Belief Rewarded: “With this ring, I, thee wed”
“You cannot discover the new opportunities of life until you can accept the loss of past opportunities”. - Author Unknown
I found this quote in some of dad’s writings. It clearly had a profound impact on his life, and is the perfect transition into the next stage of his story. When we face trials and difficulties and walk by faith, God rewards our faith! I Peter 1: 6 - 7 says, “So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you must endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.”
I’ve shared with you how Dad came to trust Jesus alone for salvation; how Christ broke the cycle of unbelief in his life. And although his living situation had stabilized and was safe, Dad was still lacking any great spiritual mentor or influence in his daily life. In the fall of 1955, his days would change forever when he met the girl he would one day marry, my mom, Caryl Easterday Smith. They married the following summer and my dad experienced something he had rarely known: family.
Dad wrote this about marrying mom, “Life began for me with the phrase, ‘with this ring, I thee wed.’” He understood that the cycle of generational unbelief was broken when he met Jesus a few years earlier, but as it related to experiencing a true, loving earthly relationship with someone, that occurred for the first time when Dad met Mom. Dad began to see how a loving family operated. He felt authentic, sacrificial love from someone else. And my mom began lovingly seeking him. Dad wrote in one of his journals that my mom’s family celebrated his birthday with his first birthday cake EVER! Imagine being 20 years old and not ever having a birthday cake. He felt loved, valued and cared for unlike any other time in life.
Throughout this blog series I focused on the issue of unbelief and belief, especially that of my dad. However, I have to speak of the faith of my mom. My dad lived with physical and familial circumstances over which he had no control. But for Mom it was different. She entered their marriage knowing full-well what might lie ahead, a life of trials and difficulties. And yet, she loved Dad, and chose to marry him, regardless of what was ahead. “God used some daring people to save me.” One of those daring people was my mom and her parents. Dad’s faith had been rewarded. For the first time in his life, dad had family and it was the beginning of something new and fresh.
But when God works, Satan also is scheming to destroy God’s plan and the ones God loves. Their wedding almost didn’t occur. Very few people on Dad’s side of the family were in favor of the marriage because of his disease. In fact, some even threatened to kidnap him before the wedding to prevent him from marrying. The instability of his growing up years continued to haunt him. Thankfully, the kidnapping did not occur and Mom and Dad joyfully married. Dad was enjoying the reward of his faith and following Christ.
I want to share another blessing Dad was experiencing. By this time, Dad was 20 years old and had outlived all of the doctor’s expectations. The early diagnosis was that Dad would not make it to his first birthday. Once he passed that milestone, the prognosis was that he would not live past 12 years of age. He continued to astound physicians as he broke every life expectancy limit they set. But God had other plans. Dad had now graduated high school, had married and was beginning his own adult life. No one in his family or the medical world of professionals around him believed this could happen. God blesses our faith with more opportunities for faith.
Mom and Dad’s walk with Christ was deepening daily. Mom told me that while she grew up in a good, Christian home, she really never had met anyone who read his Bible daily until she met Dad. Not only did Dad have a growing faith, he was passing that faith along to others, including my mom. Their first few years of marriage included opportunities for faith to be tested. Dad continued to have bleeds which would keep him out of work. He would experience job loss after job loss. Employers simply could not keep someone on the payroll who had to take as much sick time as Dad. Yet God was faithful and provided for their needs.
Then another blessing occurred. Do you remember me telling you that Dad’s family didn’t want him to marry. Well neither did his doctors. Their reasoning had to do with any children that Mom and Dad would have. The short version is that any female children would be carriers of hemophilia, and their sons would have the disease. However, a male child’s genetic makeup would end the disease in the family. Seven years later and after many many prayers, they decided it was time to have a child. And in 1963, God heard and answered their prayer. They had a son born free of the disease. When I was born, hemophilia ended in the family. And while I was born with a sin nature just like all of us, I was born physically healthy and free from the disease. God had rewarded their faith. And their faith was getting deeper and stronger.
They would need a deep faith for what was coming. They would need something to lean on when trials would come because what was coming, no one could imagine.
Think About It
Think back on events in your life. Can you recall times when God has rewarded your faith? Take a few minutes to write those down, especially thanking God for his faithfulness.
Read 2 Timothy 2:13 and consider the times when God was faithful to you even when your faith faltered.
Do you trust Him to guide, bless and reward your faith? How is God asking you today to take a deeper step of faith?
Pray
Thank God for His faithfulness, even in your times of faithlessness. Ask God to deepen and strengthen your faith, even if it is through trials and difficulties. Tell God you trust Him to work out the details of your life even better than you can draw them up yourself. And commit to Him, right now, to trust Him fully to work all things together for good. (Romans 8:28)