The sense in our suffering: the value of a broken kneecap

The greatest example we have from history and from Scripture that God allows suffering for his kingdom purposes is the suffering of Christ. That was God’s grace. The meaning of the word grace is ‘gift’, something that is given which the one receiving doesn’t have to or cannot deserve. The suffering of Christ is God’s gift to humankind. How is that possible? How can such a terrible event be a gift from God? I explore the significance and the sense in Christ’s suffering and death in the book I am busy writing. We look to Christ for encouragement because we can identify with Him in his sufferings. And so we who are Christians, a term which literally means “little Christs”, when we follow in Christ’s footsteps, we will not be spared from suffering. The work that God needs to do in us and through us can sometimes only come through the pain of the "cross". Jesus said "take up your cross..."
 

Phil 3:8-11 “... I even consider all things to be loss because of the surpassing greatness of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for the sake of whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and consider them dung, on order that I may gain Christ and may be found in Him.... through faith in Christ... so that I may know Him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to death, if somehow I may attain to the resurrection from the dead” (LEB)

1 Pet 4:13 “But to the degree that you share in the sufferings of Christ, rejoice, so that also at the revelation of his glory you may rejoice and be glad.” (LEB)

Although much has been written about “why bad things happen God’s people”, I don’t think I’ve ever read someone else’s view on the topic. It is not a comfortable topic to read or talk about. In this article I write from my personal experience of pain and difficulty, and from my personal viewpoint based on what God has revealed to me through his Spirit and Word. But this is more than a statement about the purpose of our suffering. It contains a prophetic message to the body of Christ which I believe I will continue to talk about for the rest of my life, one of the most important messages I will bring as a servant of God to the body of Christ.  This is only the beginning of my message, the introduction... 

Extract:

All of us will go through some kind of suffering to a certain extent. We were never promised a life without suffering. Sometimes God will allow us to suffer and then we need to suffer in a godly way and I can truly testify that in those times of great pain and extreme weakness, it is easier to experience the presence of Holy Spirit the strongest. I’ve had deep and intimate experiences in His Presence during my time of great pain and I believe it was revealed to me that I am sharing in the sufferings of Christ just because I am in Christ. Those are the most precious times. That is when you consider that what happened to you is a gift from God because it takes you to a level of intimacy, a level of maturity, a level of authority in Christ where you have not been before. (Not all suffering comes as a result of sin or bad choices. The suffering is not punishment from God. Just as I believe Job’s suffering was not punishment from God for his sins. Just as the suffering of Jesus was not punishment from God for his sins.) And sometimes you will recover what you have lost. You may regain your health. You may heal from your emotional wounds. Your body may be healed and you will only have the scars to show the damage that was done to you, but you will have had this rich, rich experience with God’s Spirit, your spirit man will have grown and you will have acquired riches in heaven that no money on earth can buy. But other times you will not recover what you have lost. You will lose a child, a friend, a husband, a wife, a sister, a mother, a father, a brother, a cousin. You will lose someone and that person will never return. That wound in your heart will heal but you will never get that one person back.  However, when you have been strengthened by Christ, you will be able to strengthen others with words of encouragement that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, that the healing will come. Other people will be able to identify with you in your pain and you have the opportunity to encourage them to keep going, to keep putting one foot in front of the other. And there is the hope that one day in heaven we will see all of them. All of them that knew the Lord, we will see them. And we will rejoice and there will only be joy and no more tears, no more darkness, no more sadness, no more brokenness, no more sin, no more pride, no more jealousy, no more walls around our hearts. There will only be God, and light, and Jesus and Holy Spirit, and the angels and the people that we loved. And it will only be good. And so this life of suffering is temporary. 

We have one chance to suffer well. It is in this life because when this life is over there is no more chance of suffering well. So let’s not run away from our suffering. Let’s face our suffering head on with Jesus Christ as our perfect example; He went before us, the One who didn’t spare Himself the suffering. And we will not be spared either. But when we suffer in Christ, when we share in the sufferings of Christ, we will be comforted. There is great value in that.

