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Harvest House Publishers - Stephanie Tait

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84 pages

English

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I had found my rock bottom, and instead of pulling me out,the God of the universe met me there in the rubble. What is your response when your life turns upside down? When you lose your job? When you receive a difficult diagnosis? Do you blame God or beg Him for a way out of your suffering? In more than a decade of misdiagnoses and debilitating treatments, Stephanie Tait admits she did plenty of both before hearing the two words that had drastically altered her life: Lyme disease. Yet she has discovered it's in her pain that Jesus is most present. Through personal stories and biblical examples, you will learn that sufferingconnects you to God as He meets you in your moment of painstrengthens your community when you allow others to comfort you in your sorrowgives you greater appreciation for life's goodness as you gain an eternal perspectiveEven if the healing never comes, there is something sacred in the suffering. It's from holy rubble that God makes all things new.

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Publié par	Harvest House Publishers
Date de parution	06 août 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780736972239
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
EUGENE, OREGON
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from The ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version ), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Verses marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version , NIV . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Verses marked MSG are taken from THE MESSAGE, copyright 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Verses marked TLB are taken from The Living Bible, copyright 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Verses marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Cover design by Kara Klontz Design
Cover photos oley / Shutterstock
The View from Rock Bottom
Copyright 2019 by Stephanie Tait
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97408
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
ISBN 978-0-7369-7222-2 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-7369-7223-9 (eBook)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
All rights reserved. No part of this electronic publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means-electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other-without the prior written permission of the publisher. The authorized purchaser has been granted a nontransferable, nonexclusive, and noncommercial right to access and view this electronic publication, and purchaser agrees to do so only in accordance with the terms of use under which it was purchased or transmitted. Participation in or encouragement of piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author s and publisher s rights is strictly prohibited.
Dedication
For Brent
I can scarcely imagine the glory of the table before you now,
but I suspect you re still saving a seat beside you for Aidan.
Contents
Dedication
Foreword-Nichole Nordeman
Preface
1. Great Expectations
2. The Default State
3. Turn Your Eyes
4. Holy Intimacy
5. Personal Training
6. Count It All Joy
7. Cover Your Mirrors
8. Declaration of Interdependence
9. Blessed Are the Reckless
Acknowledgments
Notes
About the Author
Foreword
Nichole Nordeman
Years ago I read a book called The Gift of Pain, cowritten by renowned surgeon Dr. Paul Brand and Philip Yancey. Dr. Brand had spent a good deal of his distinguished medical career studying, understanding, and treating people with leprosy. Among endless misconceptions about leprosy, there is a common belief that the disease s victims succumb to death from the diseased flesh itself. In truth, most deaths from leprosy result from painlessness-related injury or damage. Nerve damage has removed the ability for a person to feel pain, and therefore there is no intuitive ability to avoid or withdraw from it. If you can t experience the agony of your broken foot, there is nothing to prevent you from running on it, nor would you know to pull your hand back from an open flame.
Brand s integral study on the effects of the absence of physical pain translates easily to our spiritual and emotional lives. Pain is a gift. It instructs. It warns. Its tutelage is harrowing. Agonizing. And yet it shapes our very sacred souls.
One of those dear suffering-shaped souls has written the special book you re holding right now. I became familiar with Stephanie Tait the way many people find themselves in unexpected friendship these days online. Over time, she has shared pieces of her story on social media and was gracious in telling me how songs I d written had met her in some very dark places. Wisely, someone persuaded her to take us into the deeper parts of her story on these pages.
Stephanie joins a large club of those of us who were churchgoing, Bible-believing, good-choice-making, clean-living Christian kids. We did all these things. And then we were ready for all the blessings. Ready for the fulfilled promises. Did our part the way we were told to and were ready for God to make good on His end. Ready and still waiting. More waiting. And not at all ready for year after year of loss. Grief. Financial ruin. Physical devastation. Darkness. And despair.
