CASTIMONIA

Sexual Purity Support & Recovery Group

God

By

Suffering: God is there before you get there

SOURCE:  From a post at Counseling Solutions

All the descendants of Jacob were seventy persons; Joseph was already in Egypt.–Exodus 1:5

Whether or not you know where you are going, there is an abiding truth that is universal and applicable to every person:

Regardless of your destination, before you get there, you can know, rest and trust in the fact that God is already there.

You cannot go anywhere in this life where God is not waiting for you to get there. It is impossible to go ahead of him, to beat him to the punch or step out of his plans for you. In good times and bad, please know that God is ahead of you, waiting on you and ready to take care of you.

In Exodus, God was disrupting an entire nation. The Israelites were being made aware that things had to change. There was turmoil in their land. They were in dire straits. The famine had spread beyond discomfort and families were struggling to make ends meet.

From their perspective they were living in the moment and there was little hope for change of circumstance. It was not clear as to what they should do to resolve their problems. From their limited understanding they had no idea of the plans God had made for them. They could only see their trouble, their present situation.

In Exodus 1:5 the writer is letting us know that the Israelites are in process of leaving their homes and heading to an unknown place. Though the text does not say I’m sure some of them were struggling with the stirring of their nest. They were being made uncomfortable and most certainly some of them were wavering in their faith about these upheavals of circumstance.

  1. Have you ever been in a place where God was re-altering your life?
  2. Have you ever stood in the moment of difficulty and seemingly all perceived options seemed to be lined with personal suffering and difficulty?

If so, then you can somewhat understand what the children of Israel were going through. They were leaving all they knew. This was a total lifestyle change. People, places and things were being thrown under the bus and life was being radically altered and there was nothing they could do about it. They were being moved to another place by difficult circumstances.

It was in this time and place that the writer inserts five little words into the text: Joseph was already in Egypt! This is more profound than just placing a GPS on Joseph’s backside to let the other Israelites know where their relative was located. Most certainly Joseph was found and his new diggs in Egypt became their new diggs.

But it is more than that. This story is also about the how and why Joseph was in Egypt. As you begin to unpack Joseph’s prior circumstances, troubles and journey to Egypt you get the idea that something bigger than suffering was going on here. Then as you read about his rise to prominence and the ensuing famine in the land and the discomfiting of an entire nation, you begin to get a glimpse of God’s kindness to his children through their personal suffering.

  1. Can you see God’s kindness through your suffering?
  2. Are you aware that God is ahead of you?
  3. Do you know that your Father is planning, positioning, removing and inserting his necessary plans to take care of you?

It took the Israelites a long time to realize that Joseph’s relocation to Egypt was orchestrated by the divine and loving hand of God. Regardless of your situation, I can most assuredly tell you that God is already there!

By

God’s Will…How the Heck Do I Find It????

I am a planner. I like to use “strategery.” If you don’t know that word, you are too young and should probably stop reading now. So anyway. I am a planner or as I like to say, a strategic thinker. Sounds so much better. I remember being in high school, coming to the end, and trying to figure out what was next. Where was I going to college? What was my career going to be? What was the PLAN????

I became very much a seeker at this time. Seeking out God’s will for my life. His plan. What was it and how do I find it? I asked Him to show me. I sought it out in every way I could. I read scripture, prayed, asked my parents. Always the same answer…He will reveal it in His timing. ARRRGGGHHHHHH!!! Are you serious? Really? Ok, I will wait. Only…I never got it. No great revelation, no burning bush, no master plan.

I spent the next 30 years following my own plan. Oh, I prayed. And bargained. Sought His strategic vision for my life, especially when things went very wrong as happened quite a lot. When He didn’t provide it to me, I just kept driving and following my own way. My own best decisions led me to unemployment, leaving my wife and family, sons who wouldn’t speak to me, spiritually bankrupt, and financially unstable. My plan worked out really well!

After much forced humility, soul searching, surrender, and brokenness, God has shown me His will…daily. Not in a large, strategic, forward looking way. Just day by day. It took me learning to live one day at a time to realize that He was right beside me, hoping to guide me if I would just surrender.

God’s will becomes apparent to me a step at a time. He reveals it in His timing but in how I didn’t expect. After I worked step 3, turning my life and my WILL over to the care of God, I began to see how He reveals His will to me. When I listen, seek His guidance in my daily minute by minute life, He reveals more. Only He hasn’t so far given me the larger plan.