Background

On 18 September 2018 at a prayer meeting, the Holy Spirit started talking to me about a topic I am not unfamiliar with. I thought it was a prophetic word for one of the ladies in the meeting, but little did I know how soon after I received this reminder of the purpose of suffering, it would hit me.

At the prayer meeting I saw in my mind’s eye an image of a lighthouse on the rocks. There’s a storm and the waves are beating against the lighthouse, but it remains steady and strong and it keeps shining the light, indicating to ships on the ocean where land is. When we go through difficult times, facing the storms and the trials of this life, through the Holy Spirit dwelling inside of us, we are able, and we should be the shining examples of God’s strength made perfect in our weakness (2 Cor 12:8-10). We can be the pillar, the strong one in the family, the community, the workplace, because his Holy Spirit inside of us strengthens us and enables us to be the light towers in our world, showing those who don’t know Him, those caught up in storms without Him, where land is, where He is. God has to allow righteous suffering in the lives of his children, (Rom 5:3-5; James 1:2-4; 1 Pet 1:6-8), firstly because it makes us relevant in this broken, fallen world. We develop compassion for those who are going through challenging, painful times, so that we will know how to love and support them. And others who are suffering can relate to us in our suffering, and we then have an opportunity to point them to Christ who strengthens us in our weakness.  Suffering also causes us to cry out to God, and He always responds to his children who are desperately crying out to Him. It is during those times that we draw closer to Him, and when our characters grow the most to become more like Him. It is extremely important how we handle the suffering, because our lives have to testify of God’s goodness not only when we feel blessed with what the world sees as “good things”, but also when we don’t feel so blessed, when we’ve been blessed with the “gift” of pain. The light from the light tower must shine especially brightly during the storm! The way we handle those situations, the way we allow Holy Spirit to strengthen us in those situations, determine the brightness of the Light that shines through us for others to see. So God will often not take us out of those situations quickly. Sometimes God will allow us to stay in the storm for a while because He knows that his Light through us will shine brightest against the backdrop of the dark storm. Somebody needs to see the Light more than we need for the storm to calm down. 

Why did the Roman Centurion and others who stood at the cross of Christ, proclaim that “truly, this was the Son of God”, only after Jesus breathed his last breath (Matt 27:54)? I believe that the Holy Spirit revealed to me that one of the things that they saw was that Jesus suffered and died in such a Godly way, that God’s Spirit at work in Him was undeniable. Indeed, He had to be the Son of God (1 Pet 2:21-23). Jesus said “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” (John 12:32-33). Could it be that what Jesus meant was that in the way in which He would suffer and die, people would be able to see God in Him and be drawn by what they see? A friend of mine had a dream about a “pain offering”. So I believe that sometimes God allows the circumstances in which we can bring that “pain offering” for the sake of others, but for our own sake as well. Rick Joyner says: “The Lord does not always come to excite us—at times He comes in silence, and demands silence to do a surgery on our hearts.”

The story

The following weekend I was with my family at a holiday resort (Die Eiland), where I slid down the super slide many times over two days, accompanying my little niece and nephew. On Sunday the 23rd of September, late in the afternoon, I told the little 4-year old that this was to be the last slide for the day. She agreed. Once again we went up the many wet and slippery steps to the top. About 10 steps to go, my foot slipped and with my left kneecap, and my full body weight behind it, I hit the ridge of a step. I’ll spare you the details of initial emotions amidst the shock and trauma, but what is worth mentioning, is the fact that I did not feel close to God for the rest of that day. It felt as if He was absent, even though I knew people were praying for me (lying on my back on the wet floor, waiting for around an hour for paramedics to arrive, I asked for my phone to be handed to me so I could send messages to ask people to pray). I know in reality God is always present, but it is not how I felt during those first hours.  In my mind I kept asking God “why?” Why did He allow this to happen to me? But no answer came. I was reminded of the words of Jesus on the cross, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”. 

