Finding Hope by Trusting God
Dr. David R. Reagan
When I was 20 years old the Lord clearly called me into the ministry, but unlike Isaiah, I said, “Here am I Lord, send someone else!” (Isaiah 6:8).
For the next 20 years I ran from the Lord’s calling on my life, and no matter what I accomplished, I was miserable because peace cannot be found outside of God’s will. Finally, in the mid- 1970s I decided to meet God half way by giving up my academic career and establishing a church-related business. I was soon to learn that God is not interested in anyone meeting Him halfway. He wants total surrender.
I operated the business for a year and a half and then ran out of funding. At that point I owed the bank $100,000. As I faced the chilling reality of a failed business and a $100,000 debt, I had no inner spiritual power to help me cope with the crisis. Let me take that back. I did have the power, for I had received Jesus as my Savior many years before, and on that day I had received the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. But I didn’t know that. I had never received any teaching about the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, so I had never released the power of the Spirit in my life. Instead, I had stifled and quenched the Spirit. The result was I had no power to cope with a business failure and a $100,000 debt.
So I did the only thing I knew how to do — I threw a pity party. I wallowed in self-pity. And as I did so, I sank deeper into the pit of depression. I finally became so despondent that I decided to kill myself. I felt like I just couldn’t face the disgrace and pain of such a failure. Also, I was mad at God. How could He let me down so miserably when I had, at long last, deigned to meet Him half way? In my emotionally perverted reasoning, I decided that by taking my life I would teach God a lesson! I know that sounds weird, but when you are deeply depressed, you don’t think too clearly.
For several days I plotted my demise. Just as I had everything carefully planned, I suddenly got a strange thought: “Why not try God?” That was a strange thought for me because I didn’t believe in either a personal or a powerful God. Looking back on it today I can only conclude that the thought must have come from the stirring of the Spirit within me. I had quenched the Spirit, but the Spirit was still there, and He was trying to minister to me in my time of need. I tried to suppress the thought, but it would not go away. Over and over it came to me: “Why not try God?”
I finally decided to follow the prompting. I got on the phone and called several friends. I asked them to come to my house. When they arrived, I explained my predicament and asked them to pray for me. One by one they prayed. Their prayers were lifeless and unbelieving. They no more believed in a personal and powerful God than I did.
As the prayers droned on, I became agitated. “This won’t do,” I interrupted. “None of you are praying with any meaning. You don’t understand, I need a miracle! Let’s try again and this time, pray with some faith!” I could hardly believe those words came out of my mouth. But they did. My friends started praying again, this time with some fervor.
God performed the miracle the very next morning, and it transformed my life. You could start guessing right now and guess till the Lord returns, and you would never guess how God answered our prayers.
You see, when God responds to a cry for help, He does so in a manner that is always designed to minister first to the inner man, to the spiritual nature. It’s not that He’s unconcerned about the physical man and the physical and emotional pain; it’s just that His priorities are different from ours. We want to be ministered to from the outside in. He ministers from the inside out, because that is the only kind of ministry that has lasting effects.
If you were to guess how the Lord answered our prayers, you would most likely assume that some man walked in my store the next morning and offered to buy the business for $100,000. That would have been truly remarkable, but it would not have had a transforming effect on me. I would probably have written it off to “coincidence” rather than recognizing it as an answer to prayer. Most likely, I would have sighed with relief and gone on my way continuing to try to meet God halfway.
God answered my prayer miraculously, but He did it in a way designed to get my attention, to convince me that He truly is a personal and powerful God who is on the throne, hears prayers and still performs miracles. He also used a method that was designed to transform me more into the image of His Son.
Here’s what happened. The next morning I went to the store and started calling around trying to find a buyer for my fixtures. I was standing at the front counter talking on the phone when I heard a knock at the front door. I turned and looked at the plate glass door and saw an Oriental man and woman standing there. The man was grinning from ear to ear. I pointed to the sign hanging on the door and turned my back on the couple. The sign said, “Closed: Going Out of Business.” The man resumed his knocking. I got mad. Couldn’t this fellow read? Why did he have that big grin on his face? The last thing I wanted to see was someone happy. Misery really does
love company.
I put the phone down, went to the door, opened it about an inch and shouted, “Can’t you read? We’re closed!” “Oh yes sir,” he replied, “I know you are closed. I’m interested in buying your fixtures.” “Oh!” I replied. “Come in. Come in.” I locked the door and went back to the phone while the Oriental man and lady looked around the store. When I finished talking, the man came up to me, still grinning, and said, “Thank you, dear sir, for letting me see your store.” He was almost nauseating in his politeness.
