Dear All, my name is Tan Kang Fun but I am better known as KF Tan in the market place. I am currently the CEO of a health trust company in Singapore. I started my career as an auditor with one of the Big 4 firms before I joined a chemical company back in 1990. In year 2000, I moved to a high performance material manufacturing plant where I was the Managing Director. Before my present position, I was with healthcare companies where I had different roles at different point in time as the CPO, CFO and COO.

God Knows It All

Take comfort that God knows it all when you are going through trials. The question is do you want to take it to God? God has said in 1 Peter 5:7 “casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.” Our God is a loving, merciful and gracious God who will take care of His own. If God cares for us, He will never leave us nor forsake us! The problem with many of us is that we try to cast all our cares into God’s hand and pray that God takes away our adversity or heal us immediately. When God doesn’t answer immediately, we get discouraged and give up on God. Do you not know that when one is going through trial, God wants to mold you? If that is so, then we should, in fact, be asking God for strength and peace to go through the trial with us. I am not suggesting we don’t pray to God for healing or taking away the problem. We should continue to pray and tell God that it is our desire but at the end of the day it has to be His will. What I want to put forth is that we should focus on God to give us the strength and peace rather than the problem. When we do that then we can better accept God’s sovereignty.   

Since God knows it all, we should not be asking God “why” He is putting us through trials. I mentioned earlier that I have not questioned God why He has allowed this trial in my life. I am not bitter about the trial. In fact, it drew me closer to God. I consider the trial I was going through a blessing because I have the opportunity to spend time with God in prayer and studying His Word. You know, there are three book of Psalms that begin with “why”: (1) Psalm 10 “Why, O LORD, do you stand far off?”; (2) Psalm 22 “Why have You forsaken me?”; (3) Psalm 74 “Why have You rejected us forever?”. But each of those Psalms end on a note of trust in God. The Psalm writers did not allow their “whys” to drag on. They did not allow them to take root and grow into accusation against God. Their “whys” were really cries of anguish, a natural reaction to pain.

In contrast, there were more than a dozen times Job asked God “why”. He is persistent and petulant. He is accusatory toward God. And, as has been observed by many, God never answered Job’s “why”. Instead God answered “who”! It seems clear that one of the lessons God wants us to learn from Job’s experience is the lesson “to stop asking why” and, instead, learn to depend on Him and to listen to His small voices.

We are almost unsatisfied in our quest for the “why” of the adversity that has come upon us. But this is futile as well as an untrusting task. God’s way, being the ways of infinite wisdom, simply cannot be comprehended by our finite minds. God Himself said through Isaiah 55:8-9 “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.”

From these two verses, it is clear that the ways and thoughts of God are incomprehensible to man. If we are to experience peace in our soul in times of adversity, we must come to the place where we truly believe that God’s ways are simply beyond us and stop asking Him ”why” or even trying to determine it ourselves. It is a complete surrender to the truth about God and our circumstances as it is revealed to us by God Himself in His inspired Word. In this manner, we can then have the peace to accept our journey with God and also able to draw near to God through our worship with Him.

You must worship the LORD your God in spirit and in truth. When you do that, the angel of the LORD encamps all around you and delivers you (Psalms 34:7). God takes care of His own. If you please God by following His instruction then the peace of God will be with you. Once you have learned how to depend on God, and able to pray and thank God for anything then Philippians 4:7 will flow into your hearts and minds making you able to sleep well. Even Jesus had reaffirmed this in John 14:27 “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid”.  So, what are you waiting for? If you want the peace of God to reign in your hearts and minds, pick up the cross and be follower of Christ and claim it!

One of the greatest assurances I receive from God is found in Job 23:10 “But He knows the way that I take; When He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold.” God, being all knowing, knows every step (or decision) I take during trial. When we totally depend on God during our trial, God being our Heavenly Father will definitely guide us to walk a path that is best for us because He is in control of the situation. I can take comfort that He knows the way that I take. And when I have walked the path with Him, I will have victory over trials.

In conclusion, it is such a privilege to be a Christian. We can cast all our cares into God’s hand to totally depend on Him. We can call upon our Lord Jesus Christ to take over our problems and let him lead us in the path that is pleasing to God. However, the problem with many of us is that we don’t spend time with God. We don’t read His word, we don’t pray and we don’t put on spiritual seatbelt to listen to His word on Sunday. Then during the week, when anxieties or temptations come, we succumb to it. So, how not to lose to the devil when he comes knocking at the doors with anxieties or temptations? We must learn how to call on Jesus to tackle these problems for us. To do that, unfortunately there is no short-cut, we must draw near to God through spending time with Him in prayer, studying His word and by faith putting His word into action. This will slowly, but surely, leads to dependence on God. Once you depend on God, when the devil comes knocking at your doors with anxieties or temptations, just ask Lord Jesus to go to the doors to take over the problems for you. Then we can say with confidence that no evil or temptations formed against me shall proper.

I am already into my 10^th year of surviving stage 4 lung cancer. This is truly a miracle for the glory of God. I am on targeted drugs and have been on this therapy since May 2014. I must admit that at the onset of my cancer journey, I cried out to God in prayers to preserve me by claiming Deuteronomy 4:9 (“Only take heed to yourself, and diligently keep yourself, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. And teach them to your children and your grandchildren“) and 6.2 (“that you may fear the Lord your God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments which I command you, you and your son and your grandson, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged.”) where we are supposed to teach God’s statutes and commandments to our children and grandchildren. The second claim that I made before God to preserve me was on King Hezekiah’s prayer, from Isaiah 38, that where on his death bed, he pleaded with God to remember him of his righteous walk with God. God heard his prayer and extended 15 more years to his life. I claimed these promises before God and if it is not His will, I will accept what He knows best for me. Of course, in the midst of my journey with cancer, there were days that I did have anxieties and doubts in my mind. I then quickly confessed before God and asked for forgiveness that God will grant me unwavering faith to trust and depend on Him in my affliction.

I hope what has been shared will be useful to you in your walk with God. This series of “Total Dependence On God” is based on what I have experienced and learnt over the first two years of my cancer journey while I was going through chemotherapy treatment. I sincerely hope that it has been a blessing to you in as much as it has been a blessing to me to share with you on my trying journey with God as my partner. I now lead a normal life where my wife and I resume our love for hiking and cycling.

I would like to end this series of my sharing on Total Dependence On God by leaving you with this question: Are you willing to totally depend on God in the days of your troubles?