The book you are holding is one woman s arduous and bravely personal examination of how wrong our theology is about suffering. How damaged our lens is. In story after story of her own broken journey, she shakes off the idea that our lives are meant to be merely survived with God s help, and she gently invites us to see the gift in our pain. What it points us to. What it leads us away from. How it gathers us uniquely into the arms of our community, our confidants, and our Savior. Digging into sacred Scripture, not as anecdotal hopey verses, but as the kind of crinkled-up and stained road map you dig out of your pocket to pore over when you can t make sense of yourself or the world around you.
Thank you, Stephanie, for the wildly vulnerable decision to allow us to bear witness to your journey and your relationship with pain. Thank you for respecting suffering for the teacher it is, and for respecting us as the students we will all be, at one time, whether or not we re ready. Because no one ever is.
Preface
I f you picked up this book to hear a testimony of how God worked even the seemingly terrible parts of a life into a beautiful surprise ending where with a little hindsight everything suddenly made sense
If you re walking through pain and have reached out in your desperation to this book, hoping to hear a story of someone who s already made it successfully to the other side
If you re waiting for your prayer to be answered and are looking to my story to assure yourself that God will one day give you the desires of your heart if you only hold on a little longer
If you re weary and broken and longing for someone to show how to get past this season of struggle or how to identify the lesson God is surely trying to teach you in all this so He will finally allow you to move beyond it
I m sorry, dear friend, but this is not that book.
When I set out to write, I knew I was walking into something that would challenge me beyond anything I had ever experienced. Much like the old adage that reminds us what happens when we pray for patience, when you commit to exploring the depths of God s presence in suffering you have to be fully prepared for Him to faithfully provide the source material you need. He has walked me through more pain than I ever thought possible to bear, and if I had known the details of His plan from the start, I likely would have pleaded for Him to pass me over for this calling.
This, my friend, is a present-tense testimony. This book springs directly from a heart still raw with grief and a body still inflicted with very real pain and disease. I have written this book not as a memoir of a journey I once had, but as letters from a woman still very much traveling this same road with God. A woman who s still not sure exactly how His plans will unfold. As one of my former pastors would commonly say, None of us has arrived yet, least of all me.
I can t give you a story with a happy ending, because my story doesn t have an ending yet.
There will be no page where I come to the beautiful realization that my seven miscarriages were perfectly timed blessings that led me to adopt seven orphans from Africa into our home and hearts.
There will be no page where I share that God miraculously cured my Lyme disease to show His glory and power, and I ve now gone on to live in health and prosperity, writing and speaking about my experiences.
There will be no page where I can tie a bow on top of my testimony and share in an articulate past-tense narrative all the specific reasons for the suffering God walked my family through, and how His plan became perfectly clear to me once I was safely on the other side.
A friend of mine reached out to me when I began this project and asked, Why write the book now? Why not wait until you re better so you can write the whole story, ending and all?
Because my message is ultimately this: It s not about the ending. It s not about when healing comes, or if it ever comes at all. It s not about proving God s faithfulness by showing exactly how He provided for me. It s not about helping people hold on through the hard times by promising that it s all going to work out in a way they can see and understand later.
No, this book is about destroying all of those ideas and expectations and replacing them with something so much harder but ultimately so much more fulfilling. It s a book about finding the good in suffering, even if the healing never comes. It s a book about seeing the faithfulness of a good and loving God, even in the valley of the shadow of death. This was never meant to be a book about holding on through the hard seasons, but rather about finding the joy and growth and holy intimacy of a God who has met me within them.
From within my pain I ve made the choice to lean even deeper into His Word, to share what He is teaching me, and to continue to preach these truths to my own heart just as much as to yours. I won t pretend to have all the answers, but I will promise you this: I can confidently testify that God has been unswervingly faithful, and His mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22-23). I can tell you that He has revealed Himself more to me in my deepest pain than in any other experience I ve had on earth. I can tell you that I have learned more about tr