He continued to grin and started bowing in the Oriental style. Then he started apologizing! “I’m very sorry, dear sir, but you do not have any fixtures I’m interested in. I’m opening up a different type of store.”
I escorted him and the lady to the door. The lady walked out, but as the man got halfway through the door, he suddenly stopped, turned to me and said, “I discern that you are troubled in the spirit. Do you want to talk about it?” Talk about getting angry. I was livid. Who did this guy think he was? I replied in my best “Christian” manner, “What’s it to you?” “Well,” he replied, “I assume from the nature of this store that you must be a Christian. I am too. And I discern that you need ministry. Would you mind if I shared with you what Jesus Christ has done for me in my life?”
I didn’t want to hear his story. I wanted him to leave. But what was I to say? It was like when someone asks if they can pray for you. You may not want them to, but you hate to say no. “I’m awfully busy,” I said, as I glanced at my watch in irritation. “It won’t take but a moment,” he replied. He grinned again. “Okay, okay,” I said, “but make it quick.” He turned and said something to the lady in a foreign language, and she left. I locked the door again, and we went to my office. When we sat down on the couch, he put his arm around me and began to pat my shoulder sympathetically. Again, I was outraged. Who does this guy think he is? He hardly knows me, and he has his arm around me! But I soon forgot my anger as he began to tell his story.
“When I was a small boy, my father came home one day with terror in his eyes. ‘The communists are coming,’ he said, ‘and they are going to kill us because we are devout Catholics.’ “He told each of us to get two pillow slips and to go to the living room. He started running all over the house gathering up items which he piled in the middle of the floor. ‘Put these in the pillow slips,’ he said, ‘and tie the tops.’ “We were a very wealthy family, but all we took with us that day was what we could stuff into those pillow slips. We fled into the jungle, and we threw ourselves upon the Lord because we didn’t know how to survive in the jungle.
There were 12 of us in all. We wandered about aimlessly crying out to God to save us. “Finally, after three weeks, we made it from Hanoi to Saigon, and we rejoiced over the Lord’s deliverance. A Repeat Performance “We began our life anew. Many years later I came home one day to my family and my aged parents with that same look of terror in my eyes. ‘Get the pillow slips,’ I yelled. ‘The Communists are coming again.’
“You see, I was a translator at the American Embassy. I had been informed that the Embassy could not arrange for all my family to be flown out. I would not leave without them. So, once again, we had to flee. I knew if we stayed we would be executed because I had worked for the Americans. “We fled into the Mekong Delta and, again, we began to cry out to God for deliverance. After wandering for several days, we made it to the South China Sea where we discovered a boat full of refugees about to depart. God had saved us a second time! “But when the boat got out to sea, it started sinking. There were just too many people on it. Some people panicked and began to push others overboard. We got on our knees and started calling out to God. Soon, a merchant ship appeared and took the survivors on board. God had saved us a third time!
“We were taken to the Philippines where we were put with thousands of other refugees in a concentration type camp. We began praying that God would give us a new home. A year later the news came that we were being adopted by a Bible Church in Dallas, Texas. God saved us a fourth time. “So, here we are in a new land starting our lives over. God is so good. He loves us, and He answers our prayers. Lean on Him. He will deliver you.”
I looked at the man with tears in my eyes. Before I knew it, I had my arms around him, hugging him in thankfulness for insisting on sharing a story I had not wanted to hear. When he left, everything had changed. Yet, nothing visible had changed.
I still had a failed business. I still owed a bank $100,000. What had changed was me. I no longer felt depressed. I was no longer wallowing in despair and self-pity. I had hope. I knew in my soul that God had heard my prayer and that He had sent that man to assure me that if I would trust in the Lord, everything would turn out all right. God had used an Oriental man from halfway around the world to get my eyes off myself and onto His Son.
I had no problems compared to the problems that man had faced. If God could solve his problems, He surely could handle mine.
After I sold off all the assets of my business, I still owed the bank $60,000. I negotiated a deal to pay off that debt by agreeing to pay the bank a minimum of $1,000 a month. That obligation meant that my family and I were going to have to learn to live on a greatly reduced income. Our whole lifestyle was transformed almost overnight.
