Wisdom

On Friday night, I started singing a song that I’ve sung in church before, “My God is awesome, He can move mountains, keep me in the valley, hide me from the rain.” It was pouring rain, and I had been out in the rain all day, but even though I’d gotten wet, I had been dressed perfectly for the day. The clothing that I was wearing dried quickly wherever I went, and the rain didn’t bother me at all. When I got home, it really started pouring, a deluge that seemed like a river opened up in the sky and was swamping the streets. If I had been out in that it would have been impossible to go anywhere, and that was the song that came into my heart. I had been in the rain but had somehow been protected, and when it really started to pour, I was hidden safely inside.

The song goes on to say “My God is awesome, heals me when I’m broken, strength when I am weakened, forever He will reign!” and the chorus just keeping repeating He’s awesome, He’s mighty, He's Holy, He’s a deliverer, He’s a provider, He’s a protector. All things that I have experienced since I have been born again, and if I am honest I know He was all of those things to me before I was born again, I just didn’t understand who it was that was providing and protecting and delivering and being awesome in my life. Now that I know, I see it every day.

So Friday night a song comes into my heart and Saturday afternoon I hear it sung by a choir. A confirmation, but of what? I know that God is awesome and holy and mighty and my provider and protector and deliverer. I see His miracles every day of my life. He knows I love Him and worship Him and do my best to follow His leading. Why would He need to confirm this song with me? When I asked Him that, while the choir sang and I sang along, He said, “Yes, but do you really believe it?” He wasn’t asking that to make me think about worshiping Him more – God isn’t like that – He doesn’t need our worship, He doesn’t need our praise, He doesn’t need anything from us, but when we do recognize who He is, we are blessed because we can trust that the promises He has made to us are true and that He can do miracles in our lives in the very situations where it seems the most hopeless and impossible for those promises to come true.

In Mark chapter 9, there is a verse that the Lord brings back to me again and again and again. There is a story about a father whose son has a demon that throws him into convulsions and is trying to destroy him by casting him into the fire and into water. Jesus’ disciples cannot cast out the demon, and when Jesus arrives and asks what all the commotion is about, the father begs Him to help, “If” He can. Jesus replies, “If you can . . . Everything is possible for one who believes.”  That’s the New International Version, but I like the New Living Translation even better, “What do you mean, ‘If I can?’ Jesus asked. “Anything is possible if a person believes.”

When I heard the song yesterday, the same song that He had given me the night before, it wasn’t the song itself that I needed to hear, it was the message of who God is that I needed to be reminded of. There are some mountains that are currently in my life that need to be moved, and this song was His way of reminding me that He can and will move them. I need Him to be my protector, my provider and my deliverer, and He is just making sure that I remember that He always has been and always will be.

He also needed to remind me that I do hear His voice. Yes, it was raining on Friday, but there are lots of other songs about the rain. Why did that song come into my heart? Because He knew the choir would sing it on Saturday. I had never been to that church before, and I was very tired that day. It had been a long exhausting week, and I needed a day off, but I’d told the church I’d be there back in April, and when I say I’m going to do something I do it. It was a long trip up to the Bronx, the subway was all messed up and it took me almost three hours to get there. I kept saying, Why Lord? but when I got there, I knew why. The work I do helps people. When I first started doing it, the word He gave me was, “My children are dying for lack of knowledge,” (Hosea 4:6) a word He gave me this morning on my way up there, and that the Minister in charge of the Health Ministry had written on the information fact sheet for her program. Confirmation after confirmation.

In Hosea, the passage is referring to God’s people who do not have knowledge of scripture any more because their spiritual leaders have failed them. When He gave me the word when I started the work that I am doing in nutrition and wellness, He was referring to the lack of knowledge of how to nurture our bodies with healthy food. The information that I teach is very basic, but it’s information that no one teaches anyone, and no one knows. There’s so much information about health out there, but so much of it is just conjecture, not based on any research or fact. The work I do is all based in solid research, and it’s good basic knowledge that can help everyone, even people with serious health challenges, to have a better quality of life.

I started doing this work not long after I was born again, and in the years since, I have started to realize that God’s people everywhere are dying for lack of knowledge in mind, body and spirit. When the Lord speaks against the religious leaders and the false prophets, it’s because they have been leading people astray. At the very least they haven’t been leading them at all, and at worst they have been telling them things that are not true. In the time since I have been born again I have met some wonderful pastors and Priests, people who I am blessed to know and to have in my life, but I know that there are some out there who are not a blessing. In the work that I do now, I’ve had a similar experience, of meeting people who were genuinely trying to help people, but there are also those who are not. When I worked in the financial world, I worked for a time with these two young guys who were financial analysts, and they always talked about some people in the industry as “Crackpots.” There are a lot of crackpots out there, working in areas of spiritual, physical, and mental health. There are some wonderful people, but there are some who can actually cause harm.

There is a phrase that is part of the code of ethics for the work that I do, as well as for anyone working in the medical field, “First, do no harm.” Sometimes people forget that there is a code of ethics for the kind of work that I do because we don’t operate on anyone or dispense medicine. We just give advice and information. But there are people I know who talk about things that have no real research base, things that they just believe or think are right, things that may have worked for them, but those things can have negative consequences for people if the information is presented as fact when it’s really just a personal opinion. Pastors can do the same thing. They are in a position of authority, and so can give advice that is their opinion, but because of their position of authority, people could take it as fact, act on it, and then find themselves in a heap of trouble. That happened to me before, and I learned the hard way that Pastors are just as human as the rest of us. I’ve gotten great advice too, but the one place where the advice is always the best, and the place where I go now always, is God Almighty Himself. Why would I bother to go anywhere else when the Lord of the Universe is ready, willing and able to help? James 1:5 in the New Living Translation says it beautifully, “If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and He will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking.”

I needed wisdom on Friday and on Saturday – I need it every day, but those days were days when I was feeling very low in my spirit. A combination of being tired and worn from the week’s work, exhausted with dealing with a stressful situation with a person who has been causing me distress, feeling like there is a light at the end of the tunnel but that the tunnel is still long and dark, wanting God’s promises now and not later even though I know that His timing is perfect. I asked Him, crying out from my heart as I walked home through the rain, and He answered, that He is awesome and mighty, my protector and provider, my savior, my healer, my deliverer, and not only is He those things for me, but He is all of that for the whole world. In every place where I am waiting on a promise, in every situation where I need to see a miracle, in every valley that I am in, through every rain storm, in the face of every mountain, He says, “Everything is possible if you believe.”

Blessings,

Jannie Susan