Indubiously

What started out as a look into many of Piper’s favorite scripture verses for a memorial plaque that my kids are working to have placed at a memorial park in our hometown, turned into a week-long study on the thought and idea of ABANDONMENT.

The circled scripture in Piper’s trusty New American Standard Bible that we had given her as a birthday gift in the early 1990’s, that I honed in on is found in Jeremiah 29:11. In this portion of Biblical history, the Lord, through the prophet Jeremiah, declared to the children of Israel… as well as for us in the church today saying… “For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.”

As is my normal Bible study process, one of the first things that I did was to look through many of my different Bible translations in order to gain a better and maybe more modern twist on what was being said.  The last one I looked at was in the paraphrase of The Message Bible.  These words written in current terms sort of jumped right off the page and dove into my heart!  Here Jeremiah plainly states the Lord declaring, “I know what I'm doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for.” 

Without any hesitation or shadow of doubt, I can indubiously* state that this was a scriptural truth that my wife lived her life by 24/7.  What really got my attention though, was the fact of this Word, that we saw personally and upfront during our battle for Piper’s health… worked for us!  The Lord promised us that He would not and... He did not ABANDON us.

I was a little taken by surprise though when my thoughts went to some of the people that we felt had ABANDONED us and instead of feeling the normal twang of pain that Piper and I had felt at the time… I began to feel pain in my heart for them!

As I sat back in my desk chair, it dawned on me how difficult it must have been for many of the people that we interacted with as they found themselves having to struggle with their faith.  To “not abandon you” or “not have plans for calamity” as the NASB puts it, is defined in the original Hebrew by Strong’s and Brown-Driver-Briggs, as to not have thoughts (or plans) of “adversity, displeasure, or misery, or be disagreeable or unhappy or sad,” and to not react “viscous in disposition.”

The modern English definition of ABANDON is “to cease to support someone, to completely give up on a course of action, or the practice of a way of thinking” or to respond to someone with “a complete lack of inhibition or restraint and/or with recklessness.”**

When I read all of those definitions for ABANDON, my jaw practically fell on the floor… because it astutely described what Piper and I experienced with different folks on both coasts!  In many respects, watching someone struggle with their faith in a situation that I was up to my eyeballs in… was almost more difficult than seeing the deteriorating changes in my wife… mainly because I knew that her strong faith would not fail her! 

Today as I look back, I hurt for them.  I can’t hardly imagine how hard it must have been to them.  At the time, their reactions confused me as it was very different than where Piper and I were in our faith.  And again, at the time, it was not what I expected and to be honest… it irritated me.

I cannot imagine having to go through what we did without a deeply personal knowing of how intimately God loves us and is therefore, absolutely true to His Word… that when He says that He will never ABANDON us… He means it!

I’m not too sure what to say at this point.  I still pray for those different folks… and I pray for each of my readers… that you will continue to grow in your deeply personal, experiential knowing of how intimately God knows and loves you… and that He proves it to us… on a daily basis… but being true to His Word!

So… When you hear the Lord saying to you: “I know what I'm doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for (or the future you are expecting)"...  that you do whatever you need to do to get yourself to the point in your faith that you absolutely and indubiously* believe it… BELIEVE HIM - without a doubt!

 

*“Indubiously” (meaning without doubt or certain) was a favorite term of my best male friend in high school.  He had a way of interjecting the word into the middle of a discussion that would get us all laughing in an instant!  John… if you’re reading this… please give me a shout out!

**Oxford Online Dictionaries