Prior to the business failure, my income had been increasing rapidly almost every year. But like most Americans captivated by materialism, no matter how much I made, it was not enough. I always needed a bigger house or a larger car. Suddenly, we had to learn how to live a frugal lifestyle. Most of what I earned each month went to pay off the debt. So we mainly lived on my wife’s income as a first-grade teacher.
It was the discipline of the Lord. It wasn’t easy, but it was another spiritually transforming experience. We were delivered from materialism. We learned how to live simply, how to count our blessings, how to be satisfied with what we had. We began to learn about how to trust in the Lord to provide our basic needs.
But we were still pretty much what I would call “cultural Christians.” By that I mean that my wife and I had been born into Christian families, raised in the Church, and considered Christian values to be an integral part of our lives. We attended church regularly and made sure that our children were involved in all the church’s activities. In short, we were a typical American church
going family.
The problem with that is that we were not committed disciples of the Lord. Like most Christians, we had accepted Jesus as Savior but not as Lord. We had received His Spirit into our lives, but we had never released the power of the Spirit. For me the Spirit was a resident but not president. He resided but He did not preside. My ego was on the throne of my life.
I tasted the discipline of the Lord again in a traumatic event involving our younger daughter. She became involved with drugs. Her whole personality changed. She became moody and tempestuous. Her school work declined. Family arguments grew more frequent.
All the signs of drug involvement were there, but we didn’t recognize them. We could not begin to conceive that a child of ours could be having a drug problem. That was the kind of nightmare that afflicted other families, not ours.
But it did afflict us. One day it culminated with our daughter running away from home. She was only 16. She vanished completely. For three months we did not know if she was dead or alive. During those awful days of waiting and wondering — days of weeping and searching — Satan attacked us with everything he could use. We were overwhelmed by self-condemnation. We felt judged and censured by some of our friends.
Every news report seemed to contain a horror story about the mutilation death of a runaway. A special television documentary on runaways indicated that most girls ended up as prostitutes. We felt totally helpless. In our helplessness, we turned to God as never before. My wife and I joined hands and got on our knees and cried out to God for mercy. We admitted our inability to cope with the situation and, like little children, we cried out to our Father for help.
As we emptied ourselves and humbled ourselves before the Lord, we experienced the filling of His Spirit. We received a peace that was beyond human understanding. We felt assured that our daughter was in His hands and that everything would turn out okay if we would only lean on the power of His Spirit and trust in His mercy.
My wife and I were drawn closer to each other. Long lingering resentments evaporated. Pettiness dissipated. Love was renewed. God was working mightily through a tragedy to heal our marriage and to renew and deepen our relationship with Him. Our daughter was found alive and well, living and working in a small town in Indiana. We had walked through the valley of the shadow of death and found that the Lord walks with you every step of the way if you will only let Him.
As a result of these crisis experiences, I began to discover some important things about God. First and foremost was the revelation that He is the same yesterday, today and forever (Malachi 3:6 and Hebrews 13:8).
A key to living with hope: Keep your eyes on God and off yourself. What a discovery that was for me! God had not retired! He is alive and well. He is still the same God as the one revealed in the Bible — a God who is sovereign, personal, loving, caring, powerful and who still intervenes in history in response to the faith of those who seek Him. I could hardly contain my joy.
I began to believe the promises of God’s Word and act upon them. One that became the cornerstone of my new relationship was 1 Peter 5:6-7. It reads: Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety upon Him, because He cares for you. “He cares for you!” What a comforting thought. The Creator of this universe is a personal God who is concerned about every one of His creatures.
Christianity is the only religion with a personal God. The Allah of Islam is aloof and impersonal and arbitrary. He is never referred to in the Quran as a god of love. The god of modern day Judaism is one who relates to the nation, but not to individuals.
The chief god of Hinduism, Brahman, is indistinct from the creation. He is totally impersonal. But the Bible reveals the true God of this universe as a Father who is concerned about every one of His creatures, both Man and animal. In Matthew 6:25-34 believers are told not to worry about things like food and clothing because God will suppl your needs, just as he supplies food for the birds. This promise echos a statement of King David in Psalm 37:25: “I have been young, and now I am old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, or his descendants begging bread.”