(I don’t believe that it was possible for God to forsake Jesus, for Jesus declared “we are One” John 10:30. Since Jesus was completely human and suffered like us, He experienced the same kinds of emotions. In the darkest moments of your life, every one of us will feel as if God has left the room. In reality He never leaves us, never forsakes us, but in your moment of great pain and weakness it will feel as if He is not your caring, loving Father, as if He is not personally involved. It will feel as if He has forsaken you. A good article on this topic can be found at 

https://melwild.wordpress.com/2014/11/24/the-father-did-not-abandon-jesus/)

Despite the shock and trauma on that day, I noticed something. All of the people who attended to me, the first responders, the paramedics, the doctor in the casualty ward, were all so friendly, so helpful, so patient and so compassionate. At least three of them revealed that they were children of God. One prayed for me in the ambulance. Even though I didn’t feel his presence spiritually, I saw God in the people who attended to me. I saw his hand. I saw his provision. All the logistics ran smoothly and everyone we encountered were skilled and friendly. 

I was taken by ambulance to hospital. The x-rays revealed a broken kneecap, a clean break which caused the two pieces to move away from each other. I needed an operation.

That night in hospital, as the pain meds had worked out and the nurses had not yet topped it up, I was just crying in agony, and praying, in faith “thank You Lord for relieving my pain... I worship You... I worship You... I praise Your name. You are so good Lord. There’s none like You. You went through all of that pain. You didn’t have to go through it. It was not Your pain to have. You didn’t deserve it. You didn’t need to subject Yourself to that much pain for Your own sake. You didn’t need to come to us. Not for Yourself. How did You do that? Lord Jesus... You can take the pain away. You went through all of that pain, for my benefit, so that we would know that You know us in our pain, You felt the pain and so You feel us in our pain...” I didn’t experience Jesus taking my pain away supernaturally. Eventually strong pain meds gave me relief again. But for the next few days, I experienced Him to be closer than usual, hearing his voice crystal clear, mostly in the early hours of the morning. I was so aware of his love as He gave me insight and explained why He had allowed this to happen to me. I was so thankful for his tangible presence and hearing his voice that clearly. God doesn’t cause our suffering, but He does allow it sometimes because He has foresight and He knows what good He can cause to come out of it. 

The next day was a public holiday and I had to wait until Tuesday morning for the orthopaedic surgeon to come on duty. In the meantime my knee had swollen up to almost the size of a rugby ball. 
 

A pastor in town came to visit me in hospital. He made a very interesting but true comment: We have only one chance to suffer well, which is in this life, because when we spend eternity in heaven there will be no more suffering. So we can choose now to make the most of our suffering and suffer well. He gave me a prophetic word. He saw in a vision that an angel was standing behind me, giving me a telescope through which I could see into the future and God his giving me prophetic foresight so that I can pray into it. Immediately I was reminded of the prophetic visions of the prophets Daniel and John, of the end times, and the great tribulation that will come upon the whole earth. Years ago already the Holy Spirit revealed to me that the church would go through the great tribulation with the rest of the world, and He is calling some of his children to prepare the church for that time of suffering. Following this revelation I conducted a thorough study of the books of Daniel and Revelation and discovered a strong Biblical basis for this truth, but will not go into the details here. The reason why we have the prophecies of the end times is so that the church in the end times can pray and prepare.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, not having had much sleep because of the pain, the Holy Spirit spoke to me so clearly. “This is to prepare you for what is to come”. I know this doesn’t sound like God to some of you, but God sometimes does prepare his children for the difficulties that lie ahead. For example, Jesus told the apostle Peter how he was going to die (John 21:18-19). Paul also knew that he was going to imprisoned and that hardships lay ahead (Acts 20:23). Hettie Brittz has a powerful testimony of how the Holy Spirit prepared her for her suffering, although she only realised it when it happened (read her book Vreesloos Vry). And because she was prepared, and because she knew her Saviour and Healer of her soul, she experienced emotional healing supernaturally fast. Suffering is inevitable, but God graciously wants our soul and spirit to be prepared. 

I came to the conclusion that God did not lose control of my life for even one split second. But an angel must’ve been given permission to look away for one split second, to not catch me when I fall, because God wanted to bring something of great value forth through my suffering. We have the promise as in Romans 8:28. 

On Tuesday morning the orthopaedic surgeon came to visit me for the first time and told me that he would operate on me that day to fix the kneecap, an injury that would/could take a long time for full recovery...  

