ABSOLUTELY SURE
By CHAPLIN T. F. McNABB

“Oh, God, I don’t understand! How can it be? God, give me an answer!”

I threw myself across my bed at three o’clock in the morning and desperately cried out to God for an answer. Only two months before I had stood by the grave of my wife, the mother of my two small daughters. With the baby in my arms, and the four-year-old standing by my side, I watched the casket being lowered into the grave. It broke my heart.

She was the most dedicated Christian I had ever known. Her Spirit-filled life, her loving devotion to the Lord Jesus, was something that inspired me continually. But her life ended at a comparatively early age.

The children went to stay with their maternal grandparents. I stored my household goods, vacated the new house we had just bought, and moved into the bachelor officers’ quarters at the Army post. Suddenly I was left with no children, no family, alone. I plunged myself anew into my work as an Army chaplain.

On this night when I was praying so desperately to God, demanding an answer, something else had happened. At one o’clock in the morning I was called to the home of a sergeant. It was a case of drunkenness, domestic trouble, and fighting. Furniture was smashed; windows were broken; the place showed the tragic results of sin in the home.

The couple had two small children. The whole family seemed well enough. They had health; they had one another; they had all the necessities of life, materially speaking, and yet those parents did not seem to appreciate it.

As I drove back to my quarters that night, I thought of the happy home I had known only two months before. It was a Christian home. We loved our children; we began and ended each day with prayer and Bible reading. Love saturated the atmosphere: love for one another and love for God. But our home had been broken up by death—while the sergeant’s home was intact, even though sin reigned in it.

Somehow it just didn’t seem to add up, I reasoned. I had given my life to God’s work, and here I was alone—no wife, no children, everything stripped from me while those who caroused, fought, and lived in sin had their home and were together!

I cried our to God as I lay across the bed sobbing; and then I opened my Bible and read in the Book of Job, chapter 16. “Surely now God has worn me out; he has made desolate all my company. And he has shriveled me up... He had torn me in his wrath... He has gnashed his teeth at me... God gives me up to the ungodly... I was at ease, and he broke me asunder; he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces.”

That is just the way I felt! Job’s description fitted me exactly, I decided. Then I realized that Gad was trying to show that He, not Job, not Satan, was sovereign; that He was Lord. Job was voicing his honest feelings. There was no whitewashing, no glossing over, and God must have appreciated that honesty, because in the last chapter of the book He said that Job’s friends had not spoken the truth about Him, as had His servant Job.

On that memorable night in my quarters, as I cried and waited before the Lord, God revealed Himself to me. He showed me that He was interested in my life. He showed me that He was sovereign, He was almighty, and He had control of my life. I cannot say that He answered all my questions that night, nor solved all my problems, but He revealed His love to me and I resigned my will to His.

No longer did I insist on having an immediate answer as to why tragedies and disappointments come to a Christian. I saw the great wisdom and power of the Lord, and I wanted above all else to adore and serve Him.

There are things that happen to even the most dedicated Christians that we may never understand. But he has promised to go with us through every experience. He has said, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee,” and I can witness that He has kept that promise for me.

I recall a young man in the veterans hospital where I was undergoing hospital clinical training. I spent quite a bit of time with Michael, an ex-sergeant who was paralyzed from the waist down. He had undergone surgery recently. Lines of suffering showed on his face. I sat by his bed and talked to him of God’s love and mercy. Finally he turned to me and said, “Chaplain, I am a Christian. But could you tell me something? My friends are not Christians. They drink and take God’s name in vain. But they are up, walking about while I am paralyzed. Why do I have to suffer so? Why?”

I could remember when I would have had a quick answer for Mike. I could have done a lot of explaining. But that day I did not say anything for some time. I clasped his hand, and I could feel him gripping mine. Tears were in my eyes.

Finally I said, “Mike, I have to be honest: I really don’t know. I have served the Lord a long time but there are a lot of things for which I don’t have the answer.”

I went on to say, “But, Mike, the apostle Paul said, ‘I know whom I have trusted and I am absolutely sure that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day’.”

“Absolutely sure!” Mike repeated.

“Absolutely sure, Mike, is what he said. That’s been my consolation through the years.”

Michael tightened his grip on my hand. “You know, Chaplain, if we believe that—well, finding an answer to all the other problems in life is not so important, is it?

“That’s my feeling, Mike,” I assured him. “Our trust in Him is the important thing!”

God knows what is best. We must allow Him to do what He wants to do. We may think we know the will of God for our lives, and be anxious to do it, and yet we may be in for a rude awakening. God’s ways are higher than our ways.

What He wants is our trust. He wants us to know He is Lord. God has the right to do what He wants to do with my life. Job learned this and he said, “He knows the way that I take: and when he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job 23:10).

We won’t always know His way in advance. We won’t always understand here in this life why He does what He does; but if we trust Him, that is all that is necessary.

Learn to trust God for who He is—almighty, omnipotent, sovereign, yet a loving, understanding God. Do not be afraid to face the facts of life. Be honest with God. He will reveal Himself in due time.

In the past year’s assignment as an Army hospital chaplain I have dealt with tragedy, death, suffering, and pain, and there have been many times I have been without an answer. But knowing God’s love, I have been able to point the patients to God and to His Son, Jesus Christ, and to say with all my heart:

“I know whom I have trusted and I am absolutely sure that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day” (2 Tim. 1:12, Williams).

—Chaplain McNabb is with the U. S. Army in Germany.