In Philippians 4:6-7, the Apostle Paul, writing from prison, said, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
We are never promised that we will not suffer in this life. But we are promised that if we lean on the Lord in faith, He will walk through the suffering with us and supply all our needs. Here’s how the prophet Isaiah expressed it (Isaiah 43:2-3):When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And through the rivers, They will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, You will not be scorched, Nor will the flame burn you. For I am the Lord your God, The Holy One of Israel, your Savior . . . Our God is a “God of hope” (Romans 15:13). Put your hope and trust in Him, and He will sustain you through any crisis that may come your way: The steadfast of mind You will keep in perfect peace, Because he trusts in You Trust in the Lord forever, For in God the Lord, We have an everlasting Rock. Isaiah 26:3-4.
Note: This article was adapted from Dr. Reagan’s book, Trusting God: Learning to Walk by Faith. Using a light-hearted, anecdotal approach, Dr. Reagan takes a look at the basic issues of everyday Christian living and identifies the key principles for walking by faith. It is a moving book that will have you laughing one moment and crying the next. 264 pages. $10 plus the cost of mailing. To order, call 1-800-705-8316 Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm Central time. Or, you can order the book through the ministry’s website at www.lamblion.com.
For the next 20 years I ran from the Lord’s calling on my life, and no matter what I accomplished, I was miserable because peace cannot be found outside of God’s will. Finally, in the mid- 1970s I decided to meet God half way by giving up my academic career and establishing a church-related business. I was soon to learn that God is not interested in anyone meeting Him halfway. He wants total surrender.
I operated the business for a year and a half and then ran out of funding. At that point I owed the bank $100,000. As I faced the chilling reality of a failed business and a $100,000 debt, I had no inner spiritual power to help me cope with the crisis. Let me take that back. I did have the power, for I had received Jesus as my Savior many years before, and on that day I had received the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. But I didn’t know that. I had never received any teaching about the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, so I had never released the power of the Spirit in my life. Instead, I had stifled and quenched the Spirit. The result was I had no power to cope with a business failure and a $100,000 debt.
Wallowing in Self-Pity
So I did the only thing I knew how to do — I threw a pity party. I wallowed in self-pity. And as I did so, I sank deeper into the pit of depression. I finally became so despondent that I decided to kill myself. I felt like I just couldn’t face the disgrace and pain of such a failure. Also, I was mad at God. How could He let me down so miserably when I had, at long last, deigned to meet Him half way? In my emotionally perverted reasoning, I decided that by taking my life I would teach God a lesson! I know that sounds weird, but when you are deeply depressed, you don’t think too clearly.
For several days I plotted my demise. Just as I had everything carefully planned, I suddenly got a strange thought: “Why not try God?” That was a strange thought for me because I didn’t believe in either a personal or a powerful God. Looking back on it today I can only conclude that the thought must have come from the stirring of the Spirit within me. I had quenched the Spirit, but the Spirit was still there, and He was trying to minister to me in my time of need. I tried to suppress the thought, but it would not go away. Over and over it came to me: “Why not try God?”
Calling for Help
I finally decided to follow the prompting. I got on the phone and called several friends. I asked them to come to my house. When they arrived, I explained my predicament and asked them to pray for me. One by one they prayed. Their prayers were lifeless and unbelieving. They no more believed in a personal and powerful God than I did.
As the prayers droned on, I became agitated. “This won’t do,” I interrupted. “None of you are praying with any meaning. You don’t understand, I need a miracle! Let’s try again and this time, pray with some faith!” I could hardly believe those words came out of my mouth. But they did. My friends started praying again, this time with some fervor.
God performed the miracle the very next morning, and it transformed my life. You could start guessing right now and guess till the Lord returns, and you would never guess how God answered our prayers.
Being Shaped by God
You see, when God responds to a cry for help, He does so in a manner that is always designed to minister first to the inner man, to the spiritual nature. It’s not that He’s unconcerned about the physical man and the physical and emotional pain; it’s just that His priorities are different from ours. We want to be ministered to from the outside in. He ministers from the inside out, because that is the only kind of ministry that has lasting effects.
If you were to guess how the Lord answered our prayers, you would most likely assume that some man walked in my store the next morning and offered to buy the business for $100,000. That would have been truly remarkable, but it would not have had a transforming effect on me. I would probably have written it off to “coincidence” rather than recognizing it as an answer to prayer. Most likely, I would have sighed with relief and gone on my way continuing to try to meet God halfway.
God answered my prayer miraculously, but He did it in a way designed to get my attention, to convince me that He truly is a personal and powerful God who is on the throne, hears prayers and still performs miracles. He also used a method that was designed to transform me more into the image of His Son.
