Love, Trust, Words of Endurance

GOD IS WITH ME

August 3, 2017

“… I will be with you.”
GENESIS 31:3 (NIV)

When I was diagnosed with cancer my prayer wasn’t for God to take the cancer away. It wasn’t a demand for an explanation. It was simply my heart crying out to God in total helplessness.

I needed a strength beyond my own to deal with what was ahead. The disease that had invaded my body could cause me to lose the things in life that were most important to me and I was powerless to change it.

So my prayers gave voice to my deepest needs and longings – to hold onto life and to keep on being a husband and a dad and ultimately to know that God really did care for me and would be with me.

My health may fail
and my spirit may grow weak,
but God remains the strength of my heart;
He is mine forever.

PSALM 73:26 (NLT)

ON THE JOURNEY WITH YOU,
DAVE DRAVECKY

Discovering Who I Am, Grief, Healing, Hope, Loss, Trust, Words of Endurance

Admitting My Weakness

By Nathan Solla on

September 11, 2012

- Discovering Who I Am, Grief, Healing, Hope, Loss, Trust, Words of Endurance

So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses,
so that the power of Christ can work through me.
That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses,
and in the insults, hardships,
persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ.
For when I am weak, then I am strong.
2 CORINTHIANS 12:9-10 (NLT)

I had always been capable of taking care of myself. If there was something I wanted – I went and did it. I felt I didn’t need nor did I ask for anyone else’s help. After my amputation, I continued to live my life in that self-sufficient mode. I immediately thrust myself into helping others when I was the one who needed the help. Fortunately, I was unable to sustain that mode for very long and I eventually burned myself out.

I do believe that God just allowed me to wear myself out at my own game. Eventually, I cried out, “I can’t do it anymore, I can’t!” I had no strength left. I reached the point where I didn’t give a rip; I didn’t care what happened.

But when I was totally at the end of myself – when I had nothing left to give – that’s when it got exciting because that’s when I saw the hand of God come in to provide the help I needed. You could almost hear him say: “Now you have got it. It’s never been you. I just let you run out of steam. Now watch me put your life back together!”

When I was humbled and admitted my weakness that was when I finally began to understand my true need for God. And for the first time in my life, I realized that I had always placed my security in myself rather than God.

Sound familiar? For most of us men, it is easy to think that everything depends on us. We work hard and we are rewarded for it. We get a paycheck that is able to provide us with a home, clothing on our backs, food on the table and necessities for the family. It is easy to feel that we are in control – that our security is in ourselves.

But when that gets pulled out from underneath us we begin to wonder where our security really comes from. And that is where God steps in.

When we are brought to the end of ourselves and admit our weakness – there is release. When we finally realize how weak we truly are and that the power and the responsibility lays in God, not us – when we confess that the battle is the Lord’s, not ours – that releases us, frees us and strengthens us. As Francois Fenelon so rightly says …

“But you need to understand that you cannot become strong
until first you are aware of your weakness.
It is amazing how strong we can become
when we begin to understand what weaklings we are!
It is in weakness that we can admit our mistakes
and correct ourselves while confessing them.
It is in weakness that our minds are open
to enlightenment from others.”

I think if I had not been brought to the point of total weakness I would never have known how much I could trust God and how faithful He is. In admitting my weakness I finally found strength. What joy there was in that discovery!

The Lord is my strength and shield.
I trust him with all my heart.
He helps me, and my heart is filled with joy.
I burst out in songs of thanksgiving.
PSALM 28:7

On the journey with you,
Dave Dravecky

Discovering Who I Am, Loss, Pain, Trust, Words of Endurance

Step Two-Move Onward

By Nathan Solla on

August 28, 2012

- Discovering Who I Am, Loss, Pain, Trust, Words of Endurance

I’m not saying that I have this all together,
that I have it made.
But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ,
who has so wondrously reached out for me.
Friends, don’t get me wrong:
By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this,
but I’ve got my eye on the goal,
where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus.
I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.
PHILIPPIANS 3:12-14

After I faced the pain of losing my arm and my identity I knew it was time to press on – time to move onward – time to trust God to build a new identity. There was no turning back.