I recently began work on a Masters in Addiction Counseling degree. God made it very plain to me through prayer, His word, and many of you that I should pursue this. So I have. Only He didn’t tell me how to pay for it, how to navigate, how to get to graduation and practice. He let me know much as He let Abram know…get up and go. I will get you there. Scary but freeing.

In 2016, as I stared down the end of my marriage and life as I knew it, I first truly recognized God’s guidance in my life at the age of 48. He clearly told me that I needed to do a full disclosure of my sexual immorality to my wife. He promised me I would survive. He didn’t reveal how that would look or what would happen in between. That is the first time in my life that I stepped aside, and as my friend Dan says, “let Him drive.” 

What I found was His decisions and plans are better than mine. The last 4+ years have been wonderful, ugly, painful, full of joy, full of sorry and damage. I survived. My marriage survived. My boys speak to me. I don’t know how we got here. I just know I didn’t drive.

By

God’s Purpose Behind Our Problems

Article Source: Unknown

Life is a series of problem-solving opportunities.

The problems you face will either defeat you or develop you – depending on how you respond to them. Unfortunately, most people fail to see how God wants to use problems for good in their lives. They react foolishly and resent their problems rather than pausing to consider what benefit they might bring.

Here are five ways God wants to use the problems in your life:

1. God uses problems to DIRECT you. Sometimes God must light a fire under you to get you moving. Problems often point us in a new direction and motivate us to change. Is God trying to get your attention? “Sometimes it takes a painful situation to make us change our ways.” Pr. 20:30 (GN)

2. God uses problems to INSPECT you. People are like teabags… if you want to know what’s inside them, just drop them into hot water! Has God ever tested your faith with a problem? What do problems reveal about you? When you have many kinds of troubles, you should be full of joy, because you know that these troubles test your faith, and this will give you patience.” James 1:2-3 (NCV)

3. God uses problems to CORRECT you. Some lessons we learn only through pain and failure. It’s likely that as a child your parents told you not to touch a hot stove. But you probably learned by being burned. Sometimes we only learn the value of something… health, money, a relationship … by losing it. “… It was the best thing that could have happened to me, for it taught me to pay attention to your laws.” Ps 119:71-72 (LB)

4. God uses problems to PROTECT you. A problem can be a blessing in disguise if it prevents you from being harmed by something more serious. Last year a friend was fired for refusing to do something unethical that his boss had asked him to do. His unemployment was a problem – but it saved him from being convicted and sent to prison a year later when management’s actions were eventually discovered. “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good…” Gen 50:20 (NIV)

5. God uses problems to PERFECT you. Problems, when responded to correctly, are character builders. God is far more interested in your character than your comfort. Your relationship to God and your character are the only two things you’re going to take with you into eternity. “We can rejoice when we run into problems …they help us learn to be patient. And patience develops strength of character in us and helps us trust God more each time we use it until finally our hope and faith are strong and steady.” Rom. 5:3-4 (LB)

By

10 Reasons to Believe in a God Who Allows Suffering

SOURCE:  (Adapted from RBC Ministries )

1. Suffering Comes With The Freedom To Choose.

Loving parents long to protect their children from unnecessary pain. But wise parents know the danger of over-protection. They know that the freedom to choose is at the heart of what it means to be human and that a world without choice would be worse than a world without pain. Worse yet would be a world populated by people who could make wrong choices without feeling any pain. No one is more dangerous than the liar, thief, or killer who doesn’t feel the harm o he is doing to himself and to others (Gen. 2:15-17).

2. Pain Can Warn Us Of Danger.

We hate pain, especially in those we love. Yet without discomfort, the sick wouldn’t go to a doctor. Worn-out bodies would get no rest. Criminals wouldn’t fear the law. Children would laugh at correction. Without pangs of conscience, the daily dissatisfaction of boredom, or the empty longing for significance, people who are made to find satisfaction in an eternal Father would settle for far less. The example of Solomon, lured by pleasure and taught by his pain, shows us that even the wisest among us tend to drift from good and from God until arrested by the resulting pain of their own shortsighted choices (Eccl. 1-12; Ps. 78:34-35; Rom. 3:10-18).

