Life Coaching: Things Just Got Real

One of my all time favorite hymns is “It Is Well With My Soul.” This hymn perfectly captures the agony of life here on this earth, especially knowing the backstory of the man, Horatio Spafford, who wrote it. He lost his business in a fire, hisson died of pneumonia, and his four daughters were drowned when an ocean liner sank. His wife survived, and sent him a telegram that said, “Saved alone, what shall I do?” Mr. Spafford immediately booked a passage on the next available ship to go to his grieving wife. While aboard the ship, when they were about four days from his destination, the captain called Spafford into his cabin. “We are now over the place where your children went down,” he told Spafford.

According to Spafford’s daughter (one who was born after the tragedy), Spafford wrote “It Is Well With My Soul” while on that boat, grieving for his four daughters who had perished. That was in 1873, this song has been blessing people throughout the years since then. I cannot even imagine writing the words, “when sorrows like sea billows roll,” while looking out my cabin window at the place where my children had died. And I certainly can’t image writing “it is well with my soul” after such a tragedy. But, I have a feeling Mr. Spafford had a certainty in his heart about something—something we really don’t think much about today, and that certainty was that heaven is real. It was a certainty that he would see his young son and his precious daughters again, and he knew that as long as he trusted God, he could truly say, “It is well with my soul.”

Life is a smacker around of the people living it. Life hits us right between the eyes and shows us no mercy. It takes no prisoners, and it is relentless in it’s pursuit of us. My questions today are these: What are we allowing life to do to us? How are we handling those curve balls? Are we smacking them out of the park like Darryl Strawberry on a good day or are we getting hit in the head, or bit on the ear like Mike Tyson on a bad day? Do we believe heaven is real? How do we live our lives embracing the reality of heaven? How “real” do we believe heaven really is? These are not easy questions to answer.

If you’ve lost someone close to you (like a spouse or a child), then the reality of heaven just got up close and personal. We either embrace the fact that we’ll see our loved ones again, or we flee from God’s presence in anger because He took them from us. It’s dicey, and it could easily go either way. I have been there and the slope is a slippery one. If you’re there at that crossroads, let me encourage you in this…there is no place to run to escape the presence of God. The Psalmist writes, “If I go to heaven, You’re there. If I go to hell, You're there.” So, run though we might, it does us no good. We can’t escape the Hound of Heaven, as Francis Thompson so eloquently called Him. My advice: Don’t run. Be still right where you are and tell Him exactly how you feel. It’s ok. He’s heard it all before and He listens.

I did a short little video yesterday on this topic and I’m linking it below. Please take a moment to watch when you get a chance. God bless you! Maranatha!