God confirms His word.
Always.
Did I need Him to send me a preacher all the way from Mexico to confirm to me what He has been saying for so long now?
I wouldn’t think so, but clearly, God did because He did just that.
Once again, I was reminded that God is a personal God, and our relationship is one of a kind. The plans He has for me are not exact to His plans for anyone else.
Sure, there may be similarities, after all, we all experience life and so we all know pain, suffering, loss, fear, illness and death, and yes, there are many good things we experience as well but, I personally had to learn to look to God in all situations for direction because these are His plans, only He knows them.
If I have learned anything at all over the course of the last year, is that nothing I entrust to God’s capable hands is ever lost, and still I struggle to obey instantly, in some areas I like to be difficult and procrastinate. No excuses for it, just bad habits that have yet to die.
For some time now, too long really, I have felt God lead me in a direction that no one else seems to be going in, particularly in this economy, but the point that Jesus has been driving into me for so many years now, the point I struggled to accept and understand, even now after all we have been through together, is that He is my provider and I do not need to hold on to the money, on the contrary, I need to let it go.
You see, I thought that the road that lead us here was meant to teach me certain things, because I was looking at it still with wordly eyes, but now I realize that they were really teaching me something else entirely:
God is not looking at my material possessions, my education, my career [or lack thereof] the contents of my bank account or much of anything else, really.
I know this. I have known this for sometime.
God wants my heart. All of it.
God wants my obedience.
Trust. Obey. Follow.
Today, I got to hear the testimony of a family who, in obedience to God Almighty, opened a church in Mexico, in 2020. At the height of the pandemic, when most people weren’t congregating with family, much less anyone else, and here they are on the verge of celebrating their 4th anniversary.
When so many places, not just churches, closed their doors never to open again, these people stepped out and opened their doors for the very first time and have thrived, against all odds, I am sure.
I know for a fact that the road for them, has not been without pain and opposition. I’m sure they could never convey all of the details of the last 4 yrs. When we step out boldly in faith and obedience, opposition comes. It never fails.
The enemy’s way is so basic and simple that we have become not just tolerant but dismissive of his cunning. We have a very real enemy, but we also have a very real, very powerful God. We must choose wisely where we place our trust.
I really don’t have to try very hard to imagine what people must have said about the “wisdom” of opening a church when most of the world was shut down, because I know what I would’ve told them had they told me, then, what they had been told by The Lord to do. It would’ve been right along the same lines of what I told Michael everytime he told me what God was calling him to do.
“That’s insanity. Does God not see, clearly, what is going on here?”
I have since learned that, the one who does not see clearly what is going on, is me.
I am clueless by comparison to He who created the heavens and the earth. He knows all things. He goes before me. He clears my way. He provides under impossible situations, making connections only He can.
Obedience costs, but it also pays, we just can’t obey solely for the reward.
For me, personally, I find that nothing I ever lost or gained has ever truly come close to Him. To His love, His presence, His joy.
Last April I found myself incredibly angry, frustrated and even resentful of where God has brought us after weeks of homelessness and yet, it is here in this place, under these pressures and with these people, where Michael and I are learning the complicated dance of marriage, after so many years of marital strife. I don’t know why it had to be this way, but I am so thankful that we are here, and I understand that I do not need to know all things, I just need to trust Him who knows all things.
Yes, stepping out in faith seems crazy, yet God’s unconventional ways, have already brought me to places, both physically and spiritually that I had deemed impossible not so long ago, and so now I am left with this question:
‘This is what the Lord says: “You will be in Babylon for seventy years.
But then I will come and do for you all the good things I have promised,
and I will bring you home again.
For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord .
“They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.
In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me. I will be found by you,” says the Lord . “I will end your captivity and restore your fortunes. I will gather you out of the nations where I sent you and will bring you home again to your own land.”
Jeremiah 29:10-14
Psalms 73 