3. Suffering Reveals What Is In Our Hearts.

Suffering often occurs at the hand of others. But is has a way of revealing what is in our own hearts. Capacities for love, mercy, anger, envy, and pride can lie dormant until awakened by circumstances. Strength and weakness of heart is found not when everything is going our way but when flames of suffering and temptation test the mettle of our character. As gold and silver are refined by fire, and as coal needs time and pressure to become a diamond, the human heart is revealed and developed by enduring the pressure and heat of time and circumstance. Strength of character is shown not when all is well with our world but in the presence of human pain and suffering. (Job 42:1-17; Rom. 5:3-5; James 1:1-5; 1 Pet. 1:6-8).

4. Suffering Takes Us To The Edge Of Eternity.

If death is the end of everything, then a life filled with suffering isn’t fair. But if the end of this life brings us to the threshold of eternity, then the most fortunate people in the universe are those who discover, through suffering, that this life is not all we have to live for. Those who find themselves and their eternal God through suffering have not wasted their pain. They have let their poverty, grief, and hunger drive them to the Lord of eternity. They are the ones who will discover to their own unending joy why Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor n spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 5:1-12; Rom. 8:18-19).

5. Pain Loosens Our Grip On This Life.

In time, our work and our opinions are sought less and less. Our bodies become increasingly worse for the wear. Gradually they succumb to inevitable obsolescence. Joints stiffen and ache. Eyes grow dim. Digestion slows. Sleep becomes difficult. Problems loom larger and larger while options narrow. Yet, if death is not the end but the threshold of a new day, then the curse of old age is also a blessing. Each new pain makes this world less inviting and the next life more appealing. In its own way, pain paves the way for a graceful departure.

6. Suffering Gives Opportunity To Trust God.

The most famous sufferer of all time was a man named Job. According to the Bible, Job lost his family to war, his wealth to wind and fire, and his health to painful boils. Through it all, God never told Job why it was happening. As Job endured the accusations of his friends, heaven remained silent. When God finally did speak, He did not reveal that His archenemy Satan had challenged Job’s motives for serving God. Neither did the Lord apologize for allowing Satan to test Job’s devotion to God. Instead, God talked about mountain goats giving birth, young lions on the hunt, and ravens in the next. He cited the behavior of the ostrich, the strength of the ox, and the stride of the horse. He cited the wonders of the heavens, the marvels of the sea, and the cycle of the seasons. Job was left to conclude that if God had the power and wisdom to create this physical universe, there was reason to trust that same God in times of suffering (Job 1-42).

7. God Suffers With Us In Our Suffering.

No one has suffered more than our Father in heaven. No one has paid more dearly for the allowance of sin into the world. No one has so continuously grieved over the pain of a race gone bad. No one has suffered like the One who paid for our sin in the crucified body of His own Son. No one has suffered more than the One who, when He stretched out His arms and died, showed us how much He loved us. It is this God who, in drawing us to Himself, asks us to trust Him when we are suffering and when our own loved ones cry out in our presence (1 Pet. 2:21; 3:18; 4:1).

8. God’s Comfort Is Greater Than Our Suffering.

The apostle Paul pleaded with the Lord to take away an unidentified source of suffering. But the Lord declined saying, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” “Therefore,” said Paul, “most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:9-10). Paul learned that he would rather be with Christ in suffering than without Christ in good health and pleasant circumstances.

9. In Times Of Crisis, We Find One Another.

No one would choose pain and suffering. But when there is no choice, there remains some consolation. Natural disasters and times of crisis have a way of bringing us together. Hurricanes, fires, earthquakes, riots, illnesses, and accidents all have a way of bringing us to our senses. Suddenly we remember our own mortality and that people are more important than things. We remember that we do need one another and then, above all, we need God.

Each time we discover God’s comfort in our own suffering, our capacity to help others is increased. This is what the apostle Paul had in mind when he wrote, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Cor. 1:3-4).

10. God Can Turn Suffering Around For Our Good.

This truth is best seen in the many examples of the Bible. Through Job’s suffering, we see a man who not only came to a deeper understanding of God but who also became a source of encouragement for people in every generation to follow. Through the rejection, betrayal, enslavement, and wrongful imprisonment of a man named Joseph, we see someone who eventually was able to say to those who had hurt him, “You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good” (Gen. 50:20).

