Not Just Yesterday, Not Just Today . . .

My husband, Mike, and I are parents to four wonderful children.  They are a blessing to us and we are thankful to have them, but it sure was not easy to bring them into the world.  We went through a three-year period of infertility, suffered a miscarriage, felt the anxiety and fear of our third child almost dying days after he was born and staying in the neonatal intensive care unit for eleven days, and then losing our fourth child, Adrianna, in the seventh month of pregnancy and having to deliver her stillborn.  Considering all that, our last baby’s birth was relatively uneventful, except for the familiar extreme morning sickness that I experienced with all of them.

During the days of grief over losing our Adrianna my faith was shaken.  It was not lost and it did not fail me, but it sure shook.  I remember clinging to God and His promises during those days as I had to continue to be a wife to my husband, mother to my three children, and a leader in the church.  There continued to be people who needed me, my gifts, and my faith.  I received many requests for prayer for people.  I would agree, tell them I would pray, but my private thought was, “God doesn’t answer my prayers with ‘yes’, so I’ll tell my husband and he can pray.”  I still believed God was God, God was good, God was worthy and sovereign.  I just did not think He had anything else good in store for me.  I remember saying out loud that if God never did anything else for me, sending His Son to earth to die for me and save me from hell was enough.

While it is true that the immense gift of salvation that I could never ever achieve on my own is enough, it is incomplete.

“’I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.’”  Rev. 1:8 (NIV)

Every time I have heard this verse quoted the speaker begins impassioned, their voice strong and driving, but when they reach, “who is to come,” their voice begins to trail off as they close the quote.  That was how I was living, and how I was treating God too.  I believed that He was: I reminded myself of all the things He had done in my life, how many blessings I enjoyed and for which I was grateful, all the ways He had led me, all the times I had heard His voice, and those past experiences helped my faith to stay strong amid the extreme shaking.  I also firmly believed that He is: my present experience does not change God.  When our son, Andrew, was dying in the NICU I learned that just because my circumstances had changed drastically from just a few days before, God had not changed at all. He was worthy of my praise and worship the previous days and weeks when the NICU was filled with other people’s babies, and He was still worthy when it was my baby in the NICU.

Where my faith was weak was believing that He is the God who is to come.  I believed He was finished working in my life.  While I believed He would come again to gather the believers to be with Him for eternity, I doubted that He would still show up as God in my life. 

In Galatians 4:4 Paul writes, “But when the time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman.”  From the beginning of the Bible, the beginning of time as we understand and know it, this event was on its way to mankind.  God had it in store, had it all planned.  This earth altering event was yet to come for generations of people in the Bible, just as Christ Jesus’ return is yet to come for us that are alive right now.  To limit God to what He was and what He has done, or to what He is and His majesty and worth as we can understand it right now, is incomplete.  He is the God who is to come.  He has done marvelous things, great and awesome things, but He is not done!  He is worthy today, He is God Almighty today, and amazingly that is not all!  I believe He has more good things, more plans, more miracles, more earth altering events for all of us.  He is no less the God who is to come than He is the God who was and is.

My faith continues to deepen the longer I walk with God.  The more time I spend with Him, the more I am drawn to His Word and rest in His promises.  Let this be an encouragement for you today to keep believing for what God has planned that is yet making its way to you!  Our God is a Father who loves to give good gifts to His children (Matt. 7:11).  He has good things in store for you, things we could never imagine or dream of.  Keep building your faith as you remember all the marvelous things He has done, allow your worship to erupt as you praise Him for all that He is, and let hope and excitement rise up as your trust and expectation builds for all He has coming to you!

“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.”  I Cor. 2:9 (NIV)