PARENTING - A THANKLESS JOB!

This morning after I had dropped my children off at school the thought crossed my mind that “sometimes it is quite a thankless job being a parent”.  God immediately replied “Tell me about it Noel. I totally agree with you! You didn’t even greet me when you woke up this morning and it has been quite a while since you have taken the time to just sit and look at the wonderful world I created for you, never mind thank me for it.  You take a lot of things for granted, my child”.

As I reflected on this I realized that God must sometimes feel exactly the same way about my attitude as I do about my children’s attitude.  He must look down at me and think “My child, why are you so thankless”.

We provide a home for our children, work hard to feed and clothe them and give them a good education.  We love them and care for them and yet at times we feel discouraged when it seems that everything we do is just taken for granted and there is little sense of appreciation of what they have.  Can you just imagine how God must feel?  He gave His only Son to die a horrific death on the cross so that we could have fullness of life here on earth and eternal life with Him and yet how often do we just take that for granted?

We grumble and complain that we don’t have this or that.  We constantly ask God to bless us and help us and give Him a list of demands of our ‘needs’ and then get upset when those ‘needs’ are not met in the way we want them to be.

God disciplines us because He cares for us and does not want any harm to befall us and yet we rebel against Him because we want to live our own lives.  We don’t want to have to love and care for everybody.  We don’t want to have to practice self-control and not swear at the taxi driver who is blatantly breaking the law and driving dangerously.  We don’t have ‘time’ to pray and meditate on God’s word on a daily basis.

That last ‘we don’t’ brought me up short as I realized that my children must feel exactly the same way about me as God does at times.  I often don’t have ‘time’ for them.  I am so busy working, cleaning, lifting, cooking and doing a myriad of things that are actually not that important that I don’t have time to just ‘be’ with them.  The two most common sentences that they hear me utter are “not now, I am busy” and “I am so tired”.  Basically time is all we have and we can either use it well or waste it.

“I tell you, now is the time of God’s favour, now is the day of salvation”.

(2 Corinthians 6:2)

 "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven" (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

'LET DOWN' BY GOD

 

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!"

 

 

QUESTIONS AND RAINBOWS!

 

This blog is dedicated to the two Emmas in my life.  Emma Jane Curry and Emma Blencowe – my prayer for the two of you is, that no matter what life throws at you, you will continue to grow in the knowledge that God wants beautiful things for you.

 

“It was a cold, stormy day.  The children and I were driving to the dentist.  We witnessed the clouds clear and the most magnificent rainbow appeared.  Our four-year-old daughter had been given a book about Noah and we read it daily.  Thinking this was a wonderful opportunity to illustrate the story of Noah, I asked her why God sent the rainbow.  After a moment of silence, she said, “Cause God wants us to have beautiful things to look at!”

Even though it was not quite the answer I was looking for, it is wonderful to know she is growing up in the knowledge God wants beautiful things for her.”¹

 

 

This same daughter, Emma Jane, is now eleven years old and has been asking the following question repeatedly for the past few months “If God knows everything that is going to happen in the future WHY did He create the world and make us, knowing that we would sin and destroy the world He gave us?”

Up until yesterday I have not been able to give her an answer with any real conviction because, truth be told, it is a question I have struggled with most of my life!  I have always told her that God made the human race because He wants to have a relationship with us but that does not answer the question of ‘why would He do that?  Why would He give us freedom of choice when He knew that we would turn our backs on Him and destroy the world?’

We were driving along the coast and had just been admiring a beautiful rainbow when Emma Jane said, with awe in her voice, “Wow, mom, isn’t God wonderful!” and then it struck me – that is the reason why we were born – God made us so that we could experience joy and wonder and reverence for Him and His creation.  If we didn’t have freedom of choice we would not be able to experience any emotions – we would be robotic creatures unable to form a relationship with God and to interact with Him.

God knew we would destroy the earth but He would still have created it even if only a small percentage of the human race over all the ages chose to follow Him.  He confirmed this when He sent Jesus to die on the cross “for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

He knew long before He created the world that we would sin but His desire to have fellowship with us, His longing for us to experience the beauty that He could provide us with and the fact that He wants us to spend eternity with Him in heaven was worth it.