Prior to my retirement from professional baseball in November of 1989 I had realized that God was doing something in my life that was bigger than baseball. I knew before the cancer in my arm had returned – before my arm had to be amputated – that a major change was coming. I didn’t know what God had in store on the journey but I knew something different lay ahead.

That heartfelt assurance was a strong motivation to move onward through the difficult journey I was on. And I knew the Lord had said and promised …

“Forget about what’s happened;
don’t keep going over old history.
Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new.
It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it?
There it is! I’m making a road through the desert,
rivers in the badlands.”
ISAIAH 43:18-19 (THE MESSAGE)

Alan Redpath has observed that “When God wants to do an impossible thing, He takes an impossible man and crushes him.” As I endured the crushing of this impossible man – me – I had the hope and the promise that I could move onward and that God would rebuild what He had crushed because I believed the words of the Apostle Paul …

There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind
that the God who started this great work in you
would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish
on the very day Christ Jesus appears.
PHILIPPIANS 1:6 (THE MESSAGE)

Be encouraged and know that as we bring our brokenness before God that we can trust that God will rebuild us – put us back together. As He did for me – as He did for King David – I close with King David’s words …

God made my life complete
when I placed all the pieces before him.
When I got my act together,
he gave me a fresh start.
Now I’m alert to God’s ways;
I don’t take God for granted.
Every day I review the ways he works;
I try not to miss a trick.
I feel put back together,
and I’m watching my step.
God rewrote the text of my life
when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes.
PSALM 18:20-24 (THE MESSAGE)

On the journey with you,
Dave Dravecky

Discovering Who I Am, Healing, Loss, Pain, Trust, Words of Endurance

Step One-Facing Past Pain & Loss

By Nathan Solla on

August 21, 2012

- Discovering Who I Am, Healing, Loss, Pain, Trust, Words of Endurance

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:
… a time to mourn …
ECCLESIASTES 3:1,4

When I look back on my life – discovering who I am has been an ever-evolving journey for me. I believe that I am not alone – in fact, I know that while we may be on different paths and experience different life changing events – many of us find ourselves on the same quest.

It is my desire over the next several weeks for me to share this journey of mine. I have evolved from a son and a brother to a husband and father. And I have been a student and an athlete – first an amateur and then a professional. I have loved, accepted and transitioned with every new identity. (Well maybe not the student identity so much!) But my first major identity crisis – asking God who am I now – came when I lost my arm to cancer.

Battling cancer is hard enough but for many survivors – and I am one – cancer leaves us with an even tougher battle to fight. That battle has to do with our identity. When the storm of cancer sweeps into our lives the landscape can change dramatically. Everything familiar may be wiped away or changed beyond recognition. We may have lost the relationships, skills, and resources that have been an essential part of who we are and have given us a sense of joy and purpose in living. So some of us journey out of cancer as very different people.

When I lost my arm – I lost my career, my position and my sense of identity. All I had ever done career wise was play baseball. Who was I if I was not a pro baseball player? It was a long, painful and difficult journey to identify the real Dave Dravecky.

But for me the journey did not begin right away. Part of the reason was because I did not take the time to mourn the loss of my arm – that would have been the emotionally healthy step to take. But oh no – not me! Instead, I had a cavalier attitude about it. Before the amputation, I jokingly waved my left arm in the air – pretending that it was saying goodbye. After the amputation, I thrust myself into travel and speaking to prove that I could overcome this loss.

The truth was I did not want to face the pain and the reality of the loss and the fact that I was a changed person. The questions of who I was and where do I go from here – could not be held at bay any longer. Jan continued to say to me …

The only way to heal from the pain of losses suffered
is to go through the pain.
There is no way around it.
You can stuff it – you can dodge it.
But eventually, you will have to face it.