A Transforming Miracle
Here’s what happened. The next morning I went to the store and started calling around trying to find a buyer for my fixtures. I was standing at the front counter talking on the phone when I heard a knock at the front door. I turned and looked at the plate glass door and saw an Oriental man and woman standing there. The man was grinning from ear to ear. I pointed to the sign hanging on the door and turned my back on the couple. The sign said, “Closed: Going Out of Business.” The man resumed his knocking. I got mad. Couldn’t this fellow read? Why did he have that big grin on his face? The last thing I wanted to see was someone happy. Misery really does
love company.
I put the phone down, went to the door, opened it about an inch and shouted, “Can’t you read? We’re closed!” “Oh yes sir,” he replied, “I know you are closed. I’m interested in buying your fixtures.” “Oh!” I replied. “Come in. Come in.” I locked the door and went back to the phone while the Oriental man and lady looked around the store. When I finished talking, the man came up to me, still grinning, and said, “Thank you, dear sir, for letting me see your store.” He was almost nauseating in his politeness.
He continued to grin and started bowing in the Oriental style. Then he started apologizing! “I’m very sorry, dear sir, but you do not have any fixtures I’m interested in. I’m opening up a different type of store.”
A Probing Question
I escorted him and the lady to the door. The lady walked out, but as the man got halfway through the door, he suddenly stopped, turned to me and said, “I discern that you are troubled in the spirit. Do you want to talk about it?” Talk about getting angry. I was livid. Who did this guy think he was? I replied in my best “Christian” manner, “What’s it to you?” “Well,” he replied, “I assume from the nature of this store that you must be a Christian. I am too. And I discern that you need ministry. Would you mind if I shared with you what Jesus Christ has done for me in my life?”
I didn’t want to hear his story. I wanted him to leave. But what was I to say? It was like when someone asks if they can pray for you. You may not want them to, but you hate to say no. “I’m awfully busy,” I said, as I glanced at my watch in irritation. “It won’t take but a moment,” he replied. He grinned again. “Okay, okay,” I said, “but make it quick.” He turned and said something to the lady in a foreign language, and she left. I locked the door again, and we went to my office. When we sat down on the couch, he put his arm around me and began to pat my shoulder sympathetically. Again, I was outraged. Who does this guy think he is? He hardly knows me, and he has his arm around me! But I soon forgot my anger as he began to tell his story.
A Fascinating Story
“When I was a small boy, my father came home one day with terror in his eyes. ‘The communists are coming,’ he said, ‘and they are going to kill us because we are devout Catholics.’ “He told each of us to get two pillow slips and to go to the living room. He started running all over the house gathering up items which he piled in the middle of the floor. ‘Put these in the pillow slips,’ he said, ‘and tie the tops.’ “We were a very wealthy family, but all we took with us that day was what we could stuff into those pillow slips. We fled into the jungle, and we threw ourselves upon the Lord because we didn’t know how to survive in the jungle.
There were 12 of us in all. We wandered about aimlessly crying out to God to save us. “Finally, after three weeks, we made it from Hanoi to Saigon, and we rejoiced over the Lord’s deliverance. A Repeat Performance “We began our life anew. Many years later I came home one day to my family and my aged parents with that same look of terror in my eyes. ‘Get the pillow slips,’ I yelled. ‘The Communists are coming again.’
“You see, I was a translator at the American Embassy. I had been informed that the Embassy could not arrange for all my family to be flown out. I would not leave without them. So, once again, we had to flee. I knew if we stayed we would be executed because I had worked for the Americans. “We fled into the Mekong Delta and, again, we began to cry out to God for deliverance. After wandering for several days, we made it to the South China Sea where we discovered a boat full of refugees about to depart. God had saved us a second time! “But when the boat got out to sea, it started sinking. There were just too many people on it. Some people panicked and began to push others overboard. We got on our knees and started calling out to God. Soon, a merchant ship appeared and took the survivors on board. God had saved us a third time!
“We were taken to the Philippines where we were put with thousands of other refugees in a concentration type camp. We began praying that God would give us a new home. A year later the news came that we were being adopted by a Bible Church in Dallas, Texas. God saved us a fourth time. “So, here we are in a new land starting our lives over. God is so good. He loves us, and He answers our prayers. Lean on Him. He will deliver you.”
