Trust AND Obey » death

Why Me?

Dave Miller — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 14:25:15 +0000

The way I’ve asked that question of the LORD has changed radically in the last six years of my life.

Six years ago this week, I learned that my mother’s breast cancer had metastasized to her liver. She lived for five more months.

Six years ago next week, I learned that my father had pancreatic cancer. He lived for four more months.

In 2005, my parents died less than a month apart. I asked God, “Why me?” dozens of times that year. Sometimes out loud (and I mean LOUD), “Why are you doing this to me!?” as I walked to my car after hearing on the phone that my dad had just died. Sometimes in silence, “Why? Just Why?” over and over to myself at my mom’s funeral. I struggled with wavering faith, self-pity and depression in the weeks and months that followed.

Up until that time, my life had been pretty much blessing upon blessing; and I assumed it was because I was such a good person. I went to church regularly, sung in the choir, taught Sunday school, coached girls’ softball, worked hard at my job and was a pretty good father. I believed that I deserved better than most people because I was better than most people.

I was a fool.

I still ask God, “Why me?” but in a very different way.

Last week I read about a 35-year-old man named Robb Williford who died suddenly two days before Christmas leaving a wife and two sons behind. (Do NOT read the link without a tissue!) On the day his children lost their father; my daughters, my wife and I were at Disney World. Why? Why me? Why him? I weep in sadness for those little boys and their mother, and I sit here wondering why it wasn’t me. He was ten years younger than me; why is he gone and I live on?

There is no earthly reason for things to be this way.

That is the only answer to the question, “Why?” that I’ve been able to grasp in the six years since my parents deaths. There is no earthly reason for things to be this way. But I’m convinced there is a heavenly reason and that we cannot know it until our own days are over.

When something bad happens to you, do you ask, “Why me?”

When something good happens to someone else, do you ask, “Why not me?”

Jesus Christ turns this around (as He does many things) and bids His followers say, “Why me?” when something good happens to them and “Why not me?” when something bad happens to someone else. (Romans 5:8 Luke 13:4-5)

“Why Me, Lord?” – Johnny Cash

I have had steady employment since I graduated college; I’ve been married for more than 20 years to the only woman I’ve ever loved; I have two beautiful, smart and healthy daughters; I’ve never been homeless or seriously ill and I can’t help but wonder, “Why me?”

When a friend’s brother commits suicide, a man at work loses his 20 year-old son in a fire, a neighbor loses her job and hasn’t worked for almost three years, a dear brother’s wife cheats on him and it ends their marriage, I can’t help but wonder, “Why not me?”

I’m no saint; and this isn’t the first direction that I naturally go when something bad happens to me. My first reaction is usually frustration, anger and resentment, and I still ask, “Why me?” sometimes. But God’s peace is supernatural and the joy he desires for His children surpasses all worldly pleasures. It is only our sin that keeps us from enjoying these blessings in fuller measure. (Isaiah 59:2)

God’s blessings aren’t dependent on how good you are.

Think about how blessed you already are right now. (Stop reading right now and make a list of things you’re thankful for!) Let that understanding flow out of you in the form of prayers of thanksgiving to God. Crank up the volume on your thankfulness and you’ll find yourself more content with what you have. You’ll also find you are less receptive to the sounds of aggravation and irritation from within and you’ll begin to tune them out.

Thankfulness and contentment are the results of joy and peace which are fruits of the spirit (Gal 5:22-23) that God promises to all believers.

Beautiful ‘Buts’ in the Bible

Dave Miller — Fri, 07 May 2010 12:00:12 +0000

The word ‘but’ changes whatever comes right before it. A ‘but’ is not always pleasant, like when somebody says to you, “I think you have a good idea, but…” It doesn’t matter what comes after a but like that, it isn’t going to be good.

But a ‘but’ is beautiful when it changes a bad beginning into a good end. For example, “I was sick last week but I got better” or “I once was lost but now am found.”

Here are some of my favorite buts in the New Testament

Matthew 4:4 – But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’” (Quoting Deut. 8:3)

John 1:17 – For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

John 3:17 – For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.

Romans 5:8 – But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 11:22 – Behold then the kindness and severity of God ; to those who fell, severity, but to you, God’s kindness, if you continue in His kindness ; otherwise you also will be cut off.

