When we sit quietly before the Lord and reflect on our life, we quickly reach the limit of what we can truly understand and comprehend. Subsequently, we are prompted in gratitude and deep humility to worship the One who has given us this life. We yearn to better understand how to attain a fulfilling, happy, blessed, and truly worthwhile life. We sense that life brings a certain responsibility – and we simply feel unable to live up to that responsibility, especially in our time today!
We believe that God can still bring about these genuine, deeply transformative changes in our human nature today, just as seen in the Bible in the life of Peter and the other apostles. But how can we personally experience this? We know of times when God showers us with blessings, which produce praise and worship to God from the depth of our hearts. Yet sometimes, in an instant, we feel utterly abandoned, misunderstood by both God and people, and completely overwhelmed. Then the struggles and doubts arise, the feelings of powerlessness and inner emptiness.
Blessings in the sunshine
I too, can speak of such times and circumstances very well, from personal experience. When I look back over my life, from the very beginning until today, I see wonderful traces of divine grace in all its different forms and colors. I see an abundance of blessings, both spiritual and natural, which resemble a glorious summer’s day – times that brought me great joy, in which I could only praise and thank God from my heart.
Blessings outside the comfort zone
But I also see the blessings that brought hard work into my life, which required efforts that were strenuous, and took me out of my personal comfort zone. Blessings that came to me as tasks – opportunities God placed before me where I was privileged to do something for Him. Often this did not happen within the church congregation, but out in the world among people I hardly knew. Today I see what incomparable blessings for my personal life were hidden precisely in all these small tasks and challenges, without me having the slightest idea at the time of how important they would be for my life.
Now I clearly see how deeply these acts of service, done out of love for Jesus, strengthen our personal relationship with our Savior. Because we love Him, we are compelled to do what pleases Him. And, realizing our own personal weakness for these tasks, we cling to Him. In turn, God can bless even these small acts of love, and deep within our hearts, we sense that His favor rests on us. These little acts of kindness we do solely for God, as thanks for His love to us – not because others expect it of us, but simply because we know it brings Him joy – this willing, loving obedience becomes a source of pure joy that keeps our Christian life vibrant. At the same time, it is an opportunity for the God-pleasing qualities to unfold in our soul.
Lessons from the sickbed
Then I think of the times of illness that became a lasting blessing for my life. For example, the time of my slipped disc, when I endured severe pain for months and no medical intervention brought any real relief. During that time, apart from the prescribed short and very painful walks, I could practically do nothing. However, I had much time to think. As I lay in bed and looked through the skylight above me into the heavens, I felt as though God had laid me on my back to speak with me. I did not feel punished by God, but rather especially loved by Him. And I understood that He wanted to show me my life from a different perspective, and that He had something important to show me. I gained a deeper view of what truly matters in life.
In that time, I came to better understand that many things I had neglected in the bustle of everyday life actually mattered far more than the things that quietly consumed my time and energy. For example, God showed me that spending time in a good conversation with my neighbor was far more important than running a perfectly managed household.
I am not saying that the biblical priority system was unclear to me before; not at all. I also count it as one of the outstanding blessings of my life that God gave me parents who showed us children in practical, everyday life what Matthew 6:33 means: “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” But even so, it was precisely this season, when I was physically weak and dependent on others due to great pain, that became a period of enduring blessing for my soul. It was a time when God aligned my way of recognition and assessment more closely with His.
Through a dark valley
Yet, it seems to me that the deepest changes God worked in me happened during a time when His blessing came in a way that left me frozen in deep inner pain.
That period probably lasted a good ten years and seemed like a dark ice age, in which I felt like a bird with broken wings. When I finally came out of this long, dark valley, I felt as though I had lost ten years of my life. But over time, I began to realize what a great blessing that period had truly brought me. I saw how much God had changed me during that time. Today I am especially thankful to God for this difficult season.
The cause of all my inner anguish was simply that I could not understand the ways God was leading me. Of course, I had known struggles, doubts, and trials of faith before, since God had drawn me to Himself in my childhood, which I also count as one of His special gifts of grace to me. But after many blessings and successes in the first four decades of my life, I suddenly found myself, as a believing, responsible mother, at a point where I felt I had completely failed, since all the outcomes seemed to speak against me.
Over the years we had taken in two foster children in addition to our three biological children. We offered a home and family to a 10-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy and were able to lead them to Christ. However, when they grew up, all the children, one after another, chose a life without God. Within just a few years I had lost, bit by bit, everything for which I had sincerely prayed, strived, believed, and struggled. Before my eyes everything was shattered and gone. I felt completely robbed – and I could not understand how this could have happened.
