According to my
earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that
with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body,
whether it be by life, or by death.
Philippians 1:20
As a teenager, I attended a youth meeting in my hometown. Ron
Reily was one of the preachers. He preached on Philippians 1:20 and how
magnifying Christ should be the ultimate goal of a Christian’s life. As I
remember, he emphasized that anything that God allows in a Christian’s life,
even death, would magnify Christ if the Christian trusted God and was
surrendered to Him. After that meeting, I chose Philippians 1:20 as my life
verse, my creed from the Bible on how I would attempt to live my life with
God’s help. Little did I know how God would use this verse to convict and
change my life.
In nursing school, this verse helped me through many rough
days of clinical, classes, and working in the Dining Services. I had a small
sticky note taped to my nursing clipboard that said, “Magnify Christ, Phil. 1:20.”
It reminded me of my goal, my life’s purpose to know Christ and to bring Him
glory.
August or September 2010. I was driving home from the library,
where I had just finished putting in applications for RN positions and creating/updating
my Facebook. I had put my life’s verse in the about me section and I think had
written something about how I wanted to magnify Christ, no matter what. Well,
just outside of the small town in which the library was located, my car
sputtered to a stop and would not keep running. This was a frequent occurrence that
usually resolved after a few minutes of letting the car just sit. But that day,
I was frustrated. I hit my steering wheel as I sat on the shoulder of the road and
angrily asked God “Why?!” Why did I have such a stupid car, that shut off
randomly? Why couldn’t I find a nursing job, everyone said, “If you had at
least one year of experience,” or “If you had a lower level of education.” I
think that I may have even asked God why he didn’t allow me to find a husband
in college. Then it was as if the Holy Spirit nudged me and said, “What did you
just write on Facebook? You said you wanted to magnify Christ no matter what?
What if you have this old car because you are to magnify Christ by your
reaction when it breaks down? What if you don’t have a nursing job yet because
you are to magnify Christ as you wait for Me? You said you wanted to magnify
Christ, but you just failed.” I repented right there of my attitude and told
God I would accept His will in even the smallest details of my life and with
His help, magnify Christ through them. If only I had learned my lesson.
December 2010. On December 7, I woke up early in the morning
vomiting. I thought that I had contracted a stomach virus from eating at a
buffet for a ladies Christmas party the night before. I had been feeling bad
for several weeks. Sometime before Thanksgiving, I had gotten a cold or mild
flu and had not been feeling well since. I was tired all the time, had an
almost constant headache, a raised rash on my hands and feet, and was drinking
a lot of liquid for my “dry throat”. As
the day went on, my vomiting became worse; I was unable to keep anything down.
In the evening, I began to have a severe sharp stabbing abdominal pain and I
was unable to breath normally. That’s when my mother drove me to the emergency
room. At the emergency room, someone checked my blood sugar and it was over
500. I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and admitted to the ICU in Diabetic
Ketoacidosis. I was in the hospital for almost three days. I thought that I
would die very soon; I had never known or heard of a type 1 diabetic who was
healthy in their 30’s. I have met many since then. I also knew that I could no
longer do what I thought what God had called me to do- be a missionary
nurse/linguist in the jungles of Papua New Guinea. That crushed me. I knew in
my heart that it must not have been God’s will for me to be a missionary nurse
in the jungle, and I wish that I had the attitude that this diagnosis of type 1 diabetes was something that
Christ could use to magnify Himself through me… But I did not.
I spent the next several months begging God every day to
heal me so that I could go on to do what I desired to do. I knew He was
powerful enough. I knew such a miracle would surely glorify God. I wanted to
die because I had lost my purpose for living. You see, somewhere I had changed
my purpose of living from knowing and magnifying Christ to serving Him on the
mission field. I remember wishing someone would crash into my car and send me
to heaven where I would no longer be sick or heart broken. I don’t know if
others knew that I was struggling so, I tried to hide it. I tried to have a
good attitude. I continued serving God in the bus ministry, nursery, teaching
Sunday school, and going on soul winning visitation. I eventually accepted my
diabetes as God’s will and stopped begging Him to heal me. I tried my hardest
to magnify Christ in my life, but something was wrong. I didn’t have joy, sure
I was happy sometimes, but what I could have done on the mission field was
constantly in the back of my mind. I wasn’t getting much out of my devotions,
it was often hard to pray. This continued until July of 2013.
July 2013. The director of the singles ministry at my church
was planning a trip to St. Petersburg, FL for a singles conference that was
taking place the first week of July. He and his wife asked if I would like to
go even though I was not a member of the Singles Sunday School class. I decided
that I would, because I knew that I needed some spiritual refreshing. The first
day, I was alone in one of the hallways of the church looking at their world
missions map. Two girls walked by and I overheard them comment about how they
could never be missionaries because they didn’t want to give up the luxuries of
living in America. I remember being so angry at them for not wanting to give up
the pleasures of American life when so many were dying and going to hell
without ever hearing the gospel. That night, I opened up to my singles director’s
wife and told her my frustrations of how so many young adults could go to the
mission field, to unreached peoples, but didn’t want to. And how I didn’t understand
why God would take the ability to go to PNG away from me, who wanted to go so
badly. That night I realized that I really wasn’t mad at those girls; I was mad
at God because I didn’t understand why He had allowed me to develop type 1
diabetes. Wednesday of that week was July 3, my twenty fifth birthday. The
first preacher that night preached a message that was God’s birthday present to
me. He preached about how God led them about, from Exodus 13:17-18. God may
lead us in ways that make no sense to us, in a way that was about, but it was
for our good and we just needed to trust Him. That message led me to repent
from my anger and lack of trust in God, and truly trust that He knows best, even when it makes
no sense. I got my heart right with God that night, and decided again to trust
God with everything in my life.
Have I always completely trusted God since that point? I
wish that I could say yes, but I can’t. But God has been so gracious and
merciful in forgiving me for my lack of trust in Him. You see, I must trust God
in life, death, or anything in between to work through my life to magnify
Himself, whether it makes sense or not. Please don’t think I’m sharing this to
brag about how much I trust God. If you read this, you know that I can struggle
a lot in that department. I share this to show how gracious God is to lead us
back to trusting and magnifying Him when we are stubborn and think we know
best. If you are a Christian, God can use anything to magnify Himself through
you, whether it be a broken down car, a life changing medical diagnosis, the
death of a dream, or a job search. You just need to trust Him completely. There
is no better place to be than to be exactly where God wants you, Magnifying
Christ in life, in death, or anything in between.