Also on Tuesday a friend of mine told me that she had negotiated with God about something which He told her to do, and she felt that God allowed her to have her way on a certain condition. I sensed that it was true. Sometimes we are able to negotiate with God successfully. God once wanted to destroy Israel, but Moses negotiated with Him and He listened. So, the next day I tried to negotiate with God as well, but it was as if I just couldn’t get the conversation going, as if God wasn’t giving me that option. Sometimes God says “no” and all we can do is to accept that. When we are prepared, when we have foreknowledge, it is so that we can be the lighthouses in the storms, so that we can encourage and support others who are with us in the storms, while we are suffering together. 

That evening, hours after I woke up from the anaesthetics, my leg wrapped up and straight again, while eating supper, the Holy Spirit dropped a song in my heart. It was a song from my childhood and I couldn’t help but shake my head and smile at God. He has such a sense of humour! Of all the beautiful songs He could remind me of after this big operation, He chose this one, which I hadn’t heard in a while: “Higher higher, higher..... lift Jesus higher. Lower lower, lower..... stamp satan lower”. 

The other song that kept repeating in my mind that week was “Take me into the Holy of holies; take me in through the blood of the Lamb... take the coal, cleanse my lips, here I am...” And I can testify to the fact that in suffering, it is as if the door is wide open and it is easier to reach a place of intimacy with the Holy Spirit that usually takes longer to reach. We are taken into the Holy of holies where we are able to hear his voice so clearly! When our bodies and souls are weak, our spirits can connect with God easier. For this reason fasting also helps us to draw nearer to God. Fasting is voluntary suffering, the denying of the flesh for the sake of the spirit. (I have jokingly told a few friends now that if one wants to hear God’s voice clearly, you can either choose to fast or break a kneecap. Both have the same results of intimacy with God...)

That night the pain was again not well controlled with medication. But the Holy Spirit continued to be so tangibly present. When I was only thinking of asking Him to come close again, to ask “where are You?”, He was there in a split second! I realised again how He knows my every thought and answers me before I could even formulate the question in my mind! Whatever troubled me, when I mentioned it to the Lord, He answered me, comforted me and gave me fresh perspective so that I knew what I needed to do. 

He continued to speak to me about the benefits of my suffering, in specific detail. One thing that being in a situation like this does, is that it forces you to have to depend on other people for assistance. It humbles you more than before and causes you to be more thankful for those people and so improves relationships with them. You are also thankful for other things for e.g. everything else in your body that DOES work well and thankful that your injuries are not more serious. And for a believing room mate... She was a lady who had had a foot operation on the same day by the same surgeon. She was in pain too. She introduced herself and then asked if she could read me something from the Bible. What?! God sends a fellow patient to encourage me?! Of course I wanted her to read to me. She read Isaiah 43. You should read it now to see how relevant it was on that day. Other precious people I know in Tzaneen, and still others who were asked by my pastor at home to come and pray for me in hospital, also came a few times during the four days I lay there. God took care of my fellowship needs during that week!

The next day, Wednesday, my roommate’s husband was there, visiting her. When the physiotherapist was done getting me back on my feet for the first time since the accident and walking a few small but daring steps, the man introduced himself to me. He was a pastor in a local village nearby. He asked if he could talk to me a bit and then pray for me. “Of course”, I said. He spoke about the benefits of going through pain... God always does something else through it... 

But despite what I believed I heard the Holy Spirit spoke to me about his purpose through all of this, I did struggle a bit with the thought that I wasn’t protected from being injured like this. Some people believe that when something bad happens to you, it is because satan has some legal right, some “open door” to bring calamity on you. Was there some “open door”, some sin in my life, some blind spot that gave the enemy the right to steal from me? The Holy Spirit then reminded me of the tower of Siloam (Luke 13:1-4). We should not assume that hardship or an accident or death comes as a result of sin. Jesus was completely without sin and still God allowed that He be crucified. Satan had no legal right to attack Jesus, none. He had nothing on Jesus for He was without sin, and yet Jesus was tortured and murdered by the children of satan (John 8:37-46). The devil comes and he says that he wants to test us (as we see in the book of Job), to take us through a trial. The devil’s intention is to destroy us, but God still decides what He will allow satan to do to us. When we belong to Him, He intends to work out his Kingdom purposes through those trials.  And so I believe I have my answer. I am convinced that God, in his wisdom, allowed this to happen to me, for He saw the end from the beginning and knew how He could use it for his Kingdom purposes. 

