The Process
“What are you doing here, Elijah?...
I have had enough Lord!”
1 Kings 19:9,4 (NIV)
We’ve all been there. There’s something we really want, and it doesn’t come to pass. When our circumstances don’t change, people fail us, or God doesn’t answer our prayers the way we think best, we experience unmet expectations, and disappointment grips our hearts. Disappointment isn’t a sin, but it can quickly lead to a destructive downward spiral of discouragement and despair.
I never expected a special needs child. When James Bruce was born, he had all of his fingers and toes, beautiful hazel eyes, and was the answer to my fervent prayer for a little boy named Bruce. He was two months old when I realized something was wrong. James Bruce received his official “mild mental retardation, origin unknown” diagnosis when he was three years old. We discovered he had a genetic anomaly on Chromosome 15 when he was five. James Bruce was nine when he received his autism diagnosis and his seizures began when he was eighteen.
For two years after we received his intellectual disability diagnosis, I wasn’t just angry with God; I was furious! We had been advised to have an abortion with James Bruce. We chose life and wound up with a special needs child. It just didn’t seem fair and I desperately wanted my circumstances to change. I still went to church every Sunday, but inside I was seething. God had disappointed me.
Finally at the end of two long years I got tired of being mad and separated from God. Much like the prodigal son in Luke 15, I came to my senses and returned home begging the Father’s forgiveness and receiving His grace. My husband challenged me to quit praying for God to make James Bruce “normal” and to begin praying that somehow God would use him for His glory.
I doubted God’s ability to do that in any meaningful way because my child was so limited. Honestly, my prayers were more like, “OK, God, show me what you’re going to do!” One morning in my quiet time, I stumbled across a verse of scripture that changed the shape of my prayers, not just for James Bruce, but for all my children.
“Ask Me about the things to come concerning My sons, and you shall commit to Me the work of My hands.”
Isaiah 45:11 (NASB)
That morning I realized God claims ownership and responsibility for His creation. My children were God’s children before they were mine and they will still be His children long after I’m gone. Slowly, my prayers for James Bruce became less demanding and more pleading, “Lord, use James Bruce for your glory!” And wonder of wonders, God answered that prayer in some amazing ways during James Bruce’s life and death.
Biblically, we are never defined by our circumstances, relationships, or behavior; we are always defined by our hearts. Dr. Henry Brandt writes, “The heart of the problem is the problem of the heart.”
Author Paul David Tripp in his wonderful book Instruments in the Hands of the Redeemer asserts that there is always a war going on within our hearts with our desires at the center of the war. Desire in and of itself isn’t a sin, but our desires usually grow and turn into demands. A demand is a closed fist over a desire. The downward spiral from disappointment to despair begins with a desire that Tripp notes as follows:
Desire (I want)
Demand (I must)
Need (I will)
Expectations (You should)
Disappointment (you didn’t)
Punishment (because you didn’t, I will) results in conflict and broken relationships, both vertically with God and horizontally with man.
We live in a fallen and broken world, but God never wastes our suffering. The disappointments we experience are part of God’s sanctification process to conform us more and more to the likeness of Jesus Christ. Suffering helps us develop perseverance and an eternal perspective of life.
Coach Nick Saban, arguably the greatest college football coach of all time, often noted the key to his on the field success was to “trust the process.”
Author Ste Casey agrees writing, “So many of my prayers are pleas that the Lord would deliver me from the process. ‘Lord, give me relief from this thing you are doing in my life! Change this now!’ Yet the process is the whole point.”
God didn’t answer my prayers and change my circumstances by making James Bruce “normal.” Instead, He did something much better by demonstrating His faithfulness and sufficiency and changing me. It was all part of the process!