“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” Psalm 19:14
My first experience of having the Word of God speak to me was when I was 18 years old and about to be married. I was having misgivings—about the young man I was about to marry, and because we were way too young to be married at that time. I had heard throughout my upbringing that God would speak to us through His word, if only we would read it. Well, I had read it. Time and time again, but I couldn’t say I had heard God speak through it. But this was serious business, so I brought my Bible to work one day and left it in my car to read during my lunch hour. I prayed before I read it, “Lord, show me if it is your will that I marry this man at this time.” I had no idea where to begin reading, but after just a few minutes of searching, these words jumped off the page from my old King James Bible: “What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.” Peace and joy washed over me, as I knew that this was God’s voice and that He wanted me to marry the man I was engaged to. Although I didn’t understand what God meant by those words, I knew He had spoken them and they were mine.
Seven years and three small children later, my husband left us for another woman. I desperately needed to know whether God was really the God I was taught about in Sunday School and church growing up. I dove into the Word with desperation and incredible need, and the living Word spoke on every page. God started in Genesis, followed by Exodus and Numbers, where He showed me who He is and that He had rescued His children out of Egypt, and He would rescue me, too. He showed me that I was on a journey through a desert, that He was with me, and I just needed to trust Him and not complain. He filled me with joy, in the midst of the anguish I was feeling. I understood then what He meant by “peace that passes understanding”—a verse I had heard preached, but never got to experience before. After five and a half years of growing me in knowledge of Him, God brought my husband home, repentant, and changed. Three weeks later, my 27-year-old brother committed suicide, leaving a wife, a 4-year-old, a 2-year-old, and a 10-day old baby. Six weeks later, my husband was in a near-fatal accident, and required all my attention and help, making me unable to grieve the loss of my brother. Then my husband’s father died.
God’s word spoke to me through the Psalms, and the “why have you forsaken me,” cries of Psalm 42 and other Psalms, and the laments in Lamentations and Job. There were so many things I couldn’t understand. Who was this God who didn’t let me enjoy the answers to my prayers or the victory over Satan’s plan to destroy our marriage? Suddenly, He wasn’t who I thought I knew, but I still had His word to tell me who He wanted to be for me in each new situation. Nobody else could help me. “But the anointing which ye have received of Him abides in you, and ye need not that any man teach you…” (1 John 2:27).
As time passed, He taught me of His holiness. I learned that He is sovereign. That He is the Lord, and He would teach me in the way chosen for me (Psalm 25:12). These lessons were so precious to me, and I learned to sit at His feet—and that doing so was the better thing that would never be taken away from me.
Several years later, someone invited me to Bible Study Fellowship (BSF), and while I didn’t want to move from my alone times with Him, I decided to go. BSF put cohesiveness to the things that I had learned alone with God. I loved BSF and stayed there for 14 years. First, as a volunteer pianist. Then as a DL, and then a TL, trained by Rosemary Jensen—and Ray Stedman, who took all the TL trainees through the Minor Prophets. Five years later, I helped start a new BSF class as STL in another city. Our kids got married during those BSF years, the grandchildren began to come. All of this helped me endure what was still a difficult marriage to a man with a restless soul. Then it was time to step down from BSF and teach in my church.
Later, the Lord called me to help my husband in his new business. After seven years, the business failed, and so did my husband—again. We lost everything. I lost my husband to another woman again, and this time it had a different outcome. I thought he would repent, and I would forgive him, just like the last time. But this time, God had a different plan. The devastation was deeper this time, but so was my faith and relationship with my Father. I had to support myself for the first time in my life. “Lord,” I prayed, “show what you can do with a 58-year-old woman, uneducated, inexperienced, and thrown away like a sack of garbage.”
“My lover spoke and said to me, ‘Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come with me. See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come. Arise, come, my darling; my beautiful one, come with me’” (Song of Solomon 2). He led me to a different state to be alone with Him for two years. Once again, joy was the paradox in the midst of incredible suffering. I was so broken, but God’s presence was there more deeply than I had ever experienced it. He gave me new promises. “You will be called by a new name; you will be a crown of splendor in the Lord’s hand. [You] are the work of my hands, for the display of my splendor. [You] will be called an oak of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor” (Excerpts from Isaiah 60-62).
I started to understand the first verse God ever spoke to me—which I had found again one day in John 13. “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” I began to understand that God had chosen to display Himself through me in these troubles. To display His splendor. And display, He did. His presence was stronger and sweeter than ever. He found jobs for me, gave me favor with bosses who knew Him and with those who didn’t. He gave me a small house to rent in the mountains—a sanctuary in which to heal. But I had hardly started healing when, shortly after our divorce, my now ex-husband and the woman he had chosen to live with were killed in an airplane crash. It was the early morning of my 59th birthday.
“My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9).
What do you do with a God like that?
You bow.
There were many layers of difficulty after the plane crash. Among the least of them were the niggling little questions, who am I now? What is my identity? Am I a divorcee? Am I a widow? I was married 40 years and divorced only one. Does that now define me? Who am I?
Once again, the answer came: I am His. And that is enough.
Twelve years have passed since then, and God has been incredibly faithful and loving to me. He has provided all that I need and more. He still speaks through His word in sweet and stunning ways. And he finds ways to use the Word stored up in me to comfort or encourage others at random moments. I never know when He will use something He showed me of Himself during those years, but He can help Himself to me anytime He desires, for I am His, purchased by His blood and loved from before the foundations of the earth.
Come praise the Lord with me, for He has done wonderous things.~Beverly
P.S. from Rosemary: What an incredible story! But God does for each one of his own what needs to be done. Trust him.
