Every day when my team is brought to a new place to share about God we all share testimonies. Last week I had one prepared but I stopped to ask God if He wanted me to speak on something else, I heard nothing. So I proceeded with the one I was about to tell. Then my teammate stood up and started to talk about Gods Healing and God flashed the time of when I got sick 3 years ago, which I completely forgot about. I had an illness called whopping cough. That is where you cough so much that you can’t catch your breath and you feel like you can’t breathe. I don’t like to question why God does things because I know He has a greater reason but one night I was so tired of having this terrible cough and feeling like I couldn’t breathe that I asked God why? Why He had allowed me to be sick? I didn’t know. The worst part was the doctors couldn’t do anything to help me. I had to wait for it to go away.
That day when God had me tell this testimony of why I got sick I still didn’t know why or what I was even going to say but I trusted God that He would give me words. While speaking He revealed why I got sick. He allowed it because I needed to learn what true faith was. God could have healed me instantly, He’s a God of miracles but He needed me to go through this trial to grow in Him. Faith is a complete trust in something and I needed to learn to put all my faith in God. After 4 months of feeling like I couldn’t breathe, I finally realized that was something I couldn’t fix on my own. I learned that a complete faith in my God was a faith where I give up all control, all control of wanting things to make sense, and having a complete knowledge that He has a plan and purpose through all trials. And once I figured that out my God of miracles took it right away.
In that time, 3 years ago, I didn’t know why I was sick and it was frustrating but I learned that in the moment I cannot see the bigger picture. I couldn’t see anything good coming out of my pain but God did. 3 years after going through the pain He revealed the why. And God can place difficult things in our lives to grow us, make us stronger. We have to go through the dark to really know what the light looks like. He is the light and I believe that God did not cause the pain but He allowed it and this reminds me of a man named Job.
Job was a man of God. His life was completely dedicated to the Lord and the devil saw that. Satan talked to God and God told him about Job, how Job had unwavering faith and no matter what trial was thrown at Him. Terrible things did happen to Job in the season but like God already knew, Job continued to praise Him. God did not cause the pain, Satan did, but God allowed it because He knew it would make Job stronger. God was able to show Satan (only God knows all things) that a true man of God will not run from his faith over a season of hardships. God allowed the suffering on Job because He knew Job would be able to handle it. Was that season easy? Not by the slightest. And I do believe that God can give us more than we can handle. Job could not fix those sufferings on his own ,I could not fix my sufferings on my own and through that realization we could run to no one else besides God. We were left to completely trust Him and remember that He has a bigger plan for everything. I could only see what was right in front of me while God could see it all.
God brought me into the darkness to let me see the light brighter. God is a candle that the devil can never blow out.
*This was a sermon I spoke during church in Africa