1 Corinthians 15: 56-57 NKJV – The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 John 4:10 – In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Revelation 21:27 – and nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Each of these verses contrasts two different states of being. Death and Life. Romans 6:23 makes this clearer, perhaps, than any other verse in the bible. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. I think this is the most beautiful but in the Bible.

Here is where I usually spend time summing up the point, but my words are useless. Read God’s word through His servant Paul.

Ephesians 2:1-10 – And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved ), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith ; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

Truth.

No Left Turns

Dave Miller — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 03:20:42 +0000

Today I received an email with one of those “heart-warming” emotional stories in it. You know the kind. They usually tell about doe-eyed baby animals who survive a terrible ordeal, dying people who beat the odds, or cherub-faced children who understand the true meaning of life. They are usually completely fabricated and are so sweet they induce nausea.

Surprisingly, this one was not fictional and was written by a respected journalist named Michael Gartner. It is entitled, “A Life Without Left Turns.” If you would like to read the entire article, here is the link. If you would just like a synopsis, read on.

My father never drove a car.

Well, that’s not quite right.

I should say I never saw him drive a car. He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.

“In those days,” he told me when he was in his 90s, “to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it.”

At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in:

“Oh, bull___!” she said. “He hit a horse.”

“Well,” my father said, “there was that, too.”

So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car.

Another portion tells about his father and mother’s church habits:

My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn’t seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage. (Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.) He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin’s Church. She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish’s two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home. If it was the assistant pastor, he’d take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church.

He called the priests “Father Fast” and “Father Slow.”

Later in the account we find out why it is so named.

As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, “Do you want to know the secret of a long life?” “I guess so,” I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre.

“No left turns,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“No left turns,” he repeated. “Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic. As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn.”

The piece ends with his father’s death at 102 years of age.

“I want you to know,” he said, clearly and lucidly, “that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have.”

A short time later, he died.

What a horrible story. Let me sum it up from a Christian viewpoint.

A man gets married, works hard all his life, has two sons, walks everywhere, doesn’t drive a car, avoids church, lives to be 102 years old, dies peacefully and goes straight to Hell.

If there is nothing more to this life than to live happily, comfortably, healthily and die peacefully, then religion is a complete waste of time and we should just skip church like this man did and go for a walk instead! His story is an example of how not to live and we should pray that our lives are not wasted as this man’s was. How terribly, tragically sad this story is. Proof that Satan will give you anything you want in this life if he can have you in the next.

But if the Bible is the truth and there is more to our existence than this brief journey we call life, then our purpose must be to never live a life focused on selfish comfort and pleasure. Our true purpose must be to reach those who do not know about Jesus and share God’s gift of eternal life. (I’ll let you in on a secret: most of your friends at church are trying their best to live their lives like the man in this story. If they have retired already, time is running out for you to tell them that they’re wasting their life.)

Here is a truly heartwarming story that Christians should pass around more than the one by Gartner. This one is from John Piper’s book Don’t Waste Your Life.

In April 2000, Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards were killed in Cameroon, West Africa. Ruby was over eighty. Single all her life, she poured it out for one great thing: to make Jesus Christ known among the unreached, the poor, and the sick. Laura was a widow, a medical doctor, pushing eighty years old, and serving at Ruby’s side in Cameroon. The brakes failed, the car went over a cliff, and they were both killed instantly. I asked my congregation: Was that a tragedy? Two lives, driven by one great passion, namely, to be spent in unheralded service to the perishing poor for the glory of Jesus Christ – even two decades after most of their American counterparts had retired to throw away their lives on trifles. No, that is not a tragedy. That is a glory. These lives were not wasted. And these lives were not lost. “Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:35).

Americans spend billions of dollars every year trying to live a life like Michael Gartner’s father. Can you imagine him standing before Jesus on the great Day of Judgment and telling God, “I walked instead of going to church.” Or “I never drove a car and didn’t let my wife make left-hand turns.”

What will you say when you stand before Him?

Please, don’t hold this man’s life up as something to be emulated. His life was a waste. His one and only, precious life was a waste because he refused to know Jesus. Please don’t waste your life like this man. Please!