The 828 Journey

By Gina G. Parker

Don't let the devil gulp you down for dessert-move from the voice of pain to a testimony of trust!

Where do you take your pain in the face of tragedy? Like Tamar, where do you take your shame? Like Job, how do you endure disease? Like the mothers of the faith-Sarah, Rebekah, Leah, and Rachel-where do you take your unanswered prayers?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Oct 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685562373

Gina G. Parker

Gina G. Parker graduated from Baylor University with a BBA and from Baylor Law School. She has practiced law since 1991. In 2001, she founded Dental Creations with the vision to provide second chances to criminal defendants, help women in crisis, and support missions. Ms. Parker is a leading voice in the conservative movement. She served as the National Eagle Forum Chairman for Judicial Reform and is a past recipient of the National Outstanding Eagle Award for Texas for her support of the United States Constitution. Ms. Parker ministers in the United States and abroad. She leads the Hands of Hope International ministry. She is also the author of The 828 Journey. For more information, visit www.ginagparker.com.

Book preview

Dedication

To Hudson and Harrison.

Remember, all things work together for good.

Part One:

Trials and Tragedies

Chapter One

Plan A: In the Beginning

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose

(Romans 8:28, NKJV).

All Things Work for Good

The 828 Journey is about God’s divine plan for each life. The inspiration for this book is based upon my life verse from Scripture—Romans 8:28: And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. This verse has provided rich encouragement and the sweetest comfort during trying times when I couldn’t see God’s plan because of the pain and confusion. While we may not understand why bad things happen to good people or the trials and tragedies we may personally encounter in this life, Romans 8:28 is an anchor of hope for the battle-worn soul.

However, when we—or those we love—experience tragedy, the heart-wrenching question that lingers in our souls like a dark cloud on a stormy day is this: Do all things really work together for good? Does divorce work for good? Does sickness work for good? Does cancer work for good? Does sexual abuse work for good? Does death work for good? Does the death of a child work for good? Does tragedy work for good?

After experiencing the heartache of adultery and divorce, I found myself asking these same questions, yet clinging to Romans 8:28. Amid shattered dreams, shame, and heartbreak, I had many daunting questions: Why, God, why? Why is this happening to me? This was not what I envisioned the plan for my life would look like. At the same time, there were many other unanswered prayers and unfulfilled dreams. More questions raced through my mind about the good that God promises: When, God? And how?

Following my divorce, darkness hung over me like a cloud, feelings of hopelessness bombarded my soul, and the voice of the enemy raged in my head, whispering words of condemnation. There were many tearful prayer times as I wrestled with shame, guilt, disappointment, grief, and fear. Many days were spent lying across the bed or on the floor, crying out to God, asking questions, and wondering about the future. Yet, it was in this place that I experienced the comfort of the Holy Spirit and the unconditional love of God. During these times of talking to God, I could hear Him and feel His presence near. I often heard Him speak gently to me that He loved me and would not leave me alone. Mostly, I felt His sweet presence. It was as if God held me in His arms, like a mother comforting her hurting child. At this juncture on my personal 828 Journey, I decided that all my questions didn’t have to be answered and that nothing could separate me from the love of God. My purpose in life then became to love God and love people. His presence became more precious to me than the details of my life, and I truly came to know my friend Jesus.

During this time of grieving, I received a card in the mail from my precious cousin Janine Kooistra. On the front, it read, Life is all about how you handle Plan B. This card is still on my picture board as a reminder that all things work together for good. Several years passed after my divorce, and I told myself that I was way past Plan B. I was on Plan D or F, or maybe even further down the alphabet. Perhaps I was on Plan Z—which you’ll discover more about as you read this book.

However, it’s important to first understand Plan A—God’s original plan. As was said by the wise teacher Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, When you begin, you envision a better end, but when you get to the end, you see the beginning better!¹

The Bible—including Romans 8:28—doesn’t guarantee a happily-ever-after fairy tale life in this world, nor does it ask us to pretend that tragedies and trials never happen. God does not call a tragedy good; that isn’t what Romans 8:28 teaches. We’re living in a fallen world; consequently, we encounter trials and tragedies. However, this verse assures us of God’s presence with us on the 828 Journey. We also have the cherished promise later in Romans 8 that nothing can ever separate us from the wonderful love of God.

The Master Weaver

The promise of Romans 8:28 is that all things work together for good. The English word synergy comes from the Greek word meaning works together.² The old saying about the whole being greater than its parts is a good example of synergy.

