In the Evil Day, We Walk by Faith
By Dennis Pollock
Benedicta and I have been so blessed to read some of the feedback we have received from readers of her autobiography, "When Destiny Calls." Not only has almost everyone enjoyed the book, but people also frequently tell us that they could not put it down once they began reading. Many told us they read her story in two days and one lady reported that she was so transfixed by Benedicta's life story, she read it straight through in about six hours.
I am convinced that a major reason for the tremendous interest we are seeing is the fact that in her early years, Benedicta's life was filled with drama, struggle, and suffering. At the age of fourteen, she became a housemaid, nanny, cook, and cleaner for a large household. The work was far more than she realized it would be, and she usually had to awaken at 4:00 am to start her duties. The man she worked for had a violent temper and sometimes beat her savagely when she did not please him. She endured this misery for four years and kept silent about the treatment she was receiving. Finally, her mom heard about what was happening and demanded her release. Later in her life, she moved to the huge city of Lagos, Nigeria, where she worked at several jobs and finally started a small business. Sometimes she lived comfortably, but she passed through many seasons where she had so little money she could not eat regularly. Sometimes she went a day or two at a time with nothing at all to eat.
At one point, she contracted some kind of sickness that lingered for almost an entire year. It required tremendous effort just to force herself to get out to work each day, and many days she simply had no strength to do that and had to lie in her bed, wondering if this sickness would be the death of her. She had very little money for doctors and hospitals and had to rely mostly upon herbal remedies, which did her little good. Eventually, she became so weak that she lay on her floor for several days, not moving, in a comatose state, during which time she had an intense experience of seeing the heavenly splendor. Eventually, God gave her the strength to arise and go to a relative's house, who arranged for her to see a doctor. In time she regained her strength and was able to go back to work.
Benedicta's story has a happy ending. Four years after that, an American evangelist came to hold meetings in her neighborhood (and that was, of course, me). We met during that time and began talking on the phone once I was back in America. The rest is history.
Reading Your Story
As I have meditated on Benedicta's amazing life, her terrible struggles and suffering in her early years, and the autobiography she has written, I had an odd thought. Wouldn't it have been great, if while she was going through the misery she endured, an angel had come to her with this book in his hand and told her: "This is the story of your life. You need to read it, and you'll see that you have a great future ahead. How encouraged she would have been to read her own life story and to realize that everything was going to come out beautifully. Or if while she was lying on her bed, so sick she could barely move, a friend had been there to read her the book, "When Destiny Calls," and encourage her that these struggles were only temporary and that she had a tremendous life awaiting her, with a husband who would dearly love her and a ministry that would reach across the world.
But of course, no angel or friend showed up with her life story. As Benedicta suffered and struggled, she had to do what we all have to do – she had to walk by faith and believe that God had her in His hands and that He would turn things around for her good and His glory, which is, of course, exactly what He did.
The Evil Days
Although Benedicta's sufferings and dramas exceeded most of ours, the truth is that we all go through scary times and painful seasons, and we wonder if we will make it through. And just as it was with Benedicta, there will be no angel to bring us a copy of our life story, so that we can read it and find out that everything will be OK. We will all have to do just like Benedicta did – we will have to walk by faith and not by sight (and not by an advance copy of our autobiography). And this is precisely what the apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians: "…knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight." (2 Corinthians 5:6-7) But that's OK. We may not know all the details of our story, or exactly how things will work out, but we know that our Father in heaven loves us and promises us that He is able to make all things work together for our good.
Jesus Christ in us is the hope of glory. In Jesus, we are forgiven, we are accepted by God, we are justified, and we are made children of God. The Bible says that our Heavenly Father "according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." (1 Peter 1:3) God does not promise us that we will never suffer or struggle, but He does promise that He will be with us and that in the end, we will come out smelling like a rose. Although we cannot read our own life story before it happens, God has read it all and knows it all from the beginning. Well, it would be more accurate to say that He has written it before we were ever born, and He guarantees that if we receive Jesus as our Savior and abide in Him throughout our days, everything is going to be just fine.
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