastor once gave me this advice: "If any thought robs you of peace, it is an enemy of your soul; give it no recognition."

Give it no recognition. Ignore it. Disregard it. Close your ears to it. Pay it no mind.

We must not yield the floor to fear. We must filibuster our fears by speaking truth to our souls.

Part II
1.5.2011 at 2:41 pm   |   by Nicole Whitacre

We pick up our series on fear with the second half of Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones' counsel. We must not listen to ourselves, but we must also fill that space by speaking to ourselves.

Dr. Lloyd Jones explains:

"Our fears are due to our failure to stir up--failure to think, failure to take ourselves in hand. You find yourself looking to the future and then you begin to imagine things and you say: 'I wonder what is going to happen?' And then, your imagination runs away with you. You are gripped by the thing...this thing overwhelms you and down you go. Now the first thing you have to do is to take a firm grip of yourself, to pull yourself up, to stir up yourself, to take yourself in hand and to speak to yourself."

"Talk to yourself out loud, if you have to" a pastor once advised me in the midst of one of my particularly intense battles with fear. So if you ever catch me muttering to myself, you'll know why.

And what exactly should we say to ourselves?

"Faith reminds itself of what the Scripture calls 'the exceeding great and precious promises' says Lloyd Jones. "Faith says: 'I cannot believe that He who has brought me so far is going to let me down at this point. It is impossible, it would be inconsistent with the character of God.' So faith, having refused to be controlled by circumstances [or feelings!], reminds itself of what it believes and what it knows."

Tell your soul--out loud if you have to--what it believes and what it knows.