“The entire human race was created to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.   Sin has diverted the human race onto another course, but it has not altered God’s purpose to the slightest degree. And when we are born again we are brought into the realization of God’s great purpose for the human race,  namely, that He created us for Himself.  This realization of our election by God is the most joyful on earth, and we must learn to rely on this tremendous creative purpose of God”.²  

We are made in God's image "and therefore share many of His characteristics and emotions.  Knowing this provides the basis for self-worth.  Self-worth is not defined by possessions, achievements, physical attractiveness, or public acclaim.  Self-worth is knowing that God created us in His likeness.  Criticizing or downgrading ourselves is criticizing what God has made.  Because we are like God we can feel positive about ourselves and our abilities.  Knowing that you are a person of infinite worth gives you the freedom to love God, know Him personally, and make a valuable contribution to those around you".³

 

1.  Extract from God's Promise for Families, Noelene Curry

2.  My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers

3.  Life Application Bible, Study notes

 

 

 

POVERTY & LOVE

A couple of months ago I attended a service in a really quaint church in a small town known as Bathurst in the Eastern Cape.  The minister entered the church wearing black flowing robes and he had a snow white beard.  He took his place behind the lectern and his opening words were “I better introduce myself.  I am Father Abraham and if you are here for the Christmas day service you can meet Father Christmas!”

The minister was my dad Ray Lutge, who in fact had been ministering in the Bathurst church for many years, but had been on a month’s bush camping holiday with my brother in Namibia and had decided not to shave!

His sermon that morning was on the gifts of the Spirit and I was amazed to find out that there are in fact 27 Spiritual gifts noted in the Bible.

They are prophecy, service, teaching, exhortation, giving, leadership, mercy, wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, discerning of spirits, tongues, interpretation, apostleship, helps, administration, evangelist, pastoral, celibacy, voluntary poverty, martyrdom, hospitality, missionary, intercession and exorcism.

I have to laugh sometimes at how practical our God can be.  Here we have all these lovely ‘spiritual’ gifts and in there somewhere is this amazingly practical gift of administration!

Romans 12 says “Just as there are many parts to our bodies, so it is with Christ’s body.  We are all parts of it, and it takes every one of us to make it complete, for we each have different work to do. So we belong to each other, and each needs all the others.  God has given each of us the ability to do certain things well”¹.

If you look at the list of gifts there are some there that each one of us should be practicing.

The gift of giving, the gift of mercy, the gift of helps and the gift of hospitality are all gifts that we are capable of exercising.

The gift I found very interesting was voluntary poverty.  “It is the special ability that God gives to certain members of the Body of Christ to renounce material comfort and luxury and adopt a personal life-style equivalent to those living at the poverty level in a given society in order to serve God more effectively”. 
Well, Mother Teresa was certainly given that gift in abundance. She founded the Missionaries of Charity ministry in Calcutta and for 50 years she lived and worked amongst the poorest of the poor. She cared for orphans, AIDS patients, lepers, tuberculosis victims and many more in need.

God was speaking about material poverty and yet how many of us live in absolute poverty spiritually and emotionally. This kind of poverty is something that we have control of and it is in our power to change.

Even though, on a daily basis, Mother Teresa saw people starving with hunger she could still say the following:

“We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless.  The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty.  We must start in our homes to remedy this kind of poverty.  Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat”

Each one of us is capable of doing something about this kind of poverty – all it takes is love.

 

 

 

1  Life Application Bible

 

WHO IS GOD TO US?

Empathy is defined as “your pain in my heart”.  How do we develop empathy if we never experience pain or hurt, sickness or the loss of a loved one, either through death or the ending of a relationship?

Oswald Chambers writes “Suffering either gives me to myself or it destroys me.  The only way to find yourself is in the fires of sorrow.  Why it should be this way is immaterial.  The fact is that it is true in the Scriptures and in human experience.  You can always know that you can go to him, who has suffered, in your moment of trouble and find that he has plenty of time for you.  But if a person has not been through the fires of sorrow, he is apt to be contemptuous, having no respect or time for you, only turning you away.  If you receive yourself in the fires of sorrow God will make you nourishment for other people".

My sister once wrote me a letter and this is what she said "I think we are blessed in a wonderfully paradoxical way, because our capacity - huge capacity - for healing has been carved and hollowed out through out experiences of pain and feelings of rejection, feelings of never quite being good enough, through our failures, through our unmet expectations, and disappointments with ourselves and others - suffering is so intimately connected to wholeness.  Perhaps wisdom is simply a matter of waiting and healing a question of time"

It has been through my times of pain and sorrow that I have grown the most as a person.

