Starting Over: The Lifestyle of a Man of God — Part 3

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5. Thanksgiving

I have been asked to share lessons that I have learnt since the Lord has taken Leila home. I would like to share with you what I consider the greatest lesson of all that I’ve learnt.

I lived eighteen years with a godly woman—my sweetheart, lover, friend, the dearest treasure that I had on earth. I remember when she told me she had found a lump in her breast and we made an appointment to see the doctor. That morning in my quiet time, the Lord spoke to me through Psalm 112:7 in The Living Bible (TLB):

The doctor told us he feared that it was cancer in its advanced stages and that Leila would have to do a biopsy.

We spent the days and hours before the biopsy in prayer and the Word, and the Lord spoke to Leila in a fresh new way. She would keep saying, “The living Lord takes His living Word to make known His living Presence.” And her diary was filled up with one wonderful truth after another.

After the biopsy, when she came out of the coma, I had to tell her that she had cancer.

She was still dazed with the drugs and said, “Why, isn’t that funny? I never thought that would happen.”

“Well, darling,” I said, “do you think that the Lord would be saying all those things to us and ministering to our hearts if there was nothing there?”

Her tumor was four inches in diameter, too big for a mastectomy. She took cobalt treatments for months and it was reduced to one and a half inches in diameter. The doctor said, “I think we have her cured.”

So I felt free to come to the States for a conference in May, only to be phoned by Elaine, the girl who was helping at our home as a nurse, saying that Leila had had a relapse and that she was in very poor condition and I needed to get home immediately. So I cancelled everything and started home.

I remember being in the office with Lorne and saying, “You know, Lorne, at the beginning of the year, my verse for this year was Philippians 4:13 in the Amplified (AMP) version:

I have strength for all things, in Christ who empowers me.
I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him who infuses inner strength into me; I am self-sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency.

With tears in my eyes, I turned to Lorne and said, “You know, Lorne, I thought God had given me that verse for the ministry, but now I know that He has given it to me because of Leila.”

She was in the hospital when I got back. For several weeks, every morning, every afternoon, every evening, we were together. One day she said, “Oh darling, it’s worse than it’s ever been. I can hardly stand the pain.” She was too weak to pray, so I read 2 Timothy 2:11-13 (TLB) over her and prayed over it:

I am comforted by this truth that when we suffer and die for Christ, it only means we will begin living with Him in heaven. (v.11)

I have another outlook on life now. When we sing about the coming of Christ, I say, “Come, even so, come Lord Jesus.” Heaven is real. We live in an unreal world – very temporary, transitory—but Heaven is real.

And if we think that our present service for Him is hard,
just remember that someday we are going to sit with Him
and rule with Him. But if we give up when we suffer,
and turn against Christ, then He must turn against us. 
(v.12)

She wasn’t afraid to die; she was afraid to suffer; and she was afraid she might dishonor the Lord in her suffering. She was too weak to pray, too weak to believe, too weak to trust. Sometimes we feel that way and we are not even dying. 

Then I wrote out this next verse for Leila. Oh, grab hold of this truth:

Even when we are too weak to have any faith left, He remains faithful to us and will help us, for He cannot disown us who are part of Himself, and He will always carry out His promises to us. (v.13, emphasis added)

We had entered into something where we had nothing to hold on to but that promise—of God’s character and God’s faithfulness.

I went home to tell the children how their mother was faring. I got them together and said, “It’s worse than it’s ever been. We are in a real crisis.” The phone rang and it was the hospital. They wanted me to come back and spend the night there.

She was in a semi-coma and having blood transfusions, and I sat there and read Job through the night. I read about Job with his many questions to God: “If I could just find God … If I could ask Him this … If I could just ask Him that … If I could just find out the answer here and the answer there …”

At the end of the book, God reveals Himself to Job. And do you know what God does? He starts asking Job questions to which Job doesn’t know any of the answers.

Five minutes before Leila died, as I was reading one of my life chapters, Isaiah 54, verses from Isaiah 55 just jumped out of the page at me from The Living Bible. It was almost as if God was speaking to me audibly.

This plan of Mine is not what you would work out, neither are My thoughts the same as yours! For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than yours, and My thoughts [higher] than yours.

— Isaiah 55:8,9

God was saying to me, “Doug, can you trust me as Sovereign Love? Even without knowing the answers and without having everything figured out? Can you just trust me as God who reigns over every circumstance in your life and who is Love?”

I read the verse to Leila. And within five minutes, she was in the presence of the Lord. I was willing to accept, surrender, trust and obey. While I quietly mourned to myself, I found I could say, “Yes, Lord,” and I could say, “I can accept,” and “I can trust.”