When I started to take the first step by asking those questions instead of ignoring them, I was surprised to discover that so much of my identity was wrapped up in that arm and what it was capable of doing. My arm had brought me joy, worth, status and had provided a wonderful lifestyle. I had lost all of these when I lost my arm. Until I came face to face with the personal losses that came with the physical loss of my arm – I was awash in a storm of denial and depression.

If I have learned anything through the loss of my arm it is that ignoring the loss and not taking the time to mourn that loss was a huge boulder on my path to discovering who I truly was. So step one for me was to remove that boulder by honestly facing my pain and loss and then moving on with God.

Oswald Chambers wrote in My Utmost for His Highest …

“Beware of harking back to what you once were when God wants you to be something you’ve never been.”

If we allow God to work through our losses He will always teach us something that will bring us closer to Him and make us more like Him. And that is anything but loss. It is incredible how much we gain through our losses.

On the journey with you,
Dave Dravecky

Grace, Grief, Healing, Hope, The Gift of Grace, Trust, Words of Endurance

Discovering God’s Grace

By Nathan Solla on

April 4, 2012

- Grace, Grief, Healing, Hope, The Gift of Grace, Trust, Words of Endurance

Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!
2 CORINTHIANS 9:13

Thirty-one years ago I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and my world was rocked and changed forever. I received the gift of salvation with such joy and excitement – I wanted everyone to experience that same joy. So with great exuberance, I shared the Gospel with everyone that crossed my path!

One problem though was when I became a Christian I did not understand God’s Gift of Grace. While I was always able to extend Grace to others especially those who were suffering – I was not able to extend that same Grace to my family or receive His Grace myself. UNTIL …

Last year when I was looking for a Christian book to read while I was traveling, I asked God to lead me to something new and inspiring. As I scanned my bookshelves I noticed a book entitled TrueFaced. Now this book had been on my shelf for seven years and I had never read it. Why was I now drawn to it? I did not know at the time – but I took it off the shelf and put it in my brief case to read on my flight.

As I read the book I immediately knew why God led me to this book. The book presented two paths – “The Path of Pleasing God” and “The Path of Trusting God”. I was immediately drawn to “The Path of Pleasing God.” After all, I thought, wasn’t that the more admirable path?

My eyes were opened when “The Path of Pleasing God” led me to “The Room of Good Intentions” and the word over the doorknob was “Self Effort”.

I realized that …

Self-effort was the story of my life – putting forth the effort to please God. This led to weariness and emptiness.

I was “striving hard to be all God wants me to be” but I was never able to achieve God’s standard. This led to frustration and guilt.

I was “working on my sin to achieve an intimate relationship with God” but when I would always fall short that was when I turned away from God in shame.

“Increasingly the path to pleasing God seems to be about how I can keep God pleased with me” and because I could not resolve my sin in my own power it caused me to put on masks to hide those sins. At least when I wore the masks I would be accepted in my Christian community.

My life equation was “more right behavior + less wrong behavior = Godliness.” The problem was my wrong behavior often outweighed my right behavior leading to more frustration, guilt and shame. But then “The Path of Trusting God” led me to the “Room of Grace” and the word over the this doorknob was “Humility.”

I was humbled as I learned that …

“We can never resolve our sin by working on it” – only God can resolve our sin – this leads us to victory.

“Only by trusting can we truly please God. If our primary motive is pleasing God, we’ll never please Him enough and we’ll never learn trust. Pleasing God is a good desire. It just can’t be our primary motivation or it’ll imprison our hearts” and cause us to wear masks and not be real.

“Until you trust God nothing you do will please God.” I am going to trust Him to deliver me from my sin.

“Pleasing is not a means to our godliness. It is the fruit of our godliness, for it’s the fruit of trust.”

True Grace was “Standing with God, my sin in front of us, working on it together.”

