Faith You Can Borrow

By Annie Hickey

GOD'S WILL NEVER DIRECTS YOU TO WHERE HIS GRACE CAN'T PROTECT YOU. Are you struggling with something that seems too overwhelming? Everyone experiences hardships and difficulties from time to time. However, sometimes there are those people that seem to have more hardships than they can handle. Their story is so amazing that you wonder how they ar

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leavitt Peak Press
• Release date: Jun 20, 2024
• ISBN: 9781964462325

Annie Hickey

Author Annie Hickey is a single mother of two amazing kids. Annie is a native Floridian who resides in Daytona Beach. Annie is a graduate of Stetson University. Annie's career has spanned through Law, Information Technology and Politics.

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"Annie’s story, Faith You Can Borrow, is a story about amazing challenges, many mysteries, persevering faith, and the sufficiency of a sovereign God. She has woven her struggles into a story of grace and faith that we can share and from which we can learn again that God and our relationship with him is ‘far more important and significant than any circumstance’ in our lives."

Senior Pastor Larry Kirk, Christ Community Church, Daytona Beach, Florida.

Out of the depths of her own despair and triumph, Annie Hickey has penned a story of faith and hope: faith in the God who heals and hope for those darkest hours when doctors can only shake their heads.

David Hobbs, author of Out of the Fire

Faith You Can Borrow

By Annie Hickey

Faith

You Can Borrow

Revealing God’s Faithfulness in the Face of Uncertainty

Annie Hickey

Copyright © 2024 Annie Hickey.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotation in a book review.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from The New King James Version / Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers. Copyright © 1982. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NAS are taken from the New American Standard Bible ®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version ®, Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version, Cambridge, 1769. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-964462-31-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-964462-32-5 (e)

Rev. date: 06/11/2024

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my appreciation to my neurologist, Dr. Alyn Benezette. Without Dr. Benezette’s care and concern, I am quite certain that I would not be alive to write this book. Thank you so much for putting your patients first. Thank you for never givin g up.

I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to Pastor Matt Walker. Thank you for always having time to listen and for never running out of patience. I pray that God blesses you richly for you give so much to those you shepherd.

There were so many people who reached out to help me during this stressful period of my life. Lillian Keziah has for over twenty years now been a second mother to me. My sisters were my lifeline. Blake Thomas was my constant source of encouragement. Belinda Shorts, Pam Atkinson, and Joyce Saunders gave so much of their time to sit with me in hospitals. You were truly God’s angels of mercy. A special thank you to all of the body of Christ at Christ Community Church in Daytona Beach, Florida who did so much to help and never stopped praying for my recovery.

I also want to take time to acknowledge the comfort extended to me by some very special people. My friend Jeremy Brookins was so faithful to walk with me through this journey. I have very much enjoyed all of our conversations and all of your insight. My long-time friend Selina Surles never allowed those gaps in our friendship to become permanent. She stayed and doctored my hurts and cleaned my wounds and only a true friend would do that. Selina, you have the heart of a missionary. My friend Troy Schake was so faithful and firm. He never stopped believing that I would get well. He stuck by me even when others did not.

Most of my life, including the events that led to the writing of this book, would have been very different if not for the influences of my oldest and dearest friend Doug Williams. Doug, I have often said that you are my vivid reminder of heaven and God’s love. I have been truly blessed by heaven itself to have such a godly man for such a friend. I stand in awe that God placed you by his divine plan in my life. I pray that our friendship lasts forever. After forty-three years, it has a pretty good start.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to God who is my strength and my ever-present help and to my children, Cassidy and Justin Elijah, who are God’s most precious gifts to me and my reason for trying so hard to get well. Mommy loves you both very much!

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Why Me?

Firm Foundations

Understanding Your Trial

Do Everything You Can

The Trials in The Middle

Sufficient Grace

The Hope of Glory

Strength Only From God

I Can Do Better Than That

Time To Heal

Lessons Learned Along the Way

Foreword 

Sometimes I try to talk myself into having more faith and responding to life in a spiritual way, but true faith requires more than pulling myself up by my spiritual bootstraps. The trying harder idea of faith is not strong enough to sustain the weight of life, not during the times when life knocks me over like a cold, salty, ocean wave. I try to stand up, my mouth full of water, my shorts full of sand, and my lungs gasping for air, but I stumble under the surf because of my ever-shifting footing. Moments before, I was standing waist deep in the ocean, feet firmly planted in the shifting sand. I was simply enjoying the view. Now stumbling in the water, I wonder if will ever be able to enjoy the ocean. I don’t trust the ocean and her random w aves.