It is also during those times that I have actively sought God and prayed the most!

Nick Vujicic, a man born without arms or legs has this to say:  “I love how God lets us go through difficult challenges to help each other and encourage one another.  The challenges in our lives are there to strengthen our convictions.  They are not there to run us over”.

A man who I never met, put into words what God ‘is’ and those words have had a major impact on my life and my relationship with God.  His name was Andre le Roux and he was a Methodist minister.  He wrote a letter on the 26/05/2010 after being given the news that despite the chemotherapy treatment he had been undergoing, the cancer in his body was continuing to grow and spread.  Below is a portion of that letter:

"Now, more than ever, we are left with a miracle as the only option for healing.  We hold onto that hope, though will need to find, and own, a new hope too - one that is not dependent on the cancer being taken away, but on being carried through this disease, and if necessary through the valley of the shadow of death.  It is not about what God can do for us, but about who God is to us.  And the God I believe in is not the magic genie god who jumps out of our "prayer lamps" to grant us our 3 wishes (though at times God does that for us).  I believe in a God who is with us in all things: carrying, guiding and challenging.  However, at this time, that picture needs strengthening and deepening in me - it needs a new depth that I have not needed before.  I am determined to find it.  God cannot be the "fix it" only God - that would make a mockery of everything that Jesus stood for. In the end, the incarnation is about God being with us.  I hope to find that in a way that sustains me along this road.  Never having been there before makes it a new journey for me - one that may prove lonely at times, no doubt frustrating and confusing at others, but there will also be the special moments that come from seeing the world through new eyes opened by the discoveries I make along the way." 

Andre died on 13/07/2010, 48 days after penning this letter.

Jesus died upon a cross in order to be able to “feel our pain in His heart”.

 

 

 

 

 

A GOD ORDAINED APPOINTMENT!

 

There is no such thing as a co-incidence in a believer’s life.  In Psalm 139:16 it says “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be”.

God knows that sometimes we need to meet certain people and He arranges what I call “God ordained appointments”.  On a recent holiday to Port Alfred my youngest daughter and I had one such meeting.  We were travelling to meet my sister who was also staying in Port Alfred and as we left our holiday home the car started to make a noise.  It sounded like a stick or stone had got trapped between the wheel and the underside of the vehicle.  I stopped and checked underneath the car but could see nothing.

As we continued to drive the noise became worse. It was a screeching sound that got louder and louder until eventually we could hardly hear each other. I stopped the car again, got out, walked around it and prayed.  I phoned my sister to tell her we were going to be late.  I knew there was a garage workshop about a kilometer away and thought I would try and drive there slowly.

I got back into the car, started it and there wasn’t a sound. We drove off slowly and the silence was such a relief after the noise.  I decided to call on at the garage anyway as we had a ten hour drive back to Cape Town the day after.  We  arrived at the garage only to discover that it was closed. Standing in front of the locked gates was an elderly gentleman who looked like he had been waiting for us.  He walked towards us and told us that the workshop didn't open on Saturdays.  I asked him if he knew of any other garages and he said “yes, follow me”.  He got into a car parked nearby and drove off.  I followed him and we eventually drove into the parking lot of a business area and standing outside an open workshop roller door was a gentleman who later introduced himself as Chris Nell the owner of “Spannerworx”, Automative Maintenance.  My elderly gentleman spoke to Chris through the window of his car, told him my car needed looking at and drove off before I could thank him.  I said to Chris “that was a really nice guy”.  His reply “I have never seen him before”.  I knew that he had been an angel, just waiting for me to arrive so he could show me the way to Chris!  “For He will command His angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways” (Psalm 91:11).

Chris then informed me that his workshop was also closed on Saturdays and that he had just popped in to collect something and was on his way out.  I explained what had happened and told him that after praying for the car the noise had disappeared but I thought it would be best to have it checked.  He looked at me strangely then told me to drive the car into the workshop.  He hoisted it up and gave the wheels and underbody a thorough check and then took it for a test drive.  There was nothing wrong with it.