A Changed Attitude
I looked at the man with tears in my eyes. Before I knew it, I had my arms around him, hugging him in thankfulness for insisting on sharing a story I had not wanted to hear. When he left, everything had changed. Yet, nothing visible had changed.
I still had a failed business. I still owed a bank $100,000. What had changed was me. I no longer felt depressed. I was no longer wallowing in despair and self-pity. I had hope. I knew in my soul that God had heard my prayer and that He had sent that man to assure me that if I would trust in the Lord, everything would turn out all right. God had used an Oriental man from halfway around the world to get my eyes off myself and onto His Son.
I had no problems compared to the problems that man had faced. If God could solve his problems, He surely could handle mine.
Tasting the Lord’s Discipline
After I sold off all the assets of my business, I still owed the bank $60,000. I negotiated a deal to pay off that debt by agreeing to pay the bank a minimum of $1,000 a month. That obligation meant that my family and I were going to have to learn to live on a greatly reduced income. Our whole lifestyle was transformed almost overnight.
Prior to the business failure, my income had been increasing rapidly almost every year. But like most Americans captivated by materialism, no matter how much I made, it was not enough. I always needed a bigger house or a larger car. Suddenly, we had to learn how to live a frugal lifestyle. Most of what I earned each month went to pay off the debt. So we mainly lived on my wife’s income as a first-grade teacher.
It was the discipline of the Lord. It wasn’t easy, but it was another spiritually transforming experience. We were delivered from materialism. We learned how to live simply, how to count our blessings, how to be satisfied with what we had. We began to learn about how to trust in the Lord to provide our basic needs.
Playing at Christianity
But we were still pretty much what I would call “cultural Christians.” By that I mean that my wife and I had been born into Christian families, raised in the Church, and considered Christian values to be an integral part of our lives. We attended church regularly and made sure that our children were involved in all the church’s activities. In short, we were a typical American church
going family.
The problem with that is that we were not committed disciples of the Lord. Like most Christians, we had accepted Jesus as Savior but not as Lord. We had received His Spirit into our lives, but we had never released the power of the Spirit. For me the Spirit was a resident but not president. He resided but He did not preside. My ego was on the throne of my life.
Undergoing a Family Crisis
I tasted the discipline of the Lord again in a traumatic event involving our younger daughter. She became involved with drugs. Her whole personality changed. She became moody and tempestuous. Her school work declined. Family arguments grew more frequent.
All the signs of drug involvement were there, but we didn’t recognize them. We could not begin to conceive that a child of ours could be having a drug problem. That was the kind of nightmare that afflicted other families, not ours.
But it did afflict us. One day it culminated with our daughter running away from home. She was only 16. She vanished completely. For three months we did not know if she was dead or alive. During those awful days of waiting and wondering — days of weeping and searching — Satan attacked us with everything he could use. We were overwhelmed by self-condemnation. We felt judged and censured by some of our friends.
Every news report seemed to contain a horror story about the mutilation death of a runaway. A special television documentary on runaways indicated that most girls ended up as prostitutes. We felt totally helpless. In our helplessness, we turned to God as never before. My wife and I joined hands and got on our knees and cried out to God for mercy. We admitted our inability to cope with the situation and, like little children, we cried out to our Father for help.
A Spiritual Transformation
As we emptied ourselves and humbled ourselves before the Lord, we experienced the filling of His Spirit. We received a peace that was beyond human understanding. We felt assured that our daughter was in His hands and that everything would turn out okay if we would only lean on the power of His Spirit and trust in His mercy.
My wife and I were drawn closer to each other. Long lingering resentments evaporated. Pettiness dissipated. Love was renewed. God was working mightily through a tragedy to heal our marriage and to renew and deepen our relationship with Him. Our daughter was found alive and well, living and working in a small town in Indiana. We had walked through the valley of the shadow of death and found that the Lord walks with you every step of the way if you will only let Him.
Seeing God in a New Way
As a result of these crisis experiences, I began to discover some important things about God. First and foremost was the revelation that He is the same yesterday, today and forever (Malachi 3:6 and Hebrews 13:8).
A key to living with hope: Keep your eyes on God and off yourself. What a discovery that was for me! God had not retired! He is alive and well. He is still the same God as the one revealed in the Bible — a God who is sovereign, personal, loving, caring, powerful and who still intervenes in history in response to the faith of those who seek Him. I could hardly contain my joy.
