A different sort of Testimony....

Sometimes when life sucks the breath out of you and you are hanging on by a thread, it
is very hard to listen to Everything Worked Out Testimonies. Don’t get me wrong - we need to tell how God came through for us, answered our prayers and so on, because He does. And every good testimony i hear i rejoice with them!
But He also chooses to not answer how we would like it to be answered... and it is at those times, the times i live in, when hearing those sunny day testimonies that it gets hard, really hard. Is something wrong with my prayers, faith, or needs? Does God not care, hear or help me?

Thoughts about this, plus how life is panning out right now, kept mulling over and over in my mind. I got to a point where i wished that i could also jump up and shout “God Healed! Praise Him!” or “I found a great job again at 50!! Praise God!” or “The house is finally in our name!! Hallelujah!” I even made little speeches in my head of how i would tell how God came through.
I put quite a lot of thought into it, but no, there was nothing to report on. Or so i thought.

While all this mulling was going on God was slowly showing me something quite different. A friend phoned and asked if i could share a bit of our journey and how God is using it - a testimony, i guess (without the wonderful outcome) for those who sit in church with a cancer that is progressing, for the young widow with small children... for those like us.

And i thought of Moses who had to live as a fugitive for...40 years ... tending sheep in the desert. Let that sink in - 40 years. And David came to mind - already anointed as king but a blood thirsty rejected-by-God-king on his heals for 14 years. Joseph, sold as a slave, falsely accused, jailed for many many years. The three friends of Daniel who actually was thrown into the fiery furnace! Do i wait 40 years before i can share a good outcome story? A Red Sea parting? Somehow i think that was not what God was showing me...and as i was thinking what to say in my 5 minutes voice note, i saw it. In that exteremly hot oven there was a 4th person - “and the fourth looks like the son of gods” (Dan 3:25)

And right there is my very own testimony. In this blazing furnace of a disease is a fourth man - the very Son of God. He also goes by the name Immanu El - God with us. And He is - every single day. Right here. Helping, caring, giving new Hope. And i praise His Name! Right here in the pain, in this muddle called life, i find Him.

And this is my testimony: with no good outcome in sight i can testify that God is still good, and Caring and always, always with me. I see it everywhere i look and the muddle of my life becomes a bit clearer and i see how He is forming us, molding our very characters into what He wants us to be. Who we are in Him.

Bella