Perhaps the wave metaphor is too dramatic, but where is my faith in such a time? A business partner who betrays me, children making poor decisions, a late phone call from the emergency room, bad news from a doctor, stubborn sin patterns—these are the things that seem too weighty for feel good platitudes about faith. It is at times like this that we often hear well-meaning sayings such as, This will strengthen your faith, or This is testing your faith, or This is when you need your faith the most. I wonder if we really believe these words. Do we really believe that faith is under human control? Is faith something we can work up? Is it like a comb in my pocket that I need to simply pull out and use? Don’t misunderstand; I really want to have a strong faith, but I wonder how that faith is actually developed.

How does confident faith grow from theses moments of chaos and despair? We must be careful; God is not a formula. We do not have steps to deeper faith. The faith that emerges from chaos is ultimately a gift from God. Yet there are some things that seem to move us toward a gift of real faith. What must be present in the chaos for faith to grow is humility. Our tendency may be to become self-reliant or to numb ourselves with our busy strategies. However, we cry out to God. We have made this request: God will you please heal, God, will you protect my child, my spouse, my parents? Oh Father, will you please be present? God gives faith in the midst of chaos, not because we have taken the proper steps but because he has given grace to the humble. Much of practical Christian living begins with humility. We must acknowledge that we need God’s perspective and intervention—we must enter into our questions and doubt and humbly bring them before him.

So, you cry out. We’ve all been there, crying out, How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? (Psalm 13:1). We ask God to save us, and we are weary from crying out to him, our throats are parched, and our eyes grow dim as we wait for God (Psalm 69:1-3). We cry aloud to God, and we want him to hear us and listen. We try to seek the Lord in our crisis, stretching out our hands but not finding God. Our soul is not comforted. We moan because we are overwhelmed and too distressed to pray. We ask questions that we would not repeat out loud: Has the Lord rejected me forever? Will he never again be kind to me? Is his unfailing love gone forever? Have his promises permanently failed? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he slammed the door on his compassion? (see Psalm 77:1-9).

In our confusion we must wait.

It is often at this waiting time we are asked to hold on and we have very little to hold on to. As we wait, faith will grow if we remember. What can we remember? We are creatures who love the great stories of redemption. So much of a growing life of faith requires us to remember. Remember what? Remember the stories God tells of himself in the Bible. Remember the stories of God’s past faithfulness. But at times of great loss and shattered dreams it is difficult to remember. It is for times like these that God gives us others’ stories of God’s faithfulness. It is at times like this you must borrow someone else’s faith because your circumstances do not line up with what you hope is true about God.

My father always told me that there were certain things you should not borrow from your neighbor—money and tools to name just two. However, at times of great struggle, God will often place people in your life and their only purpose is to provide you with a faith from which you can borrow. In the pages that follow, you will read of a deep struggle of faith and life. It is a story of redemption. However, it is presented for you in this form to provide you with a story to borrow from. God may not heal you or answer your prayers in the exact way that he intervenes in this story. Yet, he will give you his presence and will meet you in your struggles. So if life is good as you pick up this journal then celebrate and thank God for your many blessings. Yet remember the story because you may need to borrow from it some day. If, as you pick up this story you are at the end of yourself and feeling broken, read this story and borrow some of this brave women’s faith. I am not sure what to say to you as you grieve the losses of your life; however, I am convinced that God is at work to give you the gift of faith. In the meantime, He will send stories like this one from which you may borrow a cup of faith.

Peace,

Jim Coffield, PhD

Clinical Director

Reformed Theological Seminary

Introduction 

My hope in writing this book is that others will find encouragement while trying to stand faithfully in their individual trials. I know firsthand that none of us knows what the future holds. God is the only one who knows the plans he has for each one of us. I know from personal experience that it is so difficult to stand in the middle of