Monday, February 17, 2014

When God Intervenes...


Dear Family and Friends,

God is sovereign. God never writes the story of our life the way we would write it. And that's a very good thing! If I were writing the story I never would have met my wife on a blind date. I never would have put myself in a church where I would hear the gospel of Jesus and be mercifully saved. These events altered the trajectory of my life forever. I'm so glad I'm not God.


Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

“For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”
“Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.



As most of you know next Tuesday I WAS supposed to go with my team of nine to Papua New Guinea to serve a network of local pastors with biblical training. This trip also includes a week of living solo with one of the national pastors in his village, as well as encouraging the current missionary family with To Every Tribe on the island.

However, God's ways are not my ways. I had not been feeling myself for the last two months. So with Brita's encouragement I went to see the doctor. My heart sank as I heard the doctor say I have type 1 diabetes. I found out type 1 diabetes is an auto-immune disorder that has caused my body to attack my pancreas and kill the cells that make insulin. Because of this I now need to give myself multiple insulin shots a day to control my blood sugar. This is a process of trial and error to get my blood sugars to normal levels. This may take a few months to work out. For this reason my doctor very strongly recommended I not go to Papua New Guinea one week after being diagnosed.

The doctor also said that within a few months I should be free to travel overseas. This means that we are still able to train and to be sent as long term missionaries!

  • Praise that Jesus has truly been sweet through this hard time. What a Savior! 
  • Praise for God's perfect timing. This could have been really bad in a remote village in Papua New Guinea. 
  • Praise that through gifted tickets and frequent flyer miles our whole family will be coming home to Montana for two weeks during the time Josh would have been in Papua New Guinea. 
  • Please pray for wisdom for Josh's doctors. 
  • Please pray for patience and love for each other through this unexpected speed bump. Pride and selfishness are showing themselves much too often. 
  • Please pray that the sugar in Josh's eyes would dissipate quickly so that he can see clearly again. 

This is hard, but God is so merciful. The night before my doctors appointment I was in Mexico teaching on 2 Corinthians 1:3-11. Here is a portion of it:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God... Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.

and Psalm 119:50 says "This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life"

If God can raise Jesus from the dead(and He DID) how much more can I trust Him with this light and momentary affliction.

I can truly say with out any lip service, that I am excited to see how God will use the comfort He has given me through Jesus Christ to comfort others in their affliction. This has helped me to see how much I rely on myself and not on Jesus.

We want to keep this brief so we will be posting more in the next few weeks. We love you and are so thankful for your prayers and support as we rejoice in God's sovereign and perfect plan.

Josh and Brita