If it weren’t for Martin Luther, I wouldn’t be here. I don’t mean serving in a Protestant ministry; I mean I wouldn’t be alive.
I am a descendant of a Catholic priest and contemporary of Martin Luther. He joined Luther in the Protestant Reformation, renounced his priesthood, and his vow of celibacy. Just eight years after Luther nailed his “95 Theses” to the door of the church, my ancestor was burned at the stake for being a heretic, but not until after he got married and had two children. A couple of years later, his wife was also burned at the stake, leaving a four-year-old son and two-year-old daughter in the care of relatives. I am a descendant of the son. There is a statue in The Hague, Netherlands, dedicated to those burned at the stake for their crimes against the church. My ancestor’s name is listed as one of the first person to be martyred for being a Protestant.
If the French Revolution went down as the Russian one did (where all the members of the royal family were murdered), I wouldn’t exist. Several members of the French Royal Family escaped to Canada during the civil unrest, changed their last name, intermarried with the Native Americans, and became fur traders. I am a descendant of the part of the French Royal Family who went into hiding and thrived in Canada.
If my great-great-grandparents never got together, I wouldn’t be alive. In 1849, my great-great-grandfather, a young man, heard about the California Gold Rush. He traveled cross-country by covered wagon with his brother from Southwest WI to Bodie, CA, where they struck gold and eventually owned three gold mines. At some point, one of their donkeys escaped. Roger’s brother went to look for it, got caught in a freak snowstorm, and froze to death.
During Bodie’s heyday, my great-great-grandmother, decided to go with her older sister to Bodie to run a restaurant and hotel for the miners. (It was really a saloon and a brothel). She and her sister traveled from Southwest WI by boat through the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway, down the East Coast of the Americas, crossed Panama on foot, caught another boat on the West side, and went up the coast to CA. She and her sister ran a booming business in Bodie, where she and my great-great-grandfather met, fell in love, got married, and had my great-grandfather. By that time, the Transcontinental Railroad was finished, and realizing Bodie was no place to raise a family, my great-great grandfather sold his gold mines and headed back to Southwest WI with his family.
It was God’s will that I exist. He mixed just the right combination of German, French, English (and a little bit of Native American) blood to make me. He combined just the right amount of righteous, royal, and rabble-trouser to give me the personality I need. And in the fullness of time, He brought me to Himself and filled me with His Spirit so that I could fulfill His calling for me.
You may not know stories of your ancestors, but that makes your existence no less a miracle. For you to be alive, generations of men and women had to come together at just the right time to create you. God planned you long before you ever entered the scene. God also created a good, pleasing, perfect plan for your life before you were born. Then He brought you to Himself and gave you everything you would need to fulfill that plan.
Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”
Psalm 139:16 says, “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in Your book were written [all my days] every one of them, the days that were [planned] for me, when as yet there was none of them.”
God didn’t just do a lot of work to get me here. He also worked hard to keep me here.
The first time I could have died, I was just 2 years old. My mom had a serious case of postpartum depression after my brother was born. She came to the conclusion that she could not raise children in this dark world. One night, when my dad was gone, she planned to smother my brother and me in our sleep and then kill herself. But as she was about to attempt the unthinkable, she remembered the words of a farm magazine salesman who had recently come to her door. When she turned down his offer to buy a magazine, he shared the Gospel with her.
She dropped to her knees and committed her life to Jesus. To be assured she was forgiven and saved, she asked God to trust her with another child. As the story goes, my next youngest sister was conceived that night. (Side note: don’t ever get discouraged when you share the Gospel and there is no response. You have no idea what seeds you have planted, what decisions will be made in the future, and what fruit will come from your declaring the truth).
The next time my life could have ended, I was engaged to be married. One evening, I was driving home from work in an ice storm. The radio in my car wasn’t coming in clearly, so I looked down to turn it off. When I did, I lost control and began swerving across the road. I was in the oncoming lane with a dump truck barreling toward me. The driver was struggling to control his vehicle. Just as we were about to collide, I called out to Jesus for help. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a gravel driveway next to me. I turned the wheel hard to my left, got some traction on the gravel, and skidded to a stop just as the dump truck slid past me.
The next time I could have passed away, I was pregnant with my first child. I was in preterm labor, and my daughter was coming almost two months early, so I was placed in the hospital and given some medicine to stop the labor. That evening, a nurse suggested I take a sleeping pill because if they couldn’t stop the labor and my baby came early, at least I would have a good night’s sleep under my belt. But there was some kind of reaction between the labor-stopping medicine and the sleeping pill. In the middle of the night, I awoke feeling terrible. I pushed the nurse call button, and within seconds, the door burst open, lights turned on, and doctors and nurses rushed in. I was hooked up to seven different machines, and a nurse sat with me all night to keep me awake. I found out later that my blood pressure had dropped to 45/35. With that dangerously low level, if I had not pushed the nurse call button, my child and I could have been knocking on Heaven’s gate.
The next time I almost died was by my own hand. I had just been diagnosed with my second incurable, potentially debilitating disease. Fifteen years earlier, when my son was an infant, I had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and told that I would be in a wheelchair by the time he graduated from High School. That time was fast approaching. Now, I had been diagnosed with Macular Telangiectasia (Mac Tel) and was told that I was going blind. The best way I can describe how I felt was that all of the color went out of my life. I felt that I could still have a productive life from a wheelchair, but the idea of being in a wheelchair and blind was too much for me. I couldn’t stand the idea of waiting in some dark corner for someone to come and take care of me. I didn’t want to be a burden to my family, so I decided to take my own life. Because I didn’t know what I know now about spiritual warfare and generational curses, that seemed like the best course of action. My husband was on a business trip; I decided to wait until he returned, because I didn’t want to leave my children with no parent. By the grace of God, my husband called that night, and I told him about my diagnosis. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but he said we’d be in this together, whatever the future held. That was enough for me to scrap my suicide plans.
It was God’s will that I grow up, get married, have children, and have a life after my children were grown. According to His plan, my life did not get cut short in a toddler bed, be snuffed out in a car accident, end in a hospital mistake, or be taken by suicide. Contrary to the doctor’s prediction, I am not in a wheelchair. And though it is getting harder and harder for me to read, I am far from being blind. In accordance with James 5, I have gone to the elders, had them pray over me, and anoint me with oil. Therefore, God promises to forgive and heal me. I am waiting and praying for that, but I also realize that if God wishes to take my physical sight, He will give me something more precious in spiritual sight. God’s plans for me cannot be thwarted.
Your story may not be one of disease and brushes with death. It may be one of abuse and loss. It may be one of struggle and disappointments. Or it may be a life so ordinary that you feel like you have no special purpose. But no matter what, God has good plans for you that cannot be thwarted. Neither you, nor the enemy, nor anyone or anything else can mess up God’s plans for you.
Philippians 1:6 tells us, “that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.”
Romans 8:28, 38 & 39 promises “that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose … For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
It is a miracle that any of us is alive. We are all here for a purpose. Won’t you thank God for placing you on earth and turn to Him for direction for your life?