Interactions with God #93

What good is faith if it doesn’t stand a test? If it doesn’t stand, it isn’t faith and it never was.

James 1:2-4 (NIV)

2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

After the prophetic word and confirmation of the vision that I had in 1984, I was feeling really good. Yet even with the high from that interaction and all of the Interactions up to that point, I still struggled with doubt. What doubt? That God exists? No. That was not a problem for me. The doubt was whether or not I was important to God at all. We sing that song, “Jesus loves me. This I know. For the bible tells me so.” The song is crap! I am sorry, we need more than the “bible tells me so”. We need to hear it from Jesus Himself.

Think that is too bold? Well, who of you would be OK with never hearing your spouse say “I love you”? Maybe, if they just point to a love letter they once wrote… Yea, I didn’t think so. Jesus doesn’t expect us to just be OK with the Bible telling us so. No, He expects us to start there and move to a relationship with Him that is much more intimate. One where we do have the faith to hear Him speak. However, to do so will require something we don’t like, trials.

Trials are not to prove us to God, nor are they even to prove us to satan. The trials are to make our faith grow. For if we have faith at all, it will overcome any obstacle. It will, because we trust the motive of the one who sent the trial. Once the obstacle has been overcome, we see His love for us. Each time this experience gives us a new relational event with God. That event adds to our history, our relationship with God, our faith. This then, is the process of growing in faith: Interaction, trial, interaction… or hope, discouragement, hope. Though it is not fun, it does make us grow in a way no bible college or seminary ever could. It is raw. It is real. It is God working in us. And HE will finish that work.

My friend Rich, who I worked with at Sybase and iPlanet, had gotten a job at The Middleware Company selling Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) training and consulting services. Before he started, The Middleware Company had been purchased by Precise Software, but it was still running as a separate company division. In early December, Rich managed to help me get an interview with his manager, Brent.

Martha and I had gone into December of 2002 with absolutely no means to pay the rent. God had covered us for November, but now headlong into December, our only visible hope was that I get this job at Precise Software. On December 17th, I finally got a call from Brent with a job offer to sell J2EE training for The Middleware Company/Precise Software. He said that I would get the offer letter by Friday, December 20. If you don’t already know, the verbal offer means nothing. Until you get a signed written offer, anything could happen. On that Thursday, a day before I was to get the physical letter, a company called Veritas announced their intention to buy Precise Software.  Uh Oh…

God had sent me a direct message just a few weeks earlier, and yet after hearing that announcement I became full of fear. Sure, God did make it clear He had His hands on my life. However, that didn’t mean we wouldn’t get kicked out of the rental house and loose everything. He did agree to do ANYTHING it would take to make me the best that HE could make me… Yea, I was a bit concerned.

I called Brent. I sighed a wee bit in relief as he assured me the acquisition announcement would not affect the job offer. I did get the letter the next morning.

After I sent the signed letter back, I considered why God would test me this way. I would consider it again and again in years to come, every time I experienced a similar test. Hope… nope… Hope… nope… Hope…  I now believe much of this is to make sure my hope is never in a job, person, place or thing. My hope and trust must always be in Him and Him alone.   

I started working for The Middleware Company/Precise Software, soon to be Veritas, on January 3rd of 2003. We got my first paycheck, after a year and a half of unemployment, at the end of the second week of January 2003. My rent was just over a month late and while we did have to pay a late fee, we would not get kicked out of the house. He took care of things, at the midnight hour…again.