A few weeks ago my pastor prophesied that gifts and surprises were coming my way and I expected ‘good’ things, things that one would normally consider to be ‘blessings’. I did not expect trouble, difficulty, a trial. And most certainly this trial came as a big surprise, although not a nice one. I didn’t see it coming. While I was laying there in hospital the one morning He said to me “what I allowed to happen to you is really just the answer to your prayers; you asked me to help you with those things; you asked me to help you to break through the walls in your heart; this is it; this is the answer to your prayer”.  And while I was praying one day, I realised that this was actually a gift.... (Perhaps now you’re thinking, “with the kneecap that broke, her common sense also shattered to pieces...” 😊, but continue reading..) And so it wasn’t only my kneecap that broke... In God’s great wisdom He knew that only when I was in a place of such weakness and such pain, He could break some things off of my heart, some walls of self protecting pride that were a bit stubborn and wouldn’t break off any other way. 

On Thursday morning again I experienced the Holy Spirit being so close, present at only the thought of Him! I had such an overwhelming feeling of his love, and said in my heart “You loved me so much that You would die for me... and You did! I felt so peaceful, and to a great extent realised that I had surrendered to God’s will through this time of difficulty, that which is to come, according to his wisdom, his great plan for our lives and his Kingdom. On this day I was discharged from hospital and felt ready and happy to be able to go home. 

At home the intimacy with the Holy Spirit continued. (See my blog post “Prayers in pain” for some of what I prayed during this week.) As I was pondering how it can be that a kneecap broken at a holiday resort can be counted as “sharing in the sufferings of Christ”, I realised that the Holy Spirit was beginning to explain it to me. When we are “in Christ” when we suffer, then our suffering is not worthless. “Sharing in the suffering of Christ” doesn’t only happen when we are persecuted for our faith. It includes any suffering that we go through while we belong to Christ.  In any suffering our intimacy, our experience of Him and our relationship with Him can deepen because there is something to learn from Him during times of suffering. And so our suffering can be an extremely rich experience. He needs us to become weak, because it is in our weakness that his strength in us can be made perfect and can be seen by the world. If we are not weak, we cannot experience his strength. We have to be willing to be weak, and sometimes He will allow circumstances that will cause us to be weak, especially when we pray prayers like “change me Lord”... Sometimes He will allow the carpet to be pulled from under our feet because He wants to encounter us in that place of deep intimacy when we suffer while being in Christ. We grow in intimacy with God and people when we are vulnerable, when our hearts are open and we are weak and dependent.

And so God has called us amongst other things to be the lighthouses in this dark world. Sometimes we will reach people through evangelism. Other times they will see the light shining in us in the midst of great difficulty, heartache, pain in our lives. Those who are still adrift at sea need to see the lighthouses so that they can know where land is. 

A message to the end-time church

29 September, Saturday, back home, again I was awake very early in the morning and heard the voice of the Holy Spirit so clearly. He gave me a word for my local church, but which I believe applies to the whole body of Christ worldwide.  I was still in a lot of pain, but felt that God wanted me to deliver the message while I was that weak. (In hindsight, I think that when we are in pain, we don’t use colourful words. We say it just like it is and God wanted me to deliver it without any sugar coating.)

This is a message He started giving me 2 years ago. I talked about it before, in cell group, at prayer group, in church and have written about this in my blog post called “Let’s bring back the love feasts”, in October 2017, http://anitaler.blogspot.com/2017/. 

In the book of Revelation we read the letters to the seven churches. God praises each of them for what they have done right, but He also tells them what He is displeased with. Hopefully there are many things God is happy with concerning the body of Christ currently, but one thing He is not happy with, is the way we are not the close knit family that He desires, especially the western church. We may feel love for each other, but we deceive ourselves in claiming to be family, because families don’t only meet for corporate prayer, worship, and teaching. Families visit and eat together in each other’s homes, share in each other’s joys and sorrows and go through life together.

