Dealing With The Unexpected Challenges of Life -- part 5
As we continue with this series of devotional entries on the theme “Dealing with the Unexpected Challenges of Life,” I pray that this content has been encouraging and even healing to you as you have read through each week’s entry.
Through the many unexpected “opportunities” I have experienced in my fifty plus years of serving the Lord, one basic foundational principle has stood out to me and it is this: Jesus is our refuge as we navigate through all of our unexpected challenges.
I have always found that the words of Jesus and the words about Jesus were my greatest comfort in the times of unexpected trials. For example, in John 16:33 (ESV) Jesus says, “In this world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”
Here Jesus is telling His disciples there is no doubt that they will experience trials and troubles in life (unexpected challenges). However, He also promises them that He is more powerful than anything they will face. And Mothers of Nations, this word is true for us as well!
One of the top three traumatic “unexpected” times of my life took place on September 6, 2011. As I was sitting at my office desk in our church ministry center, I began to experience extreme dizziness and my head felt like it was swirling around and around. I closed my eyes because trying to focus on anything around me made me feel even more dizzy and unbalanced. I put my head in my hands and the only prayer I could think to pray was this: “Jesus, help me!”
And long story short, He did! My coworkers called an ambulance and I was rushed to our local hospital, one with a well-known cardiac department and prominent surgeons. Tests indicated that I had experienced a stroke due to blood clots slipping through a congenital hole in my heart that I never knew existed.
And this is how God shows Himself ever-present even as we walk through unexpected challenges. In the emergency room, before any testing was done, I was assigned a cardiologist and a neurologist. And after test results came back indicating that I had a hole in my heart, guess who had fifteen years earlier invented an apparatus and a procedure for closing holes in hearts? That’s right! The cardiologist that was assigned to me before the hospital had any testing ordered about my condition! God is good. All the time. And in the midst of unexpected challenging events, He is our ever-faithful refuge.
Another thing that I learned through that experience relates to the scripture found in Matthew 12: 34 where it says that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
I saw that day the huge importance of growing your spirit man over a lifetime so that when an unexpected crisis hits, your spirit man is strong to rise up when your flesh and soul are weak and you don’t know what to do. Pray as you can. All I could say at the onset of the stroke was “Jesus help me.”
I left the hospital and needed no physical therapy, no occupational therapy and no cognitive therapy. There were post stroke symptoms that I had to manage and it was several months before I started to feel somewhat like my former self, but the Lord was with me every step of the way.
Jesus was truly my refuge and peace at that time and He ministered to me in loving and gentle ways. I learned in an even greater way how to trust and rest in God. The sowing of seeds in others’ lives as a lifestyle reaped much support in MY time of need. The support of family, friends and the body of Christ was overwhelming as Jesus took care of me through them as well. Yes, Jesus is our refuge!
Next week we will conclude our discussion of this topic. Let’s each spend some time until then meditating on the goodness of our God and thanking Him for being our refuge.
Blessings to each of you,
Rev. Nola Beintema
