Faith from our Community - Thank you!

As Jan and I spend time reflecting here in Queensland, we are seeking to understand the meaning of faith and how it should apply to every area of our lives. We have so many questions about the loss of Talia, especially whether we had enough faith for her healing and whether we could have done anything differently.

We can never understand why God chose not to heal Talia, but we do know that the only life God wants us to live is a life of faith. We know that faith pleases God (Romans 1:17 "The righteous man shall live by faith") and as we consider what this life looks like, God has shown me something interesting about the concept of "abundance".

I had previously understood abundance to mean that we have an excess of those things we need, including finances and other resources. 2 Corinthians 9:8 says "And God is able to make all grace abound to you, that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed.". When you look at the life of Jesus, He never had substantial finances, but always had more than enough. In fact, when Jesus had to pay taxes, He simply applied faith and asked Peter to collect it from the mouth of a fish (Matt 17: 24-27). This is the lifestyle which I am seeking - to see God's miraculous provision in every instance, providing the resources to fulfil the vision by faith which He has planted in my heart.

One of the keys which was missing from Jan and my lives was an understanding of both faith and provision being shared by our Christian family/community. We have been astounded as God has spoken to people and called them to share in our faith journey and this has had great impact on us personally as we have learned to open our lives to others, in recognition of the fact that we are part of the Body of Christ:

From whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.
- Ephesians 4:16

Not only have we experienced the burden of faith being shared with our Christian family, we have now experienced our physical and emotional needs being met through family and friends being led by the Holy Spirit to play a part during such a difficult time in our lives.

The song we included in the Photo Tribute to Talia was called "I was Carried" and to us this reflects the fact that not only is God carrying us through this experience from a spiritual perspective, but our Christian family has carried us from an emotional and physical perspective.

We want to say Thank You from deep in our hearts to all of you who have given of yourselves to step into our lives and care for us. So many people provided beautiful messages and words from God about Talia and her impact, as well as providing food and assistance during recent days. We were so touched that many people were compelled to participate in the services for Talia and so many people attended to share in our sorrow. We are currently blessed to be able to spend time in beautiful Harvey Bay, Queensland thanks to an old friend from our university days. Many of you encouraged us not to give up in our relationship with God and pursue the purpose of our experience and the impact it will have on our future.

Our lives have been profoundly changed in so many ways, but one of these is to understand what it means to be part of the Body of Christ functioning exactly as Jesus intended it to be. We still grieve for our baby and long for God to give us a family, but we know that the journey ahead is not one we will need to take alone!

Thanks be to God for each one of you...