All over the body of Christ people testify of how God has been giving them the message that He wants his church to gather in small groups, to have house fellowship, and table fellowship. This is how the early church gathered, and He wants us to not see our Sunday services where we gather in larger groups, as sufficient for fellowship. The Sunday service is more like a team meeting, but real heart-to-heart fellowship happens in our homes, where we will get to know each other, where we eat together, pray together, serve each other with our spiritual and natural gifts and where we start sharing whatever we have with each other, like the early church did (Acts 2:46-47). 

When I talk about this with friends, I often hear that people don’t really experience fellowship in church as we know it, because there’s no time for deep conversations. It is mostly small talk and catching up. They experience true fellowship only in small gatherings. These days church is not the place where true fellowship takes place. And this is not right. It should be THE place where people experience fellowship, and so “church” needs to also move into our homes. Fellowship according to the example of the Acts church is not us coming to the pastor, to listen to the message and to just watch and experience the pastor exercise his/her spiritual gifts. In larger gatherings, even though our spirits might be engaged and we may be worshipping God in spirit and in truth, we don’t truly fellowship because most of us in the meeting are spectators and receivers and we don’t exercise our own spiritual gifts. God doesn’t want spectators in his church. He wants sons and daughters who have received the gifts of the spirit to minister to the other parts of the body. The only way that is going to change is when we fellowship in our houses where we don’t have the pastor to lead us.

We need to create this culture in the church, not only because we need each other now, but also to prepare for what lies ahead for the body of Christ. Great suffering is coming upon the whole earth in the years before Christ returns. Jesus said that it will be the worst, unlike mankind has ever seen (Matt 24:21). We read about it amongst others in the prophecies of Daniel, Jesus and the apostle John. There’s going to come a persecution of Christians on the earth like never before and we will not be able to gather in large groups. And so one day when we are forced to gather “underground” in small groups, we will no longer have a pastor to tell us “now do this and now do that”, or to give us a word from the Lord. It will be us and it will be the Holy Spirit leading us. God wants us to be that right now, because we need to teach and train our children to be church in that way. God doesn’t want us to view fellowship as a nice-to-have in church. Fellowship must become a priority.  In many countries in the world people have not been able to gather in large groups for a long time because of persecution, and so we are still privileged to be able to do so without fear, but God wants and needs it to change, especially in the western culture where we live very individualistic lives. I am jealous of cultures that socialise much more than we do. 

Yes we are busy and we’ve got plans for the weekend; yes you enjoy your family at home; yes you have a job and when you get home you’re tired; yes you’ve got your favourite programs to watch on TV, even Christian TV. We can think of many excuses why we don’t make time to fellowship with others, why we don’t make it a Christian priority. Often times when I hear or read of someone who is sick, in trouble, dying, someone who has this need or that, I assume (and I assume that most people assume like I do) “that person has his support around him, his close friends and family who will visit and have coffee and will help him with the practical stuff. Perhaps I’ll pray for him/her and perhaps I’ll send a whatsapp.” And then it often is a matter of “out of sight out of mind”, and I will do nothing more because surely “that person will have his own support around him”. And now that I am dealing with a crisis in my life, I get to experience what others go through when very few people are supporting them and visiting them. We should stop assuming and start caring. If I can’t name the people whom I know will gather around that person to support him, then I cannot make the assumption. It is my duty to find out, because that person is in my church family and it is my family responsibility just like it is everybody else’s, to support that person. It is not enough that we support each other in prayer and through messages on whatsapp. If someone is going through a difficult time, that person needs people to visit, to be there in person and to be ready to help with practicalities just as much as they need prayer. Some people have to be the answer to the prayers. If I don’t know who your inner circle of friends and family are who will support you when crisis hits you, then I don’t really know you and you don’t know me and we are not a strong church. We are not a strong close knit family. 