Answer this question:
Does the God who lavishly provides you with his own presence, his Holy Spirit, working things in your lives you could never do for yourselves, does he do these things because of your strenuous moral striving or because you trust him to do them in you?

The obvious impossibility of carrying out such a moral program should make it plain that no one can sustain a relationship with God that way. The person who lives in right relationship with God does it by embracing what God arranges for him. Doing things for God is the opposite of entering into what God does for you. Habakkuk had it right:

“The person who believes God, is set right by God—and that’s the real
life.” Rule-keeping does not naturally evolve into living by faith,
but only perpetuates itself in more and more rule-keeping,
a fact observed in Scripture: “The one who does these things [rule-keeping] continues to live by them.”
GALATIANS 3:5-6,11-12 (THE MESSAGE)

Because of these revelations from God through this book, I have become a different man. God’s Grace has set me free from striving and it relieved my guilt and shame at my inability to live the perfect life. It allowed me to remove my masks so that I could trust God and others with who I truly am – warts and all. It caused me to throw myself at the feet of Jesus where I know Jesus will empathize with my weakness and I will receive His mercy and grace.

Once again my world has been rocked and changed forever – so with great joy, excitement and exuberance – I share God’s Grace with you!

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our
weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way,
just as we are—yet he did not sin.
Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence,
so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
HEBREWS 4:15-16

On the journey with you,
Dave Dravecky

(Quotations are excerpts taken from “The Cure” which is the recently updated version of “TrueFaced.”)

Endurance for the Journey, Trust, Words of Endurance

Focus Not on What is Seen

By connie on

March 14, 2012

- Endurance for the Journey, Trust, Words of Endurance

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.
2 CORINTHIANS 4:18

“Keep your eye on the ball.” That is one of the cardinal principles of baseball, whether you are batting or fielding. A variation says, “Look the ball into your glove.” The idea in both cases is that disaster strikes when you fail to maintain visual contact with the ball.

This is one time when a principle about baseball does not hold true in the spiritual realm. In fact, the complete opposite is true. In the arena of the spirit, if you maintain visual focus with visible realities and take your eyes off what is unseen, you are in trouble. Let me explain.

God tells us in His Word that if we insist on fixing our eyes on what is seen – on houses, cars, clothes, jewelry – we will never be able to “hit the ball” in the spiritual realm. We will continue to swing and miss until we are out of outs and the game is over.

When we are consumed by the material, it returns the favor and consumes us. That is why Ecclesiastes says things like “whoever loves money never has money enough” and “the abundance of a rich man permits him no sleep.” When our main focus is on the material we lose sight of the unseen – we lose sight of God – our eternal director.

I will always remember a personal story that a man told me about his home two weeks after the 1989 San Francisco earthquake. He said that fifteen years before the quake, he and his wife had bought their “dream home” in Santa Cruz – the epicenter of the earthquake.

They spent fifteen years of their lives putting all their time, money, and efforts into that home – their main focus in life. Many times, he chose to stay home on Sunday mornings and work on his house instead of going to church. His home had become his god.

But during the earthquake, in a short fifteen seconds – one second for every year he spent worshiping his “god” – his home was completely destroyed.

We cannot afford to fix our eyes on what is seen. It doesn’t last and it doesn’t satisfy. In fifteen seconds it can all be gone. Let’s look at what Jesus warned …

Then he said, “Beware! Guard against every kind of greed.
Life is not measured by how much you own.”

Then he told them a story:
“A rich man had a fertile farm that produced fine crops.
He said to himself, ‘What should I do? I don’t have room for all my crops.’
Then he said, ‘I know! I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones.
Then I’ll have room enough to store all my wheat and other goods.
And I’ll sit back and say to myself,
“My friend, you have enough stored away for years to come.
Now take it easy! Eat, drink, and be merry!”’

“But God said to him, ‘You fool! You will die this very night. Then who will get everything you worked for?’

