Patience and trust in God

Patience and trust

As Christian, we trust in our God. However, trusting God does not mean that bad things will not happen to us. Trusting God does not guarantee that we will not suffer. Unfortunately we live in a sinful world and no one is spare from the consequences of sin.

Looking at the suffering world, the inevitable question arise: Where is God? How can a loving God allow the world to suffer and maintains silence. Christian still live in poverty, get sick, persecuted and even people like Job, Abraham, Habakkuk and all the heroes of faith mentioned in Hebrews 11 endures long drought when miracles did not happen, when God seemed not just invisible but wholly absent. He does not seem to care. The cry out of “Why?” and “How long more?” echo through.

Reading through the Bible, it is clear that many faithful servants of God were not spare of the calamity and suffering. Abraham climbing the hill with his son, Isaac at Mt Moriah. Job scratching his boils under the hot sun, David hiding in a cave, Elijah moping in a desert, Moses pleading for the unthankful Israelites – all these heroes experience crises moments that sorely tempted them to judge God as uncaring, powerless, or even hostile. Confused and in the dark, they faced a turning point: whether to turn away embittered or step forward in faith. In the end, all chose the path of trust, and for this reason, we remember them as giants of faith.

Unfortunately, not everyone passes those test of faith with flying colours. The Bible is littered with tales of others – Cain, Samson, Solomon, Judas – who flunked.

Likewise, we have read and witnessed thousands of modern day saints who steadfastly cling to our God despite the suffering and set back.

What are the qualities that these people have that help them to preserve till the end?

Our sister Angela Koon suffered brain aneurysm while visiting London. Stranded in a foreign city with very little help, she and husband Koon endured the hardship and God seems very far away; yet as Koon testified, God is the one that he rely on. She was admitted to hospital and have to insert a shunt to drain out the fluid. Again and again, operations have to be repeated because the shunt was failing. Doctors have no ideas why it did not work. Meanwhile, the whole congregation here in KK wondered and cried out on behalf, “Lord have mercy on sister Angela and give strength to Brother Koon”. “Oh Lord, How long more?”, cried our sister Angela. Humanly speaking, the suffering, the repeat operations, the cost, the stress and the doubts are mounting, Where is our God?

In the midst of the crisis and suffering, Brother Koon maintained the calm and confidence that he always carry. I found no hint of despair or even anger towards our God in his email. While still in my doubt, Brother Koon sent an email that kept me pondering for days. This is what he wrote:

Hope that you all had a Good Christmas and New Year. At least Angela managed to spend Christmas at home with the family and Lucas before she was readmitted. She is currently having an external shunt since last tuesday, and this has drained the pressure from her brain and she is quite lucid tho sometimes also confused. She thought that she was in KK Centerpoint at one time. But she is getting stronger as she recovers from the three previous operation. Poor girl has so many scars on her head. She sometimes get depressed and cries asking how long more. Then we share some bible verses togather for assurance and strentgthening and pray and this helps. We just have to learn to be patient and trust in Him, even hard it sometimes seems. She is stable at the moment and can sit up. With the external shunt, the doctors can seem what pressure level and type of shunt is needed for her case. Even the doctors are stumped at why her internal shunt malfunctioned 3 times. If all goes well, she will go for another shunt implant on Friday, and we earnestly pray that this one will work and will be the last operation for her. It is so painful to see her confinded to bed for so long and getting dispirited. We are comforted being encircled by your prayers and love and those of our Grace Chapel family. It gives us great encouragement. Please pray for a successful operation on Friday.

We just have to learn to be patient and trust in Him, even hard it sometimes seems. Here I learned the two greatest lessons taught from those who suffered. Patience and trust are the keys of endurance that will carry us trough.

Life of faith consists of patience and hope. The reason we are patient is because we have hope. The reason we have hope is because we have seen and tasted it. Patience formed by a long memory and hope that our faithfulness will prove worth the risk. We therefore live in the past and future. Live in the past in order to remind myself what God has done and to gain confidence in what He might do again. A record of God’s faithfulness in the past combines with hope in the future equip me for the present. That is why when God spoke to the Children of Israel, He called Himself, “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”, He wants to remind His chosen people of the history with them.

The second element spoken by Brother Koon is trust. We trust God because God knows our problem and He promised that He will see it through. Hebrews says that we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet without sin. Truly nobody knows the trouble we have seen – nobody but Jesus. Jesus came down from heaven descending so far that the process he made us more comprehensible to God. Look at how Jesus responds to the sisters of Lazarus, to a widow who just lost her son or a leprosy victim banned outside the town gates, Philip Yancey says that Jesus gives God a face and that face is streaked with tears.

With my recent fall that broke my tibia bone, the right foot began to drop due to some nerve damage, doctors and friends all said the same thing: You need to have patience and it takes time to heal. Patience is needed because it has proven from the past that there is hope in waiting. I need to trust God too because God heals in His time.