When you’re going through a painful and/or difficult time, it is not only your body that is affected, but also your soul. You may have a wonderful relationship with God and spiritually you may be doing great, but your soul goes through all kinds of emotions which I believe are coped with easier when you have fellowship with people who can speak into your situation from a place of knowledge and wisdom and good perspective. It’s the blessing of the presence of supportive people around you. I am so thankful for the few friends that have come to visit a few times, in hospital and at home, for their prayers and treats and flowers, but mostly just their presence. One friend took care of me for a whole weekend! Being a medical doctor, it was not beneath her to even wash my feet and paint my toe nails, because I cannot reach my left foot to do it myself. I experienced so much love in that act and it means so much more than just a symbolic washing of feet that we sometimes do in religious settings. When Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, He met a very real need. Heidi Baker says “love looks like something”. If we don’t love each other in practical ways, we shouldn’t pride ourselves that we love like Jesus did. I am thankful to God for the “small” blessings which are actually very big blessings when in a situation like this. I am thanking God and am blessed to be able to stay in my parents’ house at the moment where all of my basic physical needs are being met. I’m also thankful for the people who are praying even though they are not present with me, but I must emphasize what a huge difference it makes when someone comes to visit and prays for you in person. I have experienced “cabin fever” perhaps for the first time in my life (I have not known this term before), but what a huge relief when someone comes to spend time with you! 

When someone goes through a difficult time that you cannot relate to, maybe you would rather not do anything because you don’t know how to support that person. Let me tell you, all you need to do is be there! With this injured leg of mine, I have pondered the fact that my right leg knew instinctively what to do to support and help the left leg.  It wasn’t trained and had no experience in supporting an injured left leg. The only qualification it needed to be fit for the job, was to “be there”. The rest came naturally. So when we are filled with God’s Spirit and we get together in our homes, we will instinctively know what needs to be done, just like my right leg knew how to support my left leg. And if you really don't know what to do, the person in desperate need of your support will tell you exactly what he/she needs. Each of us will realise our purpose, what we're good at, and not so good at, in what position we function the best. We are all a part of this one body of Christ, and every part, whether you are the eye, the ear, the toe, the foot, the leg, whatever you are, you will be led by God’s Spirit to act according to your God-given design and gifting and you will know what to do. 

There will be times when we will be alone with Holy Spirit and those times are important. The Holy Spirit wants us for Himself sometimes. Those are the times when we grow in our intimacy with Him, but God wants us to get together for times that we grow strong as a unity, as one body, times when we share and when we give. There’s the saying that goes “when times are tough, friends are few”. How sad it is that this is a fact also in the body of Christ. It must be the opposite! When the tough times come, solid friendships must already be established. 

When I injured my leg, the holiday resort, the paramedics and the hospital had the systems in place to handle the crisis. The practical help I needed, the manpower and the resources was available and ready. I believe that the body of Christ is NOT ready for the storms that are coming against us. And God is not happy with those of us who have heard the message and have not put it into practice. God wants his body, his bride to be ready when the tough times come, because we will be the lighthouse during that time. We cannot wait any longer to start to prepare. We can’t wait for the pastors to do this for us. All of us need to do it.  It’s time for us to do according to the Word of the Lord, to obey his voice, to act. We need to wake up and make arrangements.  

This is not just ‘n nice idea. It is extremely important that we intentionally start obeying God in this. We need to slay the giant of comfort in our lives. How often in the last year have we invited people into our homes to eat with and to have fellowship with them? Not only to have a fun time but to really to listen to their hearts, and to find a way to serve and love on them. How often did we go to visit a sick or injured or emotionally hurting person? 

It is time.

(I realise that an injured leg is not the worst thing that can happen to a person, but the trauma and pain I experienced was enough for the message that had to come through it. I am thankful for being given the opportunity to bring this "pain offering", for all the good that God could and can still do through it. It would've been great if the message could come without the pain, but I guess some things can only come through the pain of the "cross".)

“Lord Jesus thank You for allowing me to share in Your suffering, not suffering caused by anyone else’s or my sin, but suffering that You allow to purify my character, to draw me closer to You in intimacy and to grow in compassion for others who are suffering. You will allow suffering in the lives of Your children, and it is necessary because You are purifying Your bride. But You want us to support each other when we are suffering. You want us to be a family. So help us, Lord.”