“Yes, a person is a fool to store up earthly wealth but not have a rich relationship with God.”
LUKE 12:15-21

Don’t be a fool, remember, to endure the journey of life we must keep our focus on the unseen – our God – and not on the seen – the material. That’s the way they do it in the real Major Leagues …

REMEMBER …
Focus on God, not the ball!

On the journey with you,
Dave Dravecky

Anxiety, Endurance for the Journey, Loss, Trust, Words of Endurance

Run With Perseverance: Loosen Your Grip

By connie on

February 29, 2012

- Anxiety, Endurance for the Journey, Loss, Trust, Words of Endurance

Trust in the LORD with all your heart;
do not depend on your own understanding.
Seek his will in all you do,
and he will show you which path to take.
PROVERBS 3:5-6 (NLT)

You know that I love comparing the game of baseball to the journey through life. It is amazing to me how many principals hold true for both baseball and life.

For instance, there is the principal of the batter loosening his grip on the bat rather than tightening his grip when he is at the plate. The batter loosens his grip as the pitch is thrown so that his hands are relaxed then he is ready and set up for connecting firmly to the pitch.

I was recently sent a devotional written by Cathy Jodeit whose 16-year-old daughter was diagnosed with Lymphoma in 2006. Cathy began to journal her journey during that time and now has a website and shares her devotionals to encourage others. www.cathyjodeit.com

I wanted to write my own analogy on this principle of baseball and life but I think I will just share what Cathy shared in that devotional about Loosening Your Grip.

“… It has occurred to me that loosening the grip on a bat in a baseball game is very closely related to holding life loosely. I don’t know about you but the tighter I try to hold onto life and try to control it, the more frustrated, disappointed, angry or fearful I seem to get. It is only when I let go and let God be my navigator and the true holder of what is going on that I am freed up to give it my best. My best wisdom, my best attempt, my best acceptance, my best attitude, my best swing, etc.

We tend to choke up when we are put in pressure situations – get anxious about an outcome – unsure about our ability to cope – too dependent on the results. That is one of my greatest obstacles to overcome – to quit trying to not only control situations but people and let God be the one that I go to for security in situations and let God be the one who directs others HIS WAY and not be insistent on them responding in MY way.

Life throws us all kinds of balls, fastballs, slow balls, curves balls, sliders BUT God is the one who knows what is coming. If we loosen our grip on life and focus on Jesus … it is then that we have the potential that God has given us to get on base or even hit a homerun in the situation that we are standing at the plate, waiting and pondering with great hope how it is to turn out.

We are called to loosen our grip on life and let God tighten His on our lives. For that is where we will find true victory and joy.”
CATHY JODEIT

Loosen your grip on your life and find true joy in knowing that He will never let you go ….

My sheep listen to my voice;
I know them, and they follow me.
I give them eternal life, and they will never die,
and no one can steal them out of my hand.
My Father gave my sheep to me. He is greater than all,
and no person can steal my sheep out of my Father’s hand.
JOHN 10:27-29 (NEW CENTURY VERSION)

Loosen your grip on your life and experience true victory and peace in knowing that He guides and holds us with His right hand…

Where can I go to get away from your Spirit?
Where can I run from you?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there.
If I lie down in the grave, you are there.
If I rise with the sun in the east
and settle in the west beyond the sea,
even there you would guide me.
With your right hand you would hold me.
PSALM 139:7-10 (NEW CENTURY VERSION)

On the journey with you,
Dave Dravecky

Endurance for the Journey, Fear, Healing, Trust, Words of Endurance

Focus on Jesus

By connie on

February 29, 2012

- Endurance for the Journey, Fear, Healing, Trust, Words of Endurance

And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.
We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus,
the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.
Because of the joy awaiting him,
he endured the cross, disregarding its shame.
Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne.
Think of all the hostility he endured from sinful people
then you won’t become weary and give up.
HEBREWS 12:1-3 (NLT)

No runner can finish a marathon without a clear focus. Whether we are enduring a race or the challenge of a lifetime, a clear focus helps carry us through the pain and distractions that can overwhelm us.

