Phillip
After our seminary days, Joyce and I were called back to Florida to a fine little church in Fort Pierce. By this time we had three children – Stephen, Gayle and Phillip. Phillip was only two months old when we got settled in the new parsonage, nestled right next door to the little white cement-block church.
It happened on a beautiful Mother’s Day. I had just preached a Mother’s Day message on the blessings of a Christian home. Joyce was out in the kitchen of our small house preparing lunch after the service. I was in the living room reading.
Suddenly I hear her distraught voice. “Adrian,” she cried, “come here quickly! Something is wrong with Phillip!”
I leaped to my feet. She had our baby boy in her arms. He was not breathing. His face had a blue cast upon it.
“What’s wrong?” she cried.
“I don’t know. You call the hospital and tell them I’m coming.”
I took our little boy and put him inside my coat to keep him warm. With eyes blinded by tears, I screeched out of our driveway and sped to the emergency room. “Please help me!” I cried to a waiting nurse as I burst through the heavy double doors to the hospital. Kind hands took Phillip and rushed him into a nearby room. I kneeled outside that emergency-room door and prayed for God’s mercy, not caring who saw me or what they might think.
After a while an attending doctor came out of the room, without Phillip, and walked over to me. “He’s gone,” he said as he laid his hand on my shoulder and shook his head. “There was nothing we could do. We tried.”
It was one of those sudden “crib deaths.”
Joyce was standing in the doorway of our house when I returned alone. The look on my face told the story. Mother’s Day had turned into a day of incredible grief and confusion for us. We had not known death in either of our families. It was so sudden, so stark. We did the only thing we knew to do. We kneeled and called out to the Lord for help.
Then we turned to the Word of God. I wasn’t sure where to begin reading. But the Lord led us to a message we so sorely needed. This is what God said:
Grace be to you and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. (2 Corinthians 1:2-4)
I did not understand all that God was allowing to happen to us. But He had already made one thing abundantly clear: the Father of mercies was going to use our sorrow to help us be a blessing to other broken hearts. We gave our brokenness and confusion to the God of all comfort.
That Sunday afternoon we drove to our parents’ homes. The church had gotten someone to fill the pulpit for me for the evening service. The services were just beginning as we backed out of the driveway. I can still hear the congregation today as they were singing, “No, never alone/No, never alone/He promised never to leave me/Never to leave me alone.”
Joyce and I willed to worship the Lord together, and we sang every praise song we knew as we drove those sixty miles back to our hometown. And it was so very true. We were not alone! God’s presence was never more real.
In the days and months that followed, we sought the Lord in a new way. Then, by God’s grace, a friend and fellow pastor came to our church and preached a message on the spirit-filled life. Our hungry hearts reached up and received the truth, and the transformation took place. The Lord Jesus truly was alive in us and was just waiting to take over.
Trials; Filled with the Spirit; Comfort; Death; Grief
2 Corinthians 1:2-4
Adrian Rogers, The Power of His Presence (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1995), 61-63.