As witnessed in the life of Christian heroine Corrie ten Boom, the bigger picture of life events provides a deeper understanding of how all things work together for good. Her powerful testimony about the tapestry of God in the life of a believer is an excellent example of Romans 8:28.

Corrie ten Boom endured horrible pain and suffering, yet her story is one of triumph over tragedy. She was a Christian who, along with her family, helped many Jews escape the Nazi Holocaust during World War II. Eventually, they were arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps. Later, Corrie and her sister Betsie were sent to the Ravensbruck women’s concentration camp, where her sister died. Before Betsie’s death, she testified to God’s sovereign care as she told Corrie, There is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still.³ Only a few weeks later, Corrie was miraculously released due to a clerical error. A week after her release, all the women in her age group at Ravensbruck were sent to the gas chambers. Words cannot adequately describe the atrocities of the Holocaust.

Reading about the suffering of Corrie ten Boom reminded me of a sobering visit to a Holocaust memorial in Hungary. Its official name is Shoes on the Danube Bank, and it’s commonly known as simply the Shoes. Located on the banks of the Danube River in Budapest, this moving memorial consists of sixty pairs of cast iron shoes arrayed along the bank. They call to remembrance the place where Jewish Hungarians were slaughtered during the Holocaust. Unimaginable evil was unleashed upon men, women, and children who were marched to the river’s edge, ordered to remove their shoes, and shot to death—with their bodies falling into the river. Tragically, during 1944 and 1945, approximately twenty thousand Jews were executed along the Danube. It was a river of innocent blood.⁴

My heart was grieved after visiting this memorial, and to this day, I especially cannot forget the shoes there of an innocent child.

Despite the unspeakable suffering that Corrie ten Boom endured and witnessed, she established a rehabilitation house for both survivors and perpetrators of the Holocaust. She also wrote the famous book The Hiding Place and traveled the world sharing her powerful testimony about the love of God. While sharing her testimony with audiences worldwide, she would display a piece of tapestry with the backside showing the tangled mess of threads and knots. After reading the tapestry poem Life Is but a Weaving, she would then turn the tapestry around to reveal a beautiful crown of gold with multi-colored jewels, leaving the audience in awe. Corrie would then say, This is what God sees…from His perspective…a masterpiece!⁵

The words to the poem Life Is but a Weaving are inspirational because of Corrie’s enlightening demonstration about the Master Weaver:

My life is but a weaving

Between my God and me.

I cannot choose the colors

He weaveth steadily.

Oft’ times He weaveth sorrow;

And I in foolish pride

Forget He sees the upper

And I the underside.

Not ‘til the loom is silent

And the shuttles cease to fly

Will God unroll the canvas

And reveal the reason why.

The dark threads are as needful

In the weaver’s skillful hand

As the threads of gold and silver

In the pattern He has planned.

He knows, He loves, He cares;

Nothing this truth can dim.

He gives the very best to those

Who leave the choice to Him.⁶

As Corrie passionately pointed out, when one looks at the back of a tapestry, only knots and even frayed edges are seen, but the pattern of the beautiful front isn’t visible from this perspective. However, when the tapestry is turned over, one can see the beauty of the artist displayed.

Tragedy itself is undoubtedly neither good nor beautiful, but like the threads of a tapestry, the trials we suffer along with our many other life experiences work for good when we trust the Master Weaver.

According to His Plan

If all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His plan, then what is the plan? Studying the meaning of the Greek word for purpose will deepen one’s understanding of Romans 8:28 and of God’s plan. According to commentary in the New Spirit Filled Life Bible, the Greek word for purpose, as used in Romans 8:28, suggests a deliberate plan, a proposition, an advance plan, an intention, and a design.⁷ Most assuredly, God has a divine plan, and there’s comfort in knowing that He is the Master Planner.

In Romans 8, it’s evident that God’s plan is to free us from sin’s condemnation, to fill us with His Spirit, to make us children of God and heirs with Christ, and ultimately to have fellowship with each of us. The promise of freedom from condemnation is found in the first two verses of Romans 8, where the Apostle Paul wrote, There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

Furthermore, God not only frees us from sin’s curse but also fills us with His presence when we accept Jesus as our Savior. As Paul wrote in Romans 8:11, If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

What’s more, it’s exciting that the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit makes us children and heirs of God, as Paul tells us:

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba! Father! The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

Romans 8:15–17

The heart of God, as revealed in Romans 8, is for you to have a personal relationship with Him as your heavenly Father both now and forevermore. It’s God’s perfect plan.

