Anchored: Your Platform for the Gospel

Over the past nine weeks on the blog, we have been following along with our fall Hope Groups as they go through Hope Mommies’ newly published Bible Study — Anchored.  For those of you who did not register for a group this year, this is an opportunity to walk through the topics studied in our Hope Groups. For those of you who are currently participating in a Hope Group, our desire is for these posts to reinforce the lessons you are learning with your group.   Wherever you are in your journey through loss and grief, I pray that this series will encourage your heavy hearts, remind you of truth, and point you to the unrelenting, far-reaching Hope of Christ as we anchor ourselves in Him and His Word.

Week 9:  Your Platform for the Gospel

“Only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ…”
-Phil 1:27a

As believers, to do as this verse calls is our desire. But what happens when things don’t go as we planned? Losing a baby does not seem from our perspective like it could be allowed by a good God. “Why God?”  is often the first question asked when we encounter pain and suffering in our lives. How you respond in dealing with this question will have significant impact on the rest of your life and how you handle every challenge you face.
“Why” isn’t the best question to ask because we can never understand all of God’s reasons from our very limited perspective.  We must trust His ways and His thoughts even though we may not understand them (Isaiah 55:8-9).  They are greater and higher than ours. They are perfect (Deut 32:4), righteous (Rev 15:3) and good (Ps 119:68). As you read this I pray it will encourage you to step out with faith and anticipate the wonderful plans The Lord has for you through the life of your little one.

In order to do this, we must have a right understanding of God and trust His will. Do you believe God is good no matter what happens? Psalm 84:11b says “no good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly.” We who are in Christ are righteous by faith and therefore we can know that He will not withhold good things from us. To me, this means that it was not best for me that my sweet son, Isaiah, remain on earth with me. That means something is better in my being without him.  If this is hard for you to grasp I encourage you to take any feelings you have regarding this to the Lord and be honest with your feelings. He will help you.  We may never understand why God does things but we should rejoice that He does not do things our way, for His ways are better!

So instead of asking why, I encourage you to ask, for what purpose?  What should I do with this?  We who believe in God and His Word can suffer with hope.  Can you imagine walking through your loss(es) with no hope? No feeling of assurance that your baby went to heaven or that you will go to heaven?  No hope that God will work “all things together for good” as we who have placed our faith in Him can trust?  In 2 Cor 1:3-7 we are reminded that we are comforted by God in our affliction and that we then are able to comfort others in affliction with that same comfort we have been given!  The Lord has given you a way to reach out to the suffering, the hurting, and the broken and be able to tell them how you can have hope and joy when life hurts the most.

Perhaps there is a greater truth that we must look at in order to find joy in suffering and share the Gospel through our loss – the truth that it is God who truly satisfies and fulfills us.  Have you heard the phrase Jesus + nothing = everything?  It is a simplification of great truth that we may know intellectually but often find hard to apply.  We all quickly add things into the sentence “my life would be better if I had ________”.   I know I consider that sentence in many ways without even realizing it, though I know nothing adds to what I have in Jesus!  Anything you feel you could not be without or will not be complete without is an idol.  And  you will never find full satisfaction or joy while you seek them.

For us Hope Mommies, we often feel like our lives will be lacking if we never have the children we long to have.  I encourage you to give those hopes and dreams to the Lord.  Doing so does not mean they will never happen! The Lord is an abundant giver! Yet giving our dreams to the Lord enables us to trust Him to give us the gifts that are best for us. If you do so fully the result will be the greatest and sweetest thing you can receive. Just as David knew when he wrote “But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord GOD my refuge, that I may tell of all your works” (Ps 73:28).

When we begin to understand that the greatest gift is The Lord Himself, we become more excited in sharing Him with others.   We can even come to believe, as Jesus’ disciples did in Acts 5:41, that we can rejoice that we were counted worthy to suffer for the name of Christ.

Through the lives of our precious babies who have gone home before us, we have the opportunity to show others the hope we have in Christ!  Our sorrow can become a way to show the world that God is good even when life does not seem good!  Through our grief we can demonstrate that even though we suffer we are never alone!

I encourage you in your sorrow to seek out the Lord and find joy in Him, until you come to say as the psalmist did “You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.
O LORD my God, I will give thanks to you forever!” (Psalm 30:11-12)

One day we will rejoice in heaven and see our babies! On that day may we also rejoice with those whose lives the Lord touched through our testimony of His goodness in the midst of suffering — or even those the Lord has brought to Himself in salvation through the loss of our babies! Would there be any greater joy than that?

To read the rest of the posts in this series follow the links below:

Becky Kuehl is a joyful follower of Christ, wife to Sam, mommy to three children: Abigail, who is two, Isaiah, who was born into heaven on May 3rd 2015, and she is expecting their third in May 2016. She is a part time home health physical therapist who loves being able to share the love of Christ with people and spending time with her family. She loves being outdoors, camping and reading whenever there is time! You can get to know her more by reading her blog