Sunday, January 10, 2010

Circumstances for a purpose

Today at church a couple shared their testimony- the husband about being diagnosed 6 months ago with stage 4 brain tumor/cancer, and the wife about her grief and loss of hope in the situation.

He shared an article by John Piper about not wasting your cancer. At first I was thinking, waste cancer? How on earth could cancer and possible death be something to not waste. But as he shared he pointed out in an article by John Piper that "What God permits, he permits for a reason. And that reason is his design."

"You will waste your cancer if you believe it is a curse and not a gift."

"The aim of God in your cancer (among a thousand other good things) is to knock props out from under our hearts so that we rely utterly on him."

Wow. I've spent a lot of time today thinking about these points... and thinking of applying them to just my circumstances in general. Too often I am not content in areas of my life that I want to go differently, and had never recently considered that those very circumstances were designed for me to go through by God himself. And that they are for a purpose, a purpose that God designed for me to go through to produce faith, or perserverance, or whatever he wanted in me.

Thankful for that testimony... and eager to start not wasting my trials


1 comment:

Katherine M. said...

Hey Leslie, Good thoughts. Thanks for sharing. Would you like to try to meet up at Starbucks near Sharay's house on Cedar someday soon? I'd love to get together and visit. Let me know.