My ongoing, painful questions, for which I found no satisfying answer through all those years, were: “What did I do so fundamentally wrong? What did I neglect? What is the cause of this great failure?” – Before my eyes everything was broken; everything I so deeply loved. It was really a part of myself. – What was left to me? Each day anew, I asked these burning questions, but God seemed silent. Many times, I worked in the house and garden weeping and praying, constantly crying out to God for answers, for help, for a change of situation. For years I regularly fasted under this heavy burden – and from my perception, nothing changed. The gnawing pain, the burning questions, the whole distressing situation remained. – The only answer I received was simply: “This is your path.”
Rays of sunshine in the darkness
I would so much like to understand better and more clearly in what manner God’s help came to me, but I cannot really say. What I do know is that over time, God brought me to the point of simply and humbly accepting the path He was leading me on. I realized that I could not force God to change my situation with either prayer or fasting.
What prayers of repentance over past mistakes could not accomplish, prayers of thanksgiving however, brought a change in me! After some very good pastoral counsel, I began to thank God; to thank Him from the heart, and to thank Him every day for what I still had. I clearly remember how good that was for my soul, for I experienced a gradual peace returning to my heart.
Leaving behind that long, dark time, I still associate a visit to an unbelieving man who, after a stroke, had been transferred to a nursing home. He had not expected us. He wept for joy when he saw us. The visit was a blessing. We went to see him repeatedly; those visits were a joy for the sick man and at the same time, an encouragement for me. – In this way, God led me back exactly to the point that I had left behind. God let me continue in His school of life and kept working on me, patiently and with much love.
Now ready for new tasks
With the awareness of aging, I recall that my heart developed a desire to live the remaining healthy years that God would give me with eternity in mind. I had no plan, no idea how I could do that, but evidently God noticed that desire in my heart. Perhaps He also wanted to see how serious I was. In any case, as the years went on, He developed a complete plan; initially unknown to me. In His great wisdom, God arranged the steps of this plan to be so small that we did not shrink back, but instead, with joy and looking upwards to Him, we took the first steps. Thus, in 2017, through the invitation of a 10-year-old Albanian boy, we flew to Albania. The first time, we went for just a few days, understanding that we were pleasing God by going.
Looking back now, we see far more clearly than at that time how precisely God planned and prepared everything. Where else could such a warm welcome from complete strangers have come from, only being able to communicate very poorly due to the language barrier? God showed us the great inner and outer needs of people living in a Muslim cultural and value system. The great blessing we had received through Jesus Christ, through His love and His gospel, urged us from within to pass some of it on to these dear people. They sensed a love they had never encountered before, and when, after just a few days, the time came to say goodbye, many tears were shed. There was only one wish – that we return once more that same year.
God led us step by step into a work we had never thought of, never trusted ourselves to take on, never would have dared to accept, if we had known where the path would lead. But because God knew exactly what we could accomplish with His help, He wisely planned and prepared everything. And each time we were in Albania, we felt that God was truly present, that He Himself opened the doors, that He Himself blessed the people – as well as us, along with them.
Looking back and recognizing God’s faithful work
When I pause and look back on my life, I can only praise and thank God from the bottom of my heart for the transformation and His divine work in my soul. I am so thankful that I have been allowed to learn that it matters less what I do for God than how I do it. For God does not first and foremost expect our service, but our love for Him. It does not depend on us making plans for our lives, nor on us understanding God’s plans and ways with us. What matters is that we live in such a relationship with God that He can fulfill His plan in us, and that we join and cooperate with His ways. We may entrust ourselves to Him. He knows us with our strengths and weaknesses, with our longing and our failures.
Because He loves us, He works on us. The important thing is that we remain in His school, and that we are willing to let Him change us and not run away from Him. It becomes easier when we fight less in our own strength but instead surrender ourselves more to Him and accept His ways – regardless of how they feel to us, regardless of how well they match our own plans. The word God spoke to Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9: “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness,” can still be experienced personally and is true today. It is good to walk even through the painful times with thanksgiving, trusting that the Father knows the path He is leading His child on.
We should only look back from the perspective of what God has done in our lives. If we look at ourselves, we may either be discouraged or perhaps proud of what we have done – neither of which is good. But if we look at the traces of God in our lives, it will always keep us humble and at the same time encourage us, even when God must correct us. God always has thoughts of peace toward us; His love works redemption and blessing in our lives. This knowledge gives us hope and courage, purpose and meaning for our lives. Therefore, do not hesitate to throw yourself entirely into His loving, strong arms.
Claudia Wutke
Gifhorn, Germany
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