There have been two times in
my life when I felt God had let me down so badly that I didn’t want
anything more to do with Him.
The first time God ‘let me
down’ I was twelve years old. My parents got divorced. I decided then, that I did not want anything
more to do with a God that could not ‘keep’ my parents together no matter how
hard I prayed. I turned my back on God
until I was in my mid-twenties. It was
only as I grew older that I realized that their divorce had nothing to do with
Him. In Malachi 2:16 the Lord says “I
hate divorce”. The decision to get divorced was made
entirely by my parents and God had no hand in it!
The second time God ‘let me
down’ I was forty-three years old. From
as far back as I can remember I had always wanted to be a writer and I finally
completed my first book when I was 43 years old. I believed the promise
God made to us in Psalm 37 “Delight
yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust in Him and
He will do this”.
The title of the book is God's Promise for Families.
One of the main desires of my
heart is to write.
Someone had prophesied over
my life that God would give me the desire of my heart and a verse given in
confirmation of this prophesy is found in Jeremiah 30:2 “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Write in a book all the words I have spoken
to you’”.
I had covered all the bases –
I had prayed about the book, someone had confirmed it with a prophesy which was
then followed up by a scripture verse and the book itself is very scripturally
based. In fact a friend of mine who read
the manuscript before I submitted it for publication had this to say
“Actually, Noel, it would be a very good book if only it didn’t have so many
scripture verses in it!”
I truly believed and had absolute
faith that the book would be accepted for publication. I posted it off to three publishers – two of
them never bothered to reply and the third one sent me a politely worded
rejection letter. To say I was
devastated is an understatement.
I was totally shattered and
my faith and trust in God’s faithfulness was shaken. I spent days crying and weeks asking God why
my book had been rejected.
After a period of time I
started working on the manuscript again.
I rewrote quite a few things and added some other things. I spent a lot of time in prayer and reading
the Gospel.
Six years later I
submitted the book to a partner publisher in America and they accepted it.
I know now that if my book
had been accepted first time round it would have been one of the worst things
that could have happened to me and my family. I would
have taken all the credit and become insufferably proud. I would not have been able to cope with the
public speaking that goes hand in hand with advertising a book. There was still a lot more healing that had to take place in my life and issues from my past that needed to be dealt with before my story was made public. I needed
those years to grow in Him, to learn to rely solely on Him and to trust Him in
all things. I needed that time to realize
that God’s timing is always perfect and that He will not allow anything to
happen to us – whether good or bad – until the time is right and He has
equipped us to deal with the situation.
I can now fully agree with Jean Ingelow who said "I have lived to thank God that all my prayers have NOT been answered!"
