Speaker: Darlene Sala | Series: Encouraging Words | When Chris Haggai’s visitor arrived at the door, Chris was feeding their adult son Johnny, who had cerebral palsy because of negligence on the part of the attending doctor when he was born. The visitor had come to take a look at a refrigerator the Haggai’s had just purchased because she was thinking of buying one like it. But the woman became so curious about Johnny that she almost forgot the real purpose of her visit.

“How do you ever cope with it?” the visitor asked after a few moments.

“With Johnny? He’s a darling!”

“He must take hours of your day,” the visitor said.

“God permits things for a purpose in our lives,” Chris told her. “If I’m faithful, God will bless me for that faithfulness. If I refuse to accept what God permits, I’ll be the loser.”

After a few moments, noticing how silent the woman had become, Chris turned to her and found her at the point of tears. “My husband died six months ago of a heart attack,” the woman said. “I’ve been blaming God for taking my husband away from me.”[1]

Chris shared deeply from her experiences and from the Bible what she had learned about acceptance and trusting God. Before the visitor left, she too had committed her life to Christ and begun to understand that she could trust God to bring good from even the most painful experiences of life.

The psalmist assures us God will never, never forsake us, no matter what difficulties we may face. In Psalm 9 he wrote, “Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you” (verse 10).

Wonderful assurance!

[1] John Edmund Haggai, My Son Johnny (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. 1978) 109-11