When everything in us screams at the heavens for allowing suffering, we have reason to look at the eternal outcome and joy of Jesus who in His own suffering on an executioner’s cross cried, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46).

YOU’RE NOT ALONE if the unfairness and suffering of life leave you unconvinced that a God in heaven cares for you. But consider again the suffering of the One called by the prophet Isaiah, “a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Is. 53:3). Think about His slashed back, His bloodied forehead, His nail-ripped hands and feet, His pierced side, His agony in the Garden, and His pathetic cry of abandonment. Consider Christ’s claim that He was suffering not for His sins but for ours. To give us the freedom to choose, He lets us suffer. But He Himself bore the ultimate penalty and pain for all our sins (2 Cor. 5:21; 1 Pet. 2: 24).

When you do see the reason for His suffering, keep in mind that the Bible says Christ died to pay the price for our sins and that those who believe in their heart that God has raised Him from the dead will be saved (Rom. 10:9-10). The forgiveness and eternal life Christ offers is not a reward for effort but a gift to all who, in light of the evidence, put their trust in Him.

By

Being Present

Checking out was my way of being selfish. When I reflect on how I was before, it’s hard for me to understand how I could purposefully miss so much. That’s exactly what I did, purposefully miss so much of my marriage. Events in my sons’ lives that seemed small at the time but seem gigantic now. Thinking about those specific times, I feel like an outsider. Around sometimes but never fully there. Just on the periphery. Watching but not participating. Missing all the important moments.

As I think about many of those times now, I can’t for the life of me understand how pursuing personal gratification was more important than my wife or my boys. The list of events I missed is long. The number of things I was physically present for and mentally absent is much much longer. A lot of those times I remember from photos but the actual memories are a blur. Like I saw a snippet of a video but didn’t really see the whole thing. I have the Cliff’s notes version of parts of my memories. 

I am reminded of what I have missed by those that were present. My wife and I are remodeling a house and preparing to move. We were pulling out old pictures and came upon some from my oldest son’s junior year. It was when he had a lead role in his high school play. I made it back for the performance after having revealed to my wife and sons that I wanted to leave them. My wife let me know that I could come home if I would walk away from that affair partner. I took the way out and ran towards home. Only I still wasn’t completely present. 

My oldest son saw the picture and the look on his face. He commented how painful that time was. How justified he and his brother were for hating me during that time. Later, I realized how much he hated me. In that picture, during that moment, I had no idea. Looking at his face in that photo now, I see the pain and hurt at one of the most important times in his life. That pain and hurt is ingrained in his expression because of me. I feel like throwing up just thinking about it and what I did to him.

My youngest son likes to go to Starbucks for coffee, really because he likes getting out of the house and driving. He is graduating from high school this year. Any time he asks me to ride with him, I go. We were recently driving when a song came on the radio. He got very quiet. I didn’t understand what was going on. He immediately turned off the music, which is very unlike him. I asked him what was going on. 

“I can’t listen to that song,” he said.

“Why not,” I asked? “What’s wrong with it?”

“Don’t you remember it,” he asked?

“No, I don’t. Should I?”

“It was popular when you and Mom were fighting so much. Right after you came back home.”

Ugh. I could see the lines at the corners of his mouth turning down. The stress across his brow. The pain that hadn’t dissipated from four years prior. Still just under the surface.

“I know you and I have talked a lot about that time. I just want you to know again how sorry I am for how I hurt you and your brother and especially your Mom. Nothing can excuse that. I am so sorry.”

“I know,” he said.

“You and I also talked about how I could make amends to you. The only way I know how is to be a good Dad, be present, and always tell you the truth. Is there anything else I can do,” I asked?

“No, just do that. Be honest. Tell me the truth. And be here.”

COVID-19 and the results of a global pandemic have been overwhelming to so many people. Sickness, death, job loss, economic hardship, food shortages, isolation. The effects are still being meted out on all of us. As I search through the circumstances of now and look for how God can use this for His benefit, the one area I see is the ability to be present. In the midst of all of this, I have been allowed to spend so much time with my wife and kids. Even as they are out of the house or about to be out, they have both been staying with us through this. I can’t even quantify how incredible this time has been with them.

Keith B. NotUnknown.com

N

Thank you God for giving me an opportunity to be present.