“But the one who endures to the end will be saved.” Matthew 24:13
“The greatest grace God can give a soul is to send him a trial he cannot bear with his own powers, and then sustain him with his grace so he may endure to the end and be saved.” Father Walter Ciszek
““My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12;9
I discovered this truth that day and night in the ICU beside my daughter. I prayed and prayed. I struggled and tried all I could to help my daughter. And, God presented me with my Abraham/Isaac moment. He said to me, “do you trust Me?” I said “yes, heal my daughter as You promised.” God replied, “if you trust Me, trust Me with My daughter.” And, I said no.
Later that night, as you know from ‘I Knew His Voice’, she went into respiratory failure and sat in the edge of death. I cried out how alone I was in that moment beside her bed.
God from this moment before me, after months of the deepest, has given me one of the strongest prayers I’ve ever experienced. He placed me in this moment after all the times He came and spoke, saying to just trust.
It broke my heart and crushed me to fail so extremely. I saw how far I had fallen that night. Abraham gave his only son, the son of promise and was willing to offer Isaac up to God. His trust in God was total. I withheld my daughter. My trust was nonexistent.
If that had been the end of the story…. But, that night was just the start. I learned over the following months and years that in part, this night and request of God was heightened by my no. In that denial of trust, God started to build me, God showed me that I couldn’t bear this or anything without Him. He made the words of 2 Corinthians 12:9 come alive not just in words but in deed.
If there is one moment in my life that rings out more pivotal than the no that night, I can’t think of it. For from this moment of failure, my soul has been purified in the cleansing fire and have learned by God’s grace I may endure to the end and be saved. Through any trial.
Like St. Peter, I was tested and failed. I denied the very power of God and even all the messages of trust He had given me. I read my definition of what “Trust Me” meant. I didn’t just take those words at base meaning. But, like St. Peter, I was forgiven and called to a higher mission in my life.
And, as I right this nearly 15 years after that ICU nightmare, St. Paul’s words suddenly come crystal clear – “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Philippians 2:12-13
“The greatest grace God can give a soul is to send him a trial he cannot bear with his own powers, and then sustain him with his grace so he may endure to the end and be saved.”