Christmas is a special time for me for so many reasons. Sharing time with family and friends and, above all, celebrating Christ.
During the Christmas season of 2008, our church family of Trinity became especially meaningful because they lifted up my family and I while I was fighting stage four lymphoma.
Those who walked with us through the trial hopefully can remember the peace God gave me as the Holy Spirit had promised me even before my diagnosis that fall that I would be cured.
But at Thanksgiving, I lost a cousin who was fighting cancer and doing relatively well, and my faith in this promise wavered.
The next Sunday was the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the week of Hope. During the week of Hope, we focus on God’s promises. God used those who led worship that day to remind me of God’s promise of healing for me personally and to restore my faith. He also chose that day to make another promise to me, to undergird my hope for my future. God promised that He would give me another child.
What I have learned since then about God’s promises is that they do not always come without pain. Fighting cancer was not pretty. It was painful and difficult. As a family, we had to make sacrifices and difficult decisions. But because I had his promise of healing, we had His peace in our lives through it all.
God’s promises do not come in our timing, but his perfectly orchestrated plan. When I get impatient waiting on God, He reminds me of Sarah and Abraham, and what can happen when we try to take God’s promises into our own hands.
And, God’s promises don’t always look like what we think they will. Blessings come in all different shapes and sizes. We cannot always predict what health, wealth or happiness will truly look like. But the only way we can find them is if we delight in the Lord (Psalm 37:4).
If we truly trust God at His promises, we can rest in peace, knowing that He is faithful to keep His promises to us. Whether they are directly from the Holy Spirit to you or directly from His Word:
For He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee (Hebrews 13:5)After being healed from cancer, as I looked for this “child of hope” that God had promised, I struggled with all of these things. Waiting is painful. I didn’t want to miss what God had for our family, and I was sure because of the toll chemo and radiation had taken on my body, it was through the process of adoption. The idea of “finding” that child at the right place and the right time was overwhelming at times. And, then, nearly four and a half years after God made his promise to me, I found out through one of my routine cancer check ups that I was pregnant.
For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline. 2 Timothy 1:6-8
But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint (Isaiah 40:31).
Now that we are living in the midst of the fulfillment of this promise, I love to see the creativity of God in His timing. And as we await this child’s birth while we celebrate the coming of Jesus, I can relate to what the Israelites went through as they waited for the Messiah to come.
He had been promised. But waiting was painful. Where would he come from? How would they know when they had found Him?
And I can relate to Simeon and Anna, who were given the honor of seeing the promise of Messiah fulfilled as Jesus was dedicated in the temple. Simeon said in Luke 2:29-32:
29 “Now Lord, You are releasing Your bond-servant to depart in peace,
According to Your word;
30 For my eyes have seen Your salvation,
31 Which You have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
32 A LIGHT [l]OF REVELATION TO THE GENTILES,
And the glory of Your people Israel.”
Jesus is God’s ultimate fulfillment of His greatest promise to us: that of salvation. God keeps his promises. He is faithful. Trust in him. Wait on Him. Fervently look for His promises to be fulfilled in your life.
Five years ago, as I sat listening to the Holy Spirit speak through those ministering on stage about Hope, God restored my hope. Today, as we are reminded of the fulfillment of God’s promises of salvation through Christ, I pray, in whatever way you need it in this moment, He will give you His peace.