When he got back he refused any payment so we gave him one of the pancakes we had bought to take to my sister! He then shared with us his amazing testimony.  He had gone to a Mighty Men of God conference led by Angus Buchan (if you want to know more about this amazing man click on http://www.shalomtrust.co.za/) and his life had taken on a new meaning.  He showed us a photograph he had taken at the conference of a cloud in the shape of a cross that stayed still above the place where they were worshipping even though the clouds around it were constantly moving and changing shape as the wind blew. He shared with us how he had lost his job and had started his own business doing automotive maintenance from a small garage.  The business grew and within 2 years he was able to move to bigger premises.

 

OLD PREMISES

NEW PREMISES

How he was celebrating over 20 years of marriage that same day (cannot remember the exact number of years) and how thankful he was to God for his wife and his 2 sons.  He shared that he was relatively new at this relationship business with God but he had a burning desire to tell people about “His Father” and shared with us what God had been doing in his life.

I was going through one of those times when God seemed distant and God knew that I needed to hear a stranger’s testimony.  A stranger telling me about how great our God was and how much He cares for each of us individually and how intimately He is involved in our lives.

I needed the reminder that He has provided His angels to guide us and guard us (my elderly gentleman who led me to Chris) and that He loves us.

Four days later my mom died.  On the day she died I had the privilege to sit beside her for many hours before she went to be with our Lord and during that time I thought back to my meeting with Chris and how, through his witness, my faith and my hope in my God was renewed and strengthened.

Hebrews 3:13 “..encourage one another daily”.

Thank you Chris, for your encouragement and for checking my car out!

 

 

DYING TO LIVE

 

My mom always told me that she believed death would be glorious and that it would be an amazing experience to enter heaven and hear Jesus say "welcome home".

Ten days ago she heard Him say those words to her in person.

My mom had not been well for a while and had been moved to the Frail Care Centre at the Retirement Home she had been living in for the past 2 years.  My sister and I popped in for a visit on Thursday morning the 11^th July and knew immediately that she was dying.  She acknowledged us with a smile and after about an hour of us being there she looked around the room at my sister, myself and 2 nurse aides who were also in the room at the time and very clearly said “I love you all very much”. After that she started to drift in and out of sleep.

My husband went to fetch our three girls from home (it was school holidays) and brought them to her room.  What an amazing time that was.  Our retired minister, Bill and his wife Mary, were also there and we stood and listened and watched as these 3 girls sat on her bed, holding her hands and speaking about the memories that she had made with them - ’remember the time Ouma when…’  or ‘it was so much fun Ouma when we went to…..’

There was a lot of laughter especially when one of our daughters looked around the room at all the people present and said “Well, ouma, you certainly are getting a really good send off” and then added “and you are leaving the world well populated”.  My mom loved just being with her grandchildren and listening to them talk and she often repeated to other family members and friends things they had said.  I could just imagine her saying to Jesus later "and did You hear that wonderful comment about me having a "really good send off"!?

Each girl then said goodbye.  They hugged and kissed her, told her that they loved her and would miss her.

Bill read a scripture to her and prayed and we could see that she was aware of what was happening around her.  Everyone left and it was just my sister and I in the room with her until my brother arrived from Namibia at 4.30.  He had caught the 1:00 o’clock flight from Walvis Bay to Cape Town.

As he sat down beside her and took her hand she opened her eyes and spoke to him.  We could not make out the words she was saying but knew that she recognized him  and was at peace that he was there with her.

After that she did not open her eyes again.  The three of us stayed with her.  Every now and again one of us would pray or read a Psalm or just talk quietly.  There was an incredible sense of peace in the room .  My mom died at 6.40 that evening and about 10 minutes before her spirit left her body my brother knelt on the floor took her in his arms and committed her to the Lord giving thanks for her life.

The sms message that I sent to family and friends a little while afterwards simply stated “my mom is in His Presence” because that is exactly where she was.  At home with her Lord, hearing Him say “welcome home, my child”.

My mother believed totally and absolutely in the words that Jesus had spoken whilst He was here on earth “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.  I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live” (John 5:24 & 25).  My mom is alive with Christ.

Trevor Hudson once said “...if our deepest confidence is in the God who raised Jesus from the dead, then our sadness will not be trapped in hopelessness and despair.  We will be able to grieve with hope”.

 

I want to end with the words that one of her grandsons wrote about her:

"Don't despair at the ending  of life, rejoice at a life well lived and enjoyed.  A life that touched others, that helped nurture others and that helped change the world, even in a small way."