Through the Valley: Five-Day Bible Plan With Pamela JohnsonSample

Day One: The Fruit of Dependence

No one ever said, ‘I prefer suffering over ease and happiness’. If given a choice, we would hang out on the glorious mountaintops of life and never descend into the valleys of suffering. Thankfully, for our prosperity, God doesn't see things from our perspective.

Billy Graham once said, ‘Mountaintops are for views and inspiration, but fruit is grown in the valleys’. In other words, if we bypass the valley of suffering, we bypass the fruit that God has provided for our growth.

Fruits such as apples and oranges provide the healthy nutrients our bodies utilize to fight diseases. In the same manner, spiritual fruit can produce a godly attitude in our hearts that resists the temptation to sin. One such produce harvested in the valley is that we recognize our inability to control circumstances and our dependence on God. The nourishment of eating this fruit is to find him faithful.

I used to be a missionary in Mozambique, Africa, where there is one doctor for every 100,000 people and few hospitals and clinics. One day I became very ill with a resistant malaria and was taken to the hospital.

The conditions were crowded by our American standards and I found myself in the children's ward next to a deathly ill female adolescent on one side and a very sick baby on the other. My heart went out especially to the young girl and I wanted to share God's love and hope with her before it was too late. 

With my fever raging and the intravenous quinine causing hallucinations, I could barely speak English, let alone the indigenous language needed to communicate with this Mozambican child. I never felt so helpless. To add to my frustration was the TV in the room blaring all day and night. It was a great novelty to the large number of relatives that came to stay with their children. The added noise pollution made my plan seem so pointless. 

Then one surprising afternoon, on the TV I had resented so much, came the ‘Jesus Story’ in the families' own language. With both the audio and visual presentation, I couldn't have explained the gospel any better. Exodus 14:14 bore fruit in my life as God was teaching me in my helplessness and suffering to simply be still. His battle plan was not only better but it was already in motion.

Prayer: Dear Lord, open my eyes to what you are teaching me and help me to partake of the fruit in the valleys that you provide. Grant me the grace to always depend on you whether on the highest mountaintop or in the deepest ravine.