Psalm 23:3 ESV
Isaiah 55:8-9 ESV
There have been times in my life when I have desperately prayed for God to ease my heavy load.
There have been times when I thought God forgot about me.
There have been times when I was hurting and I asked God to restore me, but I thought He didn’t hear.
Psalm 23:3, tells us “He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.”
I had to learn when my load feels heavy it’s because I won’t let go.
One of the fundamental things my dad taught me when I was a teenager was to surrender my problems to God. To be quite honest I thought it was ‘much ado about nothing’.
I didn’t really take him seriously.
Looking back I think what I really wanted to do was complain. My dad would have known that.
He was a very patient man…emphasis on VERY and every time I complained he gently reminded me that I needed to surrender the issue to God.
The very good news that stems from my complaining is that ‘the tapes’ of his words continue to play in my mind today. That’s because our brain was created to remember things we were told in our childhood.
Indeed his words SURRENDER IT are forever etched in my mind.
I don’t know exactly when it happened but eventually I stopped complaining and I started surrendering.
SURRENDER. Surrender your issue to God.
Surrender it completely. Do not carry it yourself. God does not want you to carry it alone. God does not expect you to carry it. God DOES love you.
In addition to that, when I was young and I thought God forgot I would throwing a temper tantrum just like a two year old will do because I didn’t LIKE the path I was on.
I wanted life to be easy.
I didn’t want to hurt.
Just like a two year old I wanted MY way.
God led me one day to Isaiah 55:8-9, “my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares 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.”
Eventually that verse became my standard when I had dug in my heels because I wanted my way.
Gradually…ever so gradually I learned that God’s ways are perfect.
Only God knows what tomorrow holds. There’s an old Gospel song, “I know who holds tomorrow” written by Ira Stanphill in 1950. The refrain goes like this:
“Many things about tomorrow I don't seem to understand But I know who holds tomorrow And I know who holds my hand.”
When I’m tempted to want MY way, I sing those words. It helps me to remember that God always holds my hand.
I also learned that whenever I was sure God didn’t hear my request for restoration, it was because I was impatient and unwilling to exercise my faith.
Faith is a gift from God. But even after it’s given we need to pick it up and exercise it.
In my case faith was learned. I had to learn each step of the way, God gave me faith and I needed to pick it up.
I needed to thank God for the faith He gave.
I needed to recognize it as a gift.
But I also needed to exercise it and turn to God.
When I was 28 years old I had a miscarriage. It was a confusing time for me because (of course) I wanted that child. I wondered why it happened. Every time I conceived I had a dream and I knew the child’s name from the dream. My dream told me the child I was carrying was a girl named Angela.
When I miscarried I questioned God’s care for me. What’s important about that is how God responded to me. God was ever so loving, ever so patient, and ever so faithful to me.
Looking back I can see it was an exercise in faithfulness. It wasn’t about my faithfulness to God…it was so I would see God’s faithfulness to me. Even when I questioned God’s care for me, God continued to be faithful to me. I believe that child is in heaven and one day I will hold her in my arms.
The greatest gift I had was yet to come. God knew that. Two years later I gave birth to my third son. He WAS the child I was supposed to raise. He has always been such a blessing to me! He is sensitive and caring. He is strong and intuitive. He feels what other people feel when they are near him.
Looking back I can see God’s ways.
Forty years ago I couldn’t see the view, but God saw it. God knew what I needed when I needed it. God’s faithfulness carried me.
Today’s Spiritual Practice is: God’s Faithfulness
Remember a time when God has been faithful to you and cherish it. It IS a very great gift!
In God, Deborah
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