The importance of focusing on a goal couldn’t have been clearer for me than when I was making my baseball comeback. I would never have stuck with my grueling rehab regimen without a definite goal in mind – it was much too hard – I would have given up. BUT I was fixed on giving it my best to return to the major leagues.

Every weight that I lifted, every muscle that I stretched, every hour that I spent in the gym was focused on the day when I’d once more put on my uniform, trot out to the mound and throw my first pitch toward home plate.

Much more important though– a clear focus helps us endure in our spiritual life as well. Through the challenges I faced, I learned that it is impossible to stick with our spiritual regimen unless we keep the end goal in full view. Every trial that we face, every burden that we shoulder, every agony that we suffer must be borne with our everlasting destiny in mind.

That destiny is to be with Jesus – face-to-face, heart to heart with Him. That is why Scripture tells us to “keep our eyes” on Him. When Jesus is clearly in focus, we can be empowered to endure whatever trials come our way and not be afraid.

So we can say with confidence,
“The LORD is my helper,
so I will have no fear.
HEBREWS 13:6 (NLT)

When I consider how Jesus endured His trial, I am better able to face mine. Knowing what Jesus endured and how He endured it comforts me. Jesus doesn’t just sympathize with my pain – he understands it because He has endured it as well.

This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses,
for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin.
HEBREWS 4:15 (NLT)

When I focus on Jesus He empowers me to live out my faith. When I can’t go on, when I can’t possibly endure one more trial, setback or hardship, I can ask God to fill me with His strength. I can ask Him to empower me with His Divine energy so that I can face whatever lies ahead.

Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence,
so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
HEBREWS 4:16

When I keep my eyes on Jesus, I am never alone. The Spirit of God lives within me. God knows my every thought, ache and tear – every single one of them! I may have to endure hardship; in fact the Bible assures me that I will. But because I am a child of God, I will never have to endure hardship alone.
God has said,

“I will never leave you;
I will never abandon you.”
HEBREWS 13:5 (NCV)

On the journey with you,
Dave Dravecky

Anger, Endurance for the Journey, Grief, Lighten Your Load, Perspectives, Trust, Words of Endurance

Lighten Your Load: Do Away With Double Pain

By Nathan Solla on

January 24, 2012

- Anger, Endurance for the Journey, Grief, Lighten Your Load, Perspectives, Trust, Words of Endurance

Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering,
as though something strange were happening to you.
1 PETER 4:12

No one wants to suffer – no one enjoys suffering – it is even worse when we are taken by surprise – blindsided by the painful trial – there is no perfect time to fit suffering into your schedule.

I found that whenever I encountered a trial or affliction, I not only would experience the pain of the affliction but I would then experience shock (I absolutely hate surprises), anger (I was angry that I even had to go through this) and then resistance to the affliction.

Then one day, in the midst of our darkest valley, a friend gave me the book, Let Go by Fenelon and I read his following words:

“A cross which comes from God ought to be welcomed without any concern for self. And when you accept your cross this way, even though it is painful, you will find that you can bear it in peace. But when you receive your cross unwillingly, you will find it to be doubly severe. The resistance within is harder to bear than the cross itself! But if you recognize the hand of God, and make no opposition to His Will, you will have peace in the midst of affliction. Happy indeed are they who can bear their sufferings with this simple peace and perfect submission to the will of God! Nothing so shortens and soothes suffering as this spirit of non-resistance.”
FRANCOIS FENELON

WOW! It was another AHA moment for me. Suddenly, I realized that not only did I carry the pain of our affliction – something that I did not choose nor could I change – but I also compounded and intensified my pain with my anger and resistance – something I chose to feel and I could change. I was choosing to carry double and triple pain when I only needed to carry the single pain of the affliction, which provided enough pain by itself.