The Original Plan

As recorded in the Book of Genesis, God’s original plan was for man to have fellowship with Him. It’s evident that God had a relationship with Adam and Eve because He walked and talked with them in the garden of Eden:

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

Genesis 3:8

When I read this verse, my heart is gripped with both joy and sadness. Feelings of deep sadness are evoked because of the consequences of sin that brought separation from God, resulting in evil, pain, and untold suffering in the world. However, abounding joy fills my heart because of the amazing reality of the Lord walking with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden and because of the hope we now have in Christ to experience a personal relationship with our heavenly Father.

Imagine paradise. I’ve traveled the world and have seen the most beautiful gardens. My favorite paradise is Cancun in Mexico, with palm trees waving in the breeze, sand between my toes, bright morning sunrise shimmering across the ocean, the sound of majesty as waves hit the shoreline, the breathtaking blue-green ocean, and the fresh wind on my face. It’s a place of joy and rest for me. But this earthly paradise doesn’t compare with the garden of Eden.

In Genesis 2:8, we read, And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. Eden was God’s paradise for His children, a place of rest and fellowship with Him. There has never been a paradise like the garden of Eden, which was a beautiful, well-watered garden given to man to enjoy. Imagine rich green grass and trees, beautiful flowers with vibrant colors, flowing rivers, perfect weather, animals wandering peacefully through the garden, and—best of all—sweet fellowship with God. The garden was God’s beautiful sanctuary for man. Imagine paradise with the living God! This was Plan A, the original plan of God for all mankind.

The Lord was faithful to provide for all their needs in this beautiful and luscious garden. In fact, before Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge, the Lord provided the Tree of Life and the other trees in Eden for their source of life. Their needs were met through dependence on the provision of the Lord; therefore, even in the beginning, trusting in God was essential to the divine plan of God.

As we learned in Sunday school, in six days, God created the world and all that is in it. The first verse in the Bible says, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1). The Hebrew word for create also means to shape, form, and fashion, and it’s always used with God as the subject.⁸ Truly, God is the Creator.

The story of creation is remarkable because it reveals the heart of the Creator, His power, His plan, and His delight in what He created. How moving it is that at the end of each day’s creation, God describes it as good (verses 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, and 31 in Genesis 1). Then God, looking upon all His creation, reveals His immense pleasure with the totality of His creation: And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day (Genesis 1:31).

God created man on this sixth day:

Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’

Genesis 1:26–28

Unmistakably, in the beginning, God had a purpose for Adam and Eve and all mankind.

Abundant Life

Clearly, God’s plan, in the beginning, was set in place in the garden of Eden when He made man in His own image, gave him dominion over the earth, and fellowshipped with him. From the beginning of time, God’s heart was to bless His creation, and His desire for every person today is still the same.

But Satan has an opposing plan of destruction. The plan of God and the plan of Satan are distinctly contrasted in John 10:10 in these words of Jesus: The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. This verse describes the war of the ages, the battle between good and evil. Therefore, evil in the world must be understood in the context of this cosmic spiritual battle. Satan is the author of tragedy and the enemy of your soul. He came to steal your life, to deceive you, and to lead you away from the abundant life found in Christ Jesus.

Heaven and hell are not old-fashioned Sunday school stories. They are real. Satan came to condemn you to eternal hell, but Jesus came to give you eternal life: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). As heirs with Christ, we also have this promise, Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world’ (Matthew 25:34). What a celebration heaven will be when we’re united with Christ and other believers in this eternal kingdom!

In the Image of God

In Psalm 139, David beautifully describes the creation of man and the wondrous love of God for everyone:

You formed my innermost being, shaping my delicate inside and my intricate outside, and wove them all together in my mother’s womb. I thank you, God, for making me so mysteriously complex! Everything you do is marvelously breathtaking. It simply amazes me to think about it! How thoroughly you know me, Lord! You even formed every bone in my body when you created me in the secret place, carefully, skillfully shaping me from nothing to something. You saw who you created me to be before I became me! Before I’d ever seen the light of day, the number of days you planned for me were already recorded in your book. Every single moment you are thinking of me! How precious and wonderful to consider that you cherish me constantly in your every thought! O God, your desires toward me are more than the grains of sand on every shore! When I awake each morning, you’re still with me.

Psalm 139:13–18 (TPT)

What’s true here for David is also true for you: God’s thoughts toward you are precious and many. You, too, are fearfully and wonderfully made.

In fact, God made man and said it was good. As Max Lucado tells us,

You weren’t an accident. You were not mass-produced. You are not an assembly-line product. You were deliberately planned, specifically gifted, and lovingly positioned on Earth by the Master Craftsman.⁹

All Creation Groans

The devil first appeared on the