This week, Jessica Kelley shares with us her testimony. In addition, she tells us why having a solid picture of God is so important when we go through suffering. 
Jessica Kelley’s testimony is so important to this message, so be sure to listen to the sermon before reading this extended review. For more of her testimony and to continue following her family’s journey, visit jessicakelley.com.
Jessica Kelley’s testimony tells us why it’s so important to understand how God works in this world. Two of the ways to understand this world are the blueprint worldview and the warfare worldview. In the blueprint worldview, God controls everything, including Jessica’s child, Henry, dying from cancer. In this view, God controls Henry’s body breaking down, developing cancer, and painfully living with cancer until he died. And this view makes it seem good, just, and right.
In the warfare worldview, God doesn’t want cancer and actively works against it. God doesn’t plan someone to have cancer; that’s the work of Satan. Rather, God actively works against cancer. God works to comfort those who suffer. In the warfare worldview, God is not the author of suffering and pain in this world. And that’s so important for how we react to suffering in this world.
Living life according to the warfare worldview gives us the ability to understand God’s heart for those who suffer. Instead of a God who causes our pain, we know a God who looks like Jesus. The Jesus who healed diseases, who prayed for those who persecuted him, and ultimately worked for our forgiveness on the cross is the face of God. By viewing this Jesus in the midst of our suffering, we find a compassionate God who loves us and doesn’t want us to suffer. We find a compassionate God who is constantly at work in this world against the kingdom of darkness. We find a compassionate God who meets us in our prayers to allay fears and bring peace to our worst suffering.
Jessica Kelley is constantly working to help people see this view of God, and to oppose the blueprint worldview that is propagated in this world. We shouldn’t have the misconception about God that everything is caused by God, because Jesus shows us differently. And in this world, it is so important to have a solid picture of God.
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What an incredibly potent testimony to the absolutely unshakeable power of Faith in Christ! And Henry!!!! – What an Amazingly Brave Warrior for Jesus he was and IS!!! May Jessica continue to bring remarkable healing and strength to others through her story!
While the Kelley family’s life experience underscores the richness and depth of the Father’s love, it also reminds us how each of our lives has been vandalized by the powers of darkness in one form or another as a consequence of our Fall. These issues of life both show us (in part) what we fell from and the restorative power of God’s love through the Cross.
In a way, Greg points out this aspect early on in his message with Sandra Unger on ‘Ultimate Compassion’ ( http://vimeo.com/8035930 ) when, during his trip down to Haiti, Greg is traveling in an air-conditioned van, sees a small malnourished child searching for food on a pile of rubbish and makes the observation that it is ‘just luck’ (perhaps random may be a better word choice) that we find ourselves where we are in life.
In one sense, when these issues come upon us, it can be so confronting that before we know it, on our lips is ‘If God is a god of love then why is happening to me?’. Then we find Jesus faced with similar issues of life throughout His ministry, but taking control as He brings the remedial powers of the Kingdom of Heaven upon those situations (Luke 4:18, Matt 6:10 & 10:7-8).
The disciples faced similar situations and persecution, however, their reaction in later ministry was the same they had learned from Jesus either directly or under the guidance of the Spirit…..they have become citizens of Heaven on earth and ‘training for reigning’.
There is no less a reason for us not to be similarly discipled (as Greg says to present a Jesus like love or the Kingdom like love) in all aspects and encounters of our life. In fact, when Christ’s people are under greater persecution ie conflict between the two kingdoms, the gospel message thrives as distinct from the ‘holiday’ lifestyle most Christians are on as argued by Sandra in the above message.
The early persecution of the church was largely lost with Constantine’s ‘Edicts of Toleration’ for Christians issued in 311. With this came a slackening in the gospel message and discipling as such. Those inspired to retain it commenced the early stages of monasticism with members seeking to live a hermit like existence practicing the disciplines of the faith viz prayer, study, worship, fasting etc.
While this also led to some community/church groups adopting similar principles, like the Anabaptists, I personally found Joseph Hellerman’s book “When the Church was a Family – recapturing Jesus’ vision for authentic Christian Community” to provide great inspiration of church formation and for saved individuals to become part of the new Heavenly citizenship on earth. Similarly “Spiritual Formation as if the Church Mattered – Growing in Christ through Community” by James Wilhoit also provides a corporate/community approach to discipling.
In many ways, like the Kelleys, our faith is tested on a daily basis not with a view to destruction but rather along with discipling, to strengthen it and our relationship to God to both withstand attacks by the enemy and provide inspiration to the Church community.