Life-Experience: The Hiccup Curse!

By Pastor Jim Barr Follow @pastorbarr

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For the last six days, I have had the hiccups.  I am not talking about the ordinary and annoying kind. I am talking about the rapid-fire kind that chokes you, makes you sick, and disables you. They have moved in and no doctor, nor hospital, nor high-priced pill, nor shot, nor any of the seventeen different home remedies have been able to convince them to leave me.  Needless, this is a “Life-Experience” I that would rather skip and one that I pray will end shortly.

Like all experiences, good or bad, there can be some powerful lessons taught by the Spirit through the Word in times like these. For example, I learned that you can pray long and hard while holding your breath while seeking immediate relief before you pass out.  The lesson I learned from these breathtaking experiences is that you better put “nevertheless not my will but your will be done” on the end of every prayer.
 

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I also learned that willing something to be so doesn’t make it so. Occasionally, we believe that if we will something hard enough that somehow that translates into super faith and God must act. God does not move according to our will; but rather we move towards his will.  Faith is an important element that is required in every prayer; but we must remember, we are placing our faith in God – the God who holds the perfect will for our life and only gives good gifts to His children. Real faith, super faith, trusts in the only God that knows what is best for you. Our will doesn’t move mountains. God is the mover of mountains and He does so only when it is for the best.  I must and I do place my faith in Him.

The curse of the disabling hiccups has also taught me humility.  Think on this for a moment, you walk into a clinic seeking urgent medical attention and the check-in nurse ask you, “And what seems to be your problem today?” First, you want to knock her in the head because you have been hiccupping all the way to the room; and then she wants you to confess, the reason you are there is because of the hiccups. “I ha—ve—th—hic—hic—ups,” you reply. She then gives you that school nursery look and says with all amazement, “The hiccups???” You replay the same scene at the ER three or four times and get the same you-have-got-to-be-kidding look. You know humbleness.

I would like to finish this little self-indulgent piece with a particular cornerstone of wisdom that I have learned; but since I am up at one o’clock in the morning writing this between hiccups, I can only share this current wisdom lesson in this affair so fat: God can be trusted and He never leaves you.

Maybe someday when the hiccups are but a bad memory, I will write more about this simple truth and all that went on in my mind and my heart. For now it is enough to simple say God can be trusted – even when the thorn remains in your side  ̶  and He never leaves your side.

The Apostle Paul Said:
So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. (2 Corinthians 12:7-9 ESV)