I Will Remember to Sing

Of Your Steadfast Love to Me

Welcome to Chapter 7 of Love Embraced: A Journey in and through Suffering, as I continue to share a newly edited version of a book I first published on Amazon, ten years ago.

7 Midwife

Philemon 1: 4 - 7 (NIV)

I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers, because I hear about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints. I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you, brother, have refreshed the hearts of the saints.

As I began to take baby steps into my fears, trusting in God’s Presence to strengthen and uphold me, I was repeatedly refreshed by the love shown to me by several friends, both abroad and locally. These friends chose to walk beside me, stopping to listen attentively to my struggles, to both rejoice and mourn with me along the way and to lovingly and tenderly turn my heart toward the Promises of God, through both their words and perhaps more importantly, their actions.

One of these women was a new friend, I had only just gotten to know. The first year after my Mum died, she visited me every other week, sometimes with and sometimes without her children, who played together with mine. We sat together, wept together, prayed together, sung together. One day, this woman encouraged me, in my pain and great concern, to trust that God would care for my extended family in their grief. As I sat and told her of my aching heart for my sister, who was expecting her first child, without our Mum at her side, and with the rest of her family abroad, she listened with pain in her eyes.

In doing so, she first acknowledged the very real and understandable emotions coursing through me. Then, rather than giving me any advice of her own, she tenderly turned me to a verse the Lord had once given her to comfort her own heart- Isaiah 40: 11 (NIV):

He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.

In so doing, she let the Holy Spirit work through her, becoming a midwife to me to birth the Word of God in my heart and in my body that sighed with relief. Without any effort or doing of my own, the Holy Spirit gave me the desire to will and work for God’s great pleasure (Philippians 2:13), through my friend’s simple encouragement. And what work am I talking about exactly? To believe in Jesus Christ and the One who sent Him, which John 6:29 tells us is the work of God. So simple. And yet, so powerful!

However, as Paul gently reminds us in 2 Corinthians 1:10 (NRSVCE, my emphasis):

He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again,

Do you see how that saving from our unbelief, in our weakness and need, is not a once and done deal. It is a moment by moment, day by day occurrence. So, be encouraged, if today, you are floundering in unbelief. And if you ever get given the advice, like I once sadly gave a dear friend during corona, to “just pray and things will get better”, know that this friend might just be, like I was in having just been diagnosed with a chronic heart condition that can lead to a life in a wheelchair and early death, be floundering herself. But just too proud to admit that she too, needed a friend’s shoulder to cry on and arms to hold her too, to speak hope into her weary soul and to remind her that God is present in her suffering too.

So, don’t berate yourself for your lack of faith, but rejoice that you and I have been counted worthy to suffer such disgrace for the sake of of Jesus (Acts 5:31), so that His power might be revealed in and through our weakness. So, that God might remind you and me that He has already rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Col. 1:13-14), and that He does not count our unbelief against us, for when we are unfaithful, He remains faithful because He cannot disown Himself in us (2 Timothy 2:13).

Our struggle to believe, in our weakness, does not undo God’s work. In fact, it serves to prove God’s work, as Christ arises in us, through the touch of His Holy Spirit (also through His midwives) to prove Himself worthy to be praised. For, it is God who gives you and I the will and desire to work (have faith) for His great pleasure (Phillippians 2:13)!

So, when things get real dark, as they did for the Papa, whose son had been plagued for years by an unclean spirit that had not only stolen his ability to speak and hear, but had him throwing himself in harms way, again and again, we get to say, along with that weary, doubting Papa: I believe, but help my unbelief! And we get to have Jesus show up on our doorstep, as my friend did, as His hands and feet, to awaken the dormant, yet still living and abiding faith (Christ, our hope of glory) within us.

For, just like Jesus, we need the Father sending us His sweet angels (messengers) to strengthen us in our human weakness to lean into our spiritual strength, by drinking the cup of suffering given to us for the joy set before us. And we, just like Jesus, born into human weakness and becoming sin for us, need our Simons of Cyrene to help carry our cross for us, when we fall in utter exhaustion, with no human strength left.

Praise God, Jesus entered fully into our human weakness, not to condemn us in our unbelief, but to now, through His Holy Spirit, draw near to us, comfort us and console us with His never-forsaking Presence. So, will you join me today, in my weariness and frail humanity, with two very sick girls at home and a husband away overseas, and so many friends suffering all around me, here and overseas, to cry: We believe, Jesus, but help our unbelief!

PS if I don’t respond right away, know it’s because I am tending to my precious girls. Now, let me get this published, in finally getting a moment to finish it. Isn’t God so good to give us words of encouragement for others that end up being words of encouragement for ourselves too.

And let me end, not with someone else’s song, but my own today…a Spirit song the Lord gave me years ago and that rose up within me this morning again: