God Things Comin'

Jack McGuckin of Wycliffe Bible translator’s Jungle Aviation Service was on one of his first missionary flights in Peru. The mission director had a rule to build good relationships with the authorities: “Always cooperate with the government people whenever possible. We are in their country by permission, to preach the Gospel. So be courteous!” This sometimes meant that they would do things to please the leaders that they might not be comfortable with, as long as the action wasn’t a morally compromising request.  

Jack faced one of those moments. A sergeant had captured an ocelot and wanted Jack to deliver it to an army officer at another base. He had placed the South American panther in a huge wicker basket. The sergeant exclaimed, “The tiger cannot possibly escape from the basket.” So Jack begrudgingly loaded the ocelot into the plane, along with supplies for other mission stations, some chickens and turtles.

After Jack was steadily flying three thousand feet above the Peruvian jungles, chaos erupted in the back of his plane. The ocelot had broken free from the “impossible to escape from” basket. The chickens distracted the ocelot for a little while, but then the ocelot decided to focus on Jack.

Desperately, Jack looked for a place to land while praying for help. He noticed a small settlement and landed the floatplane on the water next to it. The men from the settlement immediately helped him gain control and recapture the ocelot. Then, they thanked him for landing there. One of the villagers had just had a heart attack and would die without quick medical attention in a hospital. Something the villages did not have the capability to pull off. And Jack’s plane provided just that capability.

Jack thought, “So the Lord had a purpose in allowing the tiger cat to break loose. God used a snarling ocelot and a scared pilot to get His plane to the right place and save a man’s life.”

Without the chaos in the plane, without the abrupt interruption to his plans, without the fear to his life – or should I say – because of the chaos in the plane, because of the abrupt interruption to his plans, because of the fear to his life, God used Jack McGuckin to save a man’s life. When bad things happen, God things are coming.  (Story adapted from Missionary Stories with the Millers by Mildred A. Martin)

Paul taught us that God will use all things for the good of those who love him. “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28 ESV).

This isn’t just on the missionary field in Peru. This isn’t just some truth from Scripture that is thousands of years old.

Recently, I was blessed to hear Charles Recker speak to the Antwerp Rotary Club. Last June, Charles, while checking on his farmland on his ATV, accidentally pulled in front of Buick heading down the road at full speed. A full-sized car at full speed hammering into an ATV is not a pretty site. Charles was flipped up into the air, crashed into the windshield and landed on the side of the road.

Since I already told you that I recently was blessed to hear Charles speak, you know that he is doing well. Praise God for his healing. He had a full recovery after spending much time in the hospital, receiving treatments, and going through therapy. But the thing that stuck out to me in the telling of his story is the story of the driver of the Buick that hit him.

Because of the accident, the cuts she received on her face from the windshield breaking, and the following treatment, the doctors discovered a cancerous tumor that was previously undetected. They were able to treat the cancer and she was fine besides a few cuts that needed healing. She was probably saved that day from a tumor that would have remained undetected until it was too big.

Interruptions. Accidents. Could they be God things? When bad things happen, God things are coming.

Try Faith Out

Have you ever wondered why everything seems to go bad all at once?

Or do you ever wonder why bad things always seem to happen to you?

What if circumstances going bad weren’t actually a bad thing?

That seems difficult to grasp because “bad things” are bad. Hence their name. Likewise, good things are usually viewed as good. Also, hence their name. But what if the good keeps us from better? What if the bad is given to prompt us to change? What if being in a bad situation can be better than being in a good one?

The writer of Hebrews wrote, “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives…God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?” [Heb 12:5-7 (ESV)].

Ten years ago, a leadership book was written that challenged my thinking. Jim Collins wrote Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t. It is an examination of great companies and what made those companies great. Now that might sound boring, but I always read things with kingdom goggles on. When reading about great companies, I was thinking about great people. What makes those great people around me great?

The premise of the book is that being good is the biggest obstacle to being great. Things are fine. We are able to make ends meet. We don’t worry about our next meal. Our children are doing well in school. All of those things that are good prevent us from changing because we are scared of messing things up. In the process of being afraid to change, we miss the greatness in store for us.

People usually do not experience greatness by accident. It is something that people have to strive and work hard for. And greatness, when we see it, appears easy. What we don’t see is all of the hours of hard work behind the scenes that made that greatness possible. We don’t see all of the good risked in order for greatness to be achieved.

So what does this have to do with us?

Chances are things are good in our lives. Because they are good, we don’t want to make the changes necessary to strive for greatness. Steve Jobs, in his commencement address at Stanford in 2005, stated, “I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.” He lost his good and went out to go after great. And I am thankful he did. After being fired from Apple, he went on to make Pixar. Without Pixar I would not be blessed with great movies like Finding Nemo, Cars, or Toy Story.

The good can hold us down. The good can keep us from trying new things. The good can keep us from going after what we really need to go after. The good is comfortable. The good is alluring. The good slowly suffocates and destroys. The bad can be better than the good.

If you’re down on your luck and things seem to be going bad, you are doing better than someone who just has it good because you are in a position to change. Whether you take advantage of that position or not is really what will decide whether you are living in the midst of God’s blessings tomorrow or once again wondering why you are down on your luck.

The choice is yours. Will you choose to remain down on your luck or just good enough, or will you choose to be a person of faith and pursue the dreams laid on your heart?

If things are bad, you have nothing to lose. You might as well try faith out. Things going bad should be viewed as discipline from the Lord to guide us onto the more perfect path. It’s time for change.

If things are good, it will be much more difficult to risk it all. I hope we all have the strength to pursue the great even when the comfortableness of the good ensnares us.

Imagine. There. On the other side of faith. Right there is the future you were destined for. Will you surrender your life to Jesus and go after it? Or will you remain good? Comfortable? The choice is yours.

It’s God’s Fault

Have you ever noticed the tendency that we have to blame God when bad things happen?

Now that is not to say that He is not partly liable. He is God after all. If he can turn water into wine, protect Daniel in the lion’s den, or part the Red Sea, then He is powerful. And if He has the power to stop a tragedy yet allows it, then we cannot just say that He is not partly responsible.

If we did not want to lay the blame at His feet, we would have to say that He is not all-powerful. But if God is not all powerful, then is He really God? Or we could say that He doesn’t care. But if He doesn’t care, then is He loving? We could just say that we live in a fallen world and that the tragedy around us is just the consequences of the fallen state of everything. But then why does God intervene and do miracles at some times and not others?

Imagine that you were walking down the sidewalk and saw a toddler playing in the road. You looked around and did not see the kid’s mom or dad anywhere. Further down the road, you saw a semi-truck going full speed. You had plenty of time to safely get the toddler out of the road and to safety, yet you also know that the semi would not be able to stop in time to avoid hitting the kid. So you decided, despite having the power to stop the situation, to just stand there and enjoy the gory show. Would you be at fault for that kid’s death? Is God at fault for the suffering in the world?

Yet we read in the writings of John, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” [1 John 4:7-8 (ESV)].

How can we reconcile all the pain in our lives and the suffering in the world with a God who is loving? How do we watch footage of the Japanese tsunami destroying house after house and still say that God is loving? How do we see starving children in Africa and say that God is loving? How do we deal with the personal pain of the death of a loved one and say that God is still loving?

Often, we don’t. We ignore the question. As if by ignoring the difficult dilemma, everything will be the way it was before the disaster or tragedy struck. We continue to go through the religious motions, saying all of the right religious sayings while inside we no longer truly believe that God is good. Oh, we continue to give lip service to that religious supposition, but, deep inside, we have stopped believing it. The idea that God is good has just become an intellectual concept that we utter without meaning while ignoring the life changing impact that truly believing it can have on our lives.

Other times, we don’t ignore the question but conclude that the best course of action is to hate God or pretend that the God we blame for causing our tragedy does not exist. After all, if God is powerful even to stop tragedies yet allows them to happen, we know that he shares responsibility. Maybe not direct, but at least indirect. What can we conclude about a God who allows tragedies to happen all around him - tragedies of the worst kind - yet has the power to stop them?

Maybe we are looking at it all wrong. Are we being bamboozled by the physical while ignoring the spiritual underpinnings to everything that goes on around us? Could tragedy, suffering, and pain actually be good for us?

God is working out things behind the scenes that we cannot see. When we ask why God intervenes some times and does not at other times – even if we were given the answers, we would not be satisfied. No answer could ever make me happy with some of the tragedies in my life, and I am sure the same could be said for some of the tragedies in yours.

What are we going to do when tragedy strikes? Are we going to ignore that the bad happened? Are we going to distance ourselves from God? Are we going to justify away how God does not hold any responsibility? Or are we going to totally give ourselves over to God, seek His will and plan, and allow Him to work the terrible situations toward good through us? The choice is ours. We can try to change our perspective.