Testimony Tuesday: He is Close to the Brokenhearted

Adopted at birth, I was raised in a non-religious home in Los Angeles.  

Somehow, I fell in love with God and his Word. After graduating from high school, I even decided to give up my dreams so that I could go into the ministry.  I was full of passion, but greatly lacking in knowledge. That same summer before college, I was invited to a Bible study by some campus students at UCLA.  I was so excited to meet people that shared such a zeal for God’s Word.  I will never forget the way that first Bible Talk made me feel. They could have laughed at my hypocrisy and lack of sound doctrine. But instead, they made me feel like family right away. They immediately started inviting me to share my faith with them on campus, go to baptisms with them, and study the Bible at all hours!  Instead of shaming me, they said, “Great!  You love God? Come be a disciple with us!”

 It wasn’t long before I realized that these people were living a life that was much different than my own.  Once I saw what I was lacking from God’s Word, I repented and was baptized in August of 1990.  Life since then has been full.  Many dreams have been fulfilled: being in the full-time ministry for many years, helping plant churches in the U.S. and abroad, living in and visiting disciples in many cities and countries, getting married, and raising children in a biblical home.  

However, it has also been full of heartache and disappointment: leaving the ministry, miscarriage, friends falling away and passing away, depression, battling pride and selfishness, and so much more. These last few years in particular have tested my faith and joy like no other.  My husband and I were separated for nine months, as we navigated through some tough times. I began to feel like I had completely lost my joy. 

As a result, I started to study out joy in the Bible. I kept reading through passages on joy, but I wasn’t discovering joy in my own life.  I quit that study.  Later that year, I began to study out affliction, and guess what I discovered?  Joy!  It was amazing to me to discover how much God speaks to us in our suffering - how he is close to the brokenhearted, how he longs to comfort us.  I found such joy in his nearness and tenderness and intimacy.  It was almost as though I had to walk through the shadow of darkness to experience his closeness.  

This year I have been studying out Job. Though I have never lost as much as he did, I appreciated the thought of knowing that in his suffering, God had something even greater planned.  His life was incredibly blessed at the beginning of his story, but it says that the Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the former part.  I also think of Joseph, being sold into slavery, wrongly accused, and sitting in that jail for so many years, only to be blessed so much more later on - enough to save his entire nation from perishing.  I am still in my valley of shadows, but I hope to cling to the things that I have learned - to embrace God’s closeness to those who are suffering, and to hope in the God who has planned great things for those who love Him, if only we will hold firm until the end.