More of God

I just read an article yesterday that was on Facebook from a website called "For Every Mom". It was about a Christian couple who experienced the stillborn birth of their third child. I printed out a copy but I re-read it today and took some notes on it. It was called " Putting a Baby In the Ground Changes You, Especially In Ways You Didn't Expect." The couple's name is Kyle and Jen Porter. Here are some notes and Bible verses from the article:

Charles Spurgeon about suffering: It would be a very sharp and trying experience to me to think that I have an affliction which God never sent me, that the bitter cup was never filled by His hand, that my trials were never measured out by Him, nor sent to me by His arrangement of their weight and quantity.

(As I was writing this, I realize the reason why Spurgeon thinks it would be worse if it didn't come from God, is because the suffering would be in vain. At least if we know that God is behind it, He has a purpose and plan behind it and He will help us through it and there is something to be gained from it).

The Lord wasn't surprised when she passed away. (Their baby was a girl, named Kate Noelle)
Psalm 139:16  The Lord has already numbered our days (I will probably look this up and add to later)

She felt like she'd never worshipped like she did at Kate's memorial. She'd never had this much on the table. (This is the mom speaking).

1 Peter 1:6-8  In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith-more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire-may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ

A quote from their pastor, Matt Chandler:  "Your life can change with one phone call. You're not exempt."

The thoughts that are going through my head right now are overwhelming but I thank God for them.

Left and came back (I don't know why I feel the need to say this sometimes-just so you know that this wasn't a continuous post)

Another title of this article was "We lost a child, but gained so much more."

Side note:  Just found out that David Bowie was saved! I was going to ask you if he was there!

This reminds me of a quote I wrote down, it might be from C.S. Lewis:  "God will never ask you to give up something without giving you something better in return." On the little slip of paper I wrote this down on, I added, "Not possible with loss of Hayden to get something better tho." Then, after reading this article yesterday, I added an arrow that said "over" and on the back of the paper really big I wrote, "More of God!" and underlined it several times and added "only thing that could be better!"

This is something that I will have to think about for a while. I know in my head what's right in response to this, but I have to convince my heart. TTYL

More on Psalm 139:16:  (NIV) "Your eyes saw my unformed body, all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."
                                             
(NKJV) "Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them."                                                 


Another update: I printed out a copy of this article I was referencing and read it out loud to Dad last night. I did that because I showed him a music video that Jaime sent my by Danny Gokey called "Tell Your Heart to Beat Again" and in the lyrics it says "'Cause love sees farther than you ever could In this moment heaven's working Everything for your good." When I asked Dad what he thought of the video, he asked me how God taking you could be for my (his) good. I realized (again) at that moment how Dad is in a much different place than I am in this grief journey. I told him what we get out of this is more of God. I also told him that some of that he has to figure out for himself though. When we went to bed, I actually handed him the article to read, but he didn't want to read it because it said it was 16 pages long. I kind of wanted to read it again, so I asked him if I could read it out loud. I don't know if anything sank in, but oh well. At least he heard it, because he wasn't going to read it.
   That makes me think of another part of the article that said that suffering like this forces us to test the theory of being a Christian. It's easy to be a Christian when everything is going well or not that bad, but when something like this happens, it shakes everything you believe in down to the core. It makes some say, "Do I still believe in a God that lets this happen?" and "Can God really use something this horrible for good?" He loves us! He loves us so much! His ways are above our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts! He sees the big picture when we are only seeing a tiny part of it. He is faithful and trustworthy. There is a purpose in our pain, THIS pain! We walk by faith, not by sight, and we have to believe that! It seems like I'm just spitting out clichés, (oh, that was cool-autocorrect added that little symbol to the word cliché). God wouldn't put us through this with nothing to gain from it on the other side. We just have to wait and SEE! Love you boy!