I began to believe the promises of God’s Word and act upon them. One that became the cornerstone of my new relationship was 1 Peter 5:6-7. It reads: Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety upon Him, because He cares for you. “He cares for you!” What a comforting thought. The Creator of this universe is a personal God who is concerned about every one of His creatures.
The Unique God of Christianity
Christianity is the only religion with a personal God. The Allah of Islam is aloof and impersonal and arbitrary. He is never referred to in the Quran as a god of love. The god of modern day Judaism is one who relates to the nation, but not to individuals.
The chief god of Hinduism, Brahman, is indistinct from the creation. He is totally impersonal. But the Bible reveals the true God of this universe as a Father who is concerned about every one of His creatures, both Man and animal. In Matthew 6:25-34 believers are told not to worry about things like food and clothing because God will suppl your needs, just as he supplies food for the birds. This promise echos a statement of King David in Psalm 37:25: “I have been young, and now I am old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, or his descendants begging bread.”
In Philippians 4:6-7, the Apostle Paul, writing from prison, said, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
We are never promised that we will not suffer in this life. But we are promised that if we lean on the Lord in faith, He will walk through the suffering with us and supply all our needs. Here’s how the prophet Isaiah expressed it (Isaiah 43:2-3):When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And through the rivers, They will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, You will not be scorched, Nor will the flame burn you. For I am the Lord your God, The Holy One of Israel, your Savior . . . Our God is a “God of hope” (Romans 15:13). Put your hope and trust in Him, and He will sustain you through any crisis that may come your way: The steadfast of mind You will keep in perfect peace, Because he trusts in You Trust in the Lord forever, For in God the Lord, We have an everlasting Rock. Isaiah 26:3-4.
Note: This article was adapted from Dr. Reagan’s book, Trusting God: Learning to Walk by Faith. Using a light-hearted, anecdotal approach, Dr. Reagan takes a look at the basic issues of everyday Christian living and identifies the key principles for walking by faith. It is a moving book that will have you laughing one moment and crying the next. 264 pages. $10 plus the cost of mailing. To order, call 1-800-705-8316 Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm Central time. Or, you can order the book through the ministry’s website at www.lamblion.com.
About - Dr. David R. Reagan
Dr. David R. 
Reagan serves as the Senior Evangelist for Lamb & Lion Ministries. He is a native Texan who resides in a suburb of Dallas. He is married and is the father of two daughters. His wife, Ann, is a retired first grade teacher. They have four grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
Reagan serves as the Senior Evangelist for Lamb & Lion Ministries. He is a native Texan who resides in a suburb of Dallas. He is married and is the father of two daughters. His wife, Ann, is a retired first grade teacher. They have four grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Dr. Reagan is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Texas in Austin. His graduate degrees were earned in the field of International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy of Tufts and Harvard Universities.
Dave — as he prefers to be called — was the founder of Lamb & Lion Ministries in 1980. Before entering the ministry he had an extensive career in higher education which included the following positions: Assistant to the President of Austin College in Sherman, Texas; President of South Texas Jr. College in Houston; Director of Pepperdine University's Center for International Business in Los Angeles; and Vice President of Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma.
In the mid-60's Dave served as a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of the Philippines and toured all of Southeast Asia lecturing on U.S. foreign policy in behalf of the U.S. Information Agency.
Dave is a life-long Bible student, teacher, and preacher. He entered the full time ministry in 1976 when he was called to serve as the pulpit minister for a church in Irving, Texas. His ordination as a Christian minister has been formally recognized by three different Christian groups.
He is the author of many religious essays which have been published in a wide variety of journals and magazines. He has written eight books — Trusting God, The Christ in Prophecy Study Guide, The Master Plan, Living for Christ in the End Times, Jesus is Coming Soon! (a book for children), Wrath & Glory: The Meaning of Revelation, America the Beautiful?, and God's Plan for the Ages. He has co-authored another book called The Parched Soul of America. His books have been translated into several languages.
Dave's sermons have been distributed worldwide. He has led more than forty pilgrimages to Israel that focus on the prophetic significance of the sites visited. He has also conducted prophecy conferences in Russia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Austria, Beloruss, Israel, South Africa, Mexico, the Philippines, India, England (including Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland), and China.
Dave is the host of Lamb & Lion's weekly television program called "Christ in Prophecy." This program is broadcast nationally on six Christian networks which combined have access to 70 million homes in the United States. And through DayStar, the program is available to every country in the world. The program deals with the prophetic significance of national and international events.
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