Christ Is Relevant to Safety

relevant: having significant and demonstrable bearing on the matter at hand; affording evidence tending to prove or disprove the matter at issue or under discussion. (Webster's dictionary)

This is how Jennifer tells her story of how Christ Is Relevant to her safety issues.

I remember when we got to chapter 6 of Desperate Dependency where we were talking about the 3 pillars of Christianity: God is real, God is love, and God is sovereign. It’s how we view these truths about God that effects how we live. It was during the particular section of “God is sovereign; therefore, He is trustworthy” that a phone call from my mom woke me up in the middle of the night saying that my brother was in the hospital. He was helping a friend move and was in the wrong part of town at the wrong time. He was attacked by a group of guys, and he had been beaten up. I lay awake that night trying to pray and understand this. In fear and frustration, I asked God, “If You are sovereign, if You are trustworthy, why didn’t You protect my brother from this? You could have stopped this from happening, yet You didn’t. Are You really sovereign? Can I really trust You with my life or even with my kids’ lives?” My mind knew this truth about God, but my heart didn’t believe it. Bad things happen all the time to people, and I felt tremendous fear knowing that if this happened to him, it could certainly happen to me. After all, I’m single, and I really need someone I can trust to protect me. I really struggled with believing this truth about God. But just because I didn’t believe Him to be trustworthy didn’t make it any less true.

This past November, while I was at work, my house was broken into. Being a single mom of two kids and living alone, this was terrifying for me. A stranger had invaded my safe place and suddenly it didn’t feel safe anymore. In the past my first thought would have been, “See, God, this just proves it. You may be sovereign, but You certainly can’t be trusted.” But thanks to my amazing God and His work in my life through the process of Desperate Dependency, I was able to trust in His sovereignty and His plan that night. My entire way of thinking about God and who He is has been changed through all this. All those distorted views I had about God are being replaced by the truth of who He really is. God’s will for our lives, what He wants most for us, is to be more like Him, and He loves us enough to accomplish this, even if it is through tragedy. God will take the bad things in our life, turn them for good, and in the process, draw us closer to Him. Although I didn’t sleep much those first few nights after my house was broken into, I was peaceful. I was able to rest in the peace of knowing that even if it’s bad, nothing will ever touch my life that doesn’t filter through God first because I am His child. Every day He is taking the bad and using it to shape me a little more into His image. The fear and confusion I felt all those months ago when my brother was attacked was replaced with peace and assurance that God IS sovereign, and because of that, He CAN be trusted.