When I finally accepted the affliction, trusted and submitted to the will of God – knowing that nothing happens to me that first does not pass through His Hands – my anger and resistance dissipated. This shift in perspective and position lightened the extra load I was carrying – I actually experienced peace in the midst of the affliction.

“Choices. Choices make the difference. Two people are in the same accident and severely wounded. They did not choose to be in the accident. It happened to them. But one of them chose to live the experience in bitterness, the other in gratitude. These choices radically influenced their lives and the lives of their families and friends. We have very little control over what happens in our lives, but we have a lot of control over how we integrate and remember what happens. It is precisely these spiritual choices that determine whether we live our lives with dignity.”
HENRI NOUWEN

We always have a Spiritual choice. Whenever we face affliction and pain, while we may initially respond with our flesh in anger and resistance, we can shed the weight of our negative emotions by turning our eyes upon Jesus – trusting Him – a Spiritual Choice. As we consider Him who endured unbelievable suffering, we, too, can endure the journey through suffering.

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author, and perfecter of our faith,
who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame,
and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men,
so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”
HEBREWS 12:2-3

Perseverance, Purpose in Suffering?, The Search for Answers, Trust, Words of Endurance

God Disciplines and Teaches Us

By Nathan Solla on

November 30, 2011

- Perseverance, Purpose in Suffering?, The Search for Answers, Trust, Words of Endurance

Endure hardship as discipline;
God is treating you as his children.
For what children are not disciplined by their father?
If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—
then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all.
Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it.
How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live!
They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best;
but God disciplines us for our good,
in order that we may share in his holiness.
No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful.
Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace
for those who have been trained by it.
HEBREWS 12:7-11 (NIV)

I was home alone. It was the day before Dave and I were leaving for Sloan Kettering in New York where he was to have his left arm amputated.

They had announced via the national media that Dave was going to have the amputation and now our phone was ringing off the hook. People from all over the country were calling to tell Dave not to have the amputation –they told us to have more faith – they shared that God does not intend for us to suffer.

Still, in the throes of a dark depression and a mind that felt like a rusty computer, I can remember hanging up the phone for the tenth time that day and feeling nothing but confusion. I grabbed my Bible and threw myself on the floor in our family room.

I cried out to God and I pleaded, “If you don’t intend for us to suffer then why are we suffering? Father, it can’t be this hard. Please take away the confusion and show me Your Truth.”

I had placed the Bible before me on the floor and as I opened my tear filled eyes the Bible had opened up to Hebrews 12 and my blurred vision then focused clearly on verse 7 “Endure all hardship as discipline; for God is treating you as his children…”

As discipline. It didn’t say hardship was discipline. It didn’t say God was bending us over the bed and beating our backsides to get us to straighten up. It said to endure hardship the same way you would endure your parents’ discipline. And how do we do that? By submitting to it, enduring it and learning from it.

I skimmed through the passage and stopped at verse 11: “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”

Peace, That is what I needed. That is what I so desperately longed for. I realized then that peace would come but that it would come later, as the fruit of my struggle, as the harvest of a long growing season. What I needed until that harvest was a farmer’s patience.

I also needed to trust the love of my heavenly Father and know He was there in the midst of our pain and confusion. He was leading and teaching us for our good so that we may share in His holiness and the result was a peace that surpassed all understanding.

Be assured that God is in the midst of your pain and you can trust Him to guide and lead you through any valley. As you submit, endure and learn from it there will be a harvest of righteousness and peace for you –

God disciplines and teaches us because He loves us.

Though the Lord gave you adversity for food
and suffering for drink,
he will still be with you to teach you.
You will see your teacher with your own eyes.
Your own ears will hear him.
Right behind you a voice will say,
“This is the way you should go,”
whether to the right or to the left.
ISAIAH 30:20-21 (NLT)

On the journey with you,
Jan Dravecky

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