Sometime later I was talking to a Christian leader in Lausanne and it upset him that I was taking Leila’s death simply by faith. Well, I’m not an intellectual and I don’t know the answers, but I know God – and I trust Him. I have had to surrender Leila and I have had to trust, and now I have to obey.

And so, throughout my life, God has been driving home those simple little lessons I learned on that street in Pacific Row and in that little church on the day I accepted Christ.

But there was still something missing: it was that I couldn’t thank the Lord. I believe this is one of the main lessons God taught me: that this lifestyle of a victorious Christian is not just about surrender and trust and obedience, but it must also be about THANKSGIVING — a joyful celebration that God is Sovereign Love and that I can trust Him in all circumstances.

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“Can you trust me as God who reigns
over every circumstance in your life
and who is Love?”
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I am a tense person and you’ll find in my messages that I get kind of tense sometimes. Some of this is because I am just insecure—I realize that you should be up here speaking and I should be down there listening. For twenty-five years, I served God being uptight, and I still am an uptight kind of guy. But God taught me something from Psalm 107:8-9,

Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness,
And for His wonderful works to the children of men!
For He satisfies the longing soul,
And fills the hungry soul with goodness.

And He has done that. He satisfies my longing soul. He fills my hungry soul with goodness. But the main reason that I can thank Him is simply because it says, “Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness!”

I believe that God is good. Do you? I believe that God is love, and that His loving kindness is better than life (Psalm 63:3). Do you?

1 Thessalonians 5:18 says, “For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you …” What is God’s will concerning you? That in whatever situation you happen to be in—prosperous or difficult, in everything—you give thanks, because that is the lifestyle of a victorious Christian.

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Thanksgiving:
A joyful celebration that God is Sovereign Love and
that I can trust Him in all circumstances.
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I know some of you are going through hard times. I went through them with my wife; some of you are going through difficult times with your children. How do we give thanks in such circumstances?

Thanksgiving arises from surrender and trust. I can’t truly thank God from the heart when things don’t go well if I’m not surrendered. I can’t really thank Him from the heart if I’m not really trusting that He is Sovereign Love.

When I surrender, I acknowledge that I am not in control. I cannot change circumstances. That is God’s job. I am to correctly react to them with thanksgiving. Thus I’ll overcome them whenever they change. And even if they don’t change, I can still experience the peace and joy of the Lord – if I thank Him, if I trust Him.

In so many areas of life, we just have to trust God. I love this definition of trust: it is relying and resting on the friendship and integrity of another. That’s trust. Simply relying on the friendship of Jesus and the integrity of God in His Word. Sometimes that is the only place we can be.

That is the lifestyle of a man and woman of God: they are surrendered, they are trusting, and they are obedient. They are praising and thanking God from the heart, not because of the circumstances but because of who God is – the One in whom they placed their trust.

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Trust is simply relying on the friendship of Jesus
and the integrity of God in His Word.
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I am Sufficient in Christ’s Sufficiency 

God took Leila—Phi Beta Kappa member, Stanford University alumna, a godly woman, a godly wife, most capable mother—but God is showing that His grace is sufficient. God can take anything out of your life, as long as He doesn’t take Himself, and you are sufficient.

I am sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency. It is God who makes me sufficient as a single father and I thank Him “for His wonderful works to the children of men” (Psalm 107:8).

I am amazed at God’s wonderful works to my children. In November, I will have four teenagers – and I don’t have one serious problem. We have the greatest time; they love the Lord; they are developing as whole people.

I know it’s because people are praying. When I was in Lausanne, Vonette Bright, Bill Bright’s wife (you’d think she has enough to pray for!) came up to me and said, “You know, Doug, sometimes I wake up at 2 or 3 a.m. in the morning and you and your children are on my heart and I just have to get out of bed and pray for you.”

Dr. Hork, a Christian leader in Eastern Europe, said, “Doug, my family and I pray for you and your children every day.”

It isn’t anything I have done.

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God can take anything out of your life, as long as
He doesn’t take Himself, and you are sufficient.
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Somebody said to me recently, “You know, Doug, I don’t think I could go through what you go through because I am not spiritually mature enough.”

I felt like saying, “Rubbish!” but I said, “It has nothing to do with my spirituality. It has to do with the grace of God.”

Paul said, “I am what I am by the grace of God.”

It’s not because of your spirituality, your dedication, your faith, your surrender, or even your obedience. It’s all the grace of God.

I want to leave this one verse with you—Philippians 4:13 (AMP):

I have strength for all things, in Christ who empowers me.
I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him who infuses inner strength into me; I am self-sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency.

It’s not me. It’s not you. Whatever your testimony is, it is Christ who empowers us.

Whatever you face in life, whatever you go through, God is Sovereign Love, and Christ is all you need.