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by Matt Jensen, Cadet –
Ever since I had to prepare myself for my wife and daughter’s death, verses like 2 Timothy 2:1 hold a whole new meaning for me, “…be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus” (ESV).
I still remember when the doctors told me that they needed to perform an emergency cesarean during the thirtieth week of my wife’s pregnancy so that maybe one of them may be saved. “Either way,” one nurse told me in the hallway as my wife screamed in pain a few feet away, “because of your wife’s condition there’s a high chance we’ll lose them both in surgery. You need to prepare yourself.”
Barely holding it together, I wrestled with God like never before. I didn’t understand why he’d allow them to be taken away from me in this way, but I still proclaimed the whole time with tears in my eyes that he was holy and that whatever his will was that I would forever praise him.
Within moments, the word went out, and on-line, on the radio, in churches of various denominations in at least four countries, and all of the cadets at the College for Officer Training assembled in prayer.
When I heard my daughter cry for the first time in the operating room, my world stood still. Hours later when the doctors told me that they would both be fine, my world became beautiful. Completely humbled by an act of God’s grace that I didn’t deserve, I knew that I had been strengthened through my complete surrender to his will even in my most difficult trial.
It’s easy to gloss over verses like 2 Timothy 2:1 without meditating upon their depth, but it’s in verses like these that we are instructed on how to keep our daily walk upon the steppingstones of eternity. It’s not always easy to stand upon each stone in front of us that paves our Christian walk; indeed, sometimes we may have to crawl. But all our Father asks of us is that we keep moving forward in surrender, and then allow him to continually transform us into stronger ambassadors of his grace.