Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,
“Never will I leave you;
    never will I forsake you.”

• Hebrews 13:5

But now, this is what the Lord says—
    he who created you, Jacob,
    he who formed you, Israel:
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
    I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters,
    I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
    they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
    you will not be burned;
    the flames will not set you ablaze.
For I am the Lord your God,
    the Holy One of Israel, your Savior;
I give Egypt for your ransom,
    Cush and Seba in your stead.
Since you are precious and honored in my sight,
    and because I love you,
I will give people in exchange for you,
    nations in exchange for your life.
Do not be afraid, for I am with you;
    I will bring your children from the east
    and gather you from the west.
I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’
    and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’
Bring my sons from afar
    and my daughters from the ends of the earth—
everyone who is called by my name,
    whom I created for my glory,
    whom I formed and made.”

• Isaiah 43:1-7

Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”
But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

• John 20:24-29

Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.
But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”
“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”
“Come,” he said.
Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”
Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”
And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down.

• Matthew 14:25-32

You make known to me the path of life;
    you will fill me with joy in your presence,
    with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

• Psalm 16:11

The Boilerplate

My wife took a Bible Study in 2011.  (There was a note in the study guide that identified September 2 and that the study was being held on Friday mornings, or I might not have ever figured out what year.)  My wife had become a Christian in 2000. She greatly respected the pastor’s wife who was also a pastor.  The pastor’s wife spent time as the interim associate pastor, and this Bible study might have been during that time.

My wife passed away in March 2023, and I found this study guide as I was cleaning up.  It is a Beth Moore study guide.  Most of the questions are close-ended, mostly fill-in-the-blank.  But my wife was eager to learn.  She wrote her thoughts in the margins, sometimes encouraged to do so by Beth Moore.  I will use her comments as I did once before, calling this a “with a little help” series in that my wife contributes.  There is more to follow in that she wrote Scriptures and prayers in a notebook.  Probably what she found in her personal Bible study, giving her encouragement through the long illness that took her life.

So, instead of writing about a topic at random, I am going to write on my wife’s comments in the Study Guide. It may follow the study guide topics, but it may not.

Discussion on this topic

Beth Moore asks the class to complete a sentence.  “When I read Isaiah 43:1, I feel …”

“Released from my fear, anything I’m afraid of.”

• My wife’s response

Then the next few verses are dominated by the word “when.”  Would the meaning change, if the word were “if”.

“ ‘If’ leaves doubt, ‘when’ is ‘Yes!  Definitely!”

• My wife’s inner thoughts

Have you ever felt God’s presence in a palpable sense?

“Selling of our home in South Carolina.  Two and a half years and no one bought it.  We asked God and finally we decided to turn in the key to the bank.  At the last minute, someone placed an offer on it.”

• My wife’s response

We thought that was the darkest hour for us financially.  We had rented out the house just to have enough cash flow to balance our monthly budget with two house notes (mortgage and rental) and two car notes.  Each renter left the house in a shambles, the repairs, each time, being more than two- or three-months’ rent.  If my boss at the NASA project had not arranged for us to get an extra one or two percent pay increase a couple of times during that period, we would have already gone under.  We prayed, and there was calm as I picked up the phone and told our real estate agent what our intentions were.  She said that she would make the next house payment.  She felt confident that this latest potential buyer would not back out, and she had already obtained financial approval.  Prior to this, we had two other potential buyers who failed to obtain loans, not getting qualified.

The new owners?  A pastor and his young family.  God had heard our prayer and the decision to turn in the key was an act of humility, as it places a black mark on your credit rating, but the credit rating people never found out our intentions.  Yes, we felt God’s presence at that time.

God is a spirit.  He leaves no fingerprints behind as He touches things.  We have to interpret the events in our lives, filtered by our faith, to experience God on a daily basis.  Non-believers would call it mere chance, but we know better.  How did Jesus respond when one of His disciples demanded to see the “fingerprints” to prove Jesus had risen from the dead?

“Because you have seen Me, you have believed.  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

• My wife quoting John 20:29

The point is that we do not see God, in the flesh, standing before us with the nail marks in his hands and feet.  We must take all that in faith.  Yes, historical records of the time can give us some assurance that Jesus might have died on the cross, but as for the resurrection, I like Lee Strobel’s argument that the apostles died martyrs’ death, except maybe John.  Any of them might have avoided that death by denying the resurrection, but none of them did.

As for God living among us, we see His handiwork in every living thing, in the rocks, in the trees, and in the skies.  Others can postulate other methods, but as someone told an atheist, it takes a lot more faith that all this, in all its detail and millions of little parts that have to work simultaneously, to happen by mere chance or by accident.  It is a lot simpler to believe that God, with infinite power and infinite intelligence, designed and created everything.

But why should the disciples not have been afraid when they were on the boat and the storm was tossing them about?

“Jesus Christ’s assurance because they knew He was the Messiah.”

• My wife’s inner thoughts

But even when Jesus calmed the storm by speaking to it, they were still afraid.  Their minds were trying to comprehend what infinite power over all of God’s Creation really meant.

But David was a man after God’s own heart.  What would David expect from God (Ps. 16:11)?

“Joy of total security and the life David enjoys in being with God.”

• My wife’s inner thoughts

What was my wife’s simple prayer in realizing how God is always with us and within us?

“Dear Father, thank you for your steadfast love.  Help me to lean on You with everything.”

• My wife’s inner thoughts

And as harder times came her way soon after this Bible study, she had a calm about her.  She fought to get better, and the good days were rare, but she never lost sight that God was with her the entire time.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory