How amazing that God can use even destructive insects to create a work of art as in this lacy holly leaf. Their intent was not to be creative but their Creator still brought exquisite beauty out of their munching away at the leaf as they destroyed it.
Although it is difficult for us to see, God Almighty can also use destructive national and world leaders to carry out His divine and perfect plan. We cannot always understand but we can fully trust that the Lord God is always still in charge of the universe, in all its complexity, including our own little world.
One
day last week I was struggling with letting go of something I have been
waiting for from God. He had shown me and confirmed in many ways that I
am to have more children. I am forty-four years old and the world's
ideas about age began to creep in and I am tired of waiting to be
honest. A common battle ensued of letting go and moving on versus
believing, waiting, and battling through.
Then I heard this verse: "Timothy, my
son, I am giving you this command in keeping with the prophecies once
made about you, so that by recalling them you may fight the battle well." I Tim. 1:18 NIV
Paul tells Timothy to recall to mind the prophetic words spoken
regarding him. This can mean a promise God has given you or an actual
prophetic word spoken over you that He has confirmed in your spirit.
First, recall it. Remind yourself of it. Then use it by fighting the
good fight with it. Believe. Stand firm. Speak it. Pray it. Battle.
The following verse says that many have shipwrecked their faith by not
standing firm, stepping out of the battle. Waiting is a battle.
Believing when we can't see it is a fight. It would be much easier to
let go. He has spoken to me to believe Him for a larger family. He
told me to buy a painting of a little boy and girl playing by the sea
when I first lost my husband. To me it made no sense at all but I did
it purely out of obedience. It hangs in my bedroom still. He has given
me confirmations time and time again. Yet I still wait and it is easy
to get used to the life you live and lose the want altogether.
My desire a long, long time ago was that my life would show that He
still answers prayer on a regular basis and works in mighty ways in our
ordinary everyday life. I first heard of George Mueller, who fed ten
thousand orphans through prayer only in his lifetime, as a child. His
reason for opening the orphanage was not primarily to feed and shelter
orphans but to show the church that God indeed answers prayer, provides,
and is the only answer we need. So he never asked for money or
provided it himself.
God is faithful. Faithful to the ordinary everyday person. He is
faithful in the smallest needs and the largest. He has extraordinary
plans for your ordinary life. So instead of letting go of His word to
me, I let go of my reasoning, my waning desires and passion, and I
recall His words to my mind and fight the good fight of my ordinary day.
I will report His extraordinary fulfillment to you when it comes. So be
watching for Him and may my life be an encouragement to you to believe
and trust Him for your ordinary life.
When you turn a corner in your life and questions rage inside, and no one gives you answers, trust the Father’s heart. Such simple trust is not a thing to take lightly. Sometimes, it sounds too easy. Sometimes, it sounds too hard, just to trust the Father’s heart. But the One who gives the sparrow a nest, and knows when each one falls, the same One who clothes a lily when it pushes up through the sod, this same God – we can trust our Father’s heart. He is faithful toward all His creation and has a plan unlike our own. The future may seem uncertain and the path unclear at times, but He alone knows how to bring beauty from ashes, if we can but trust the Father’s heart.
Used with Permission by Randy Alcorn
Jesus
tells us to “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all
these things [what you eat, drink, and wear] will be given to you as
well” (Matthew 6:33).
Unlike the pagans who “run after all these things” and “worry about
tomorrow,” believers are told to follow Christ, live a radical life of
faith, and trust God to provide (Matthew 6:25-34).
In
this passage, Jesus says that God cares for the birds. Yet birds aren’t
created in God’s image. Christ didn’t die for birds. The Holy Spirit
doesn’t indwell birds. Birds won’t reign with Christ. But we will! So
Christ asks his disciples, “Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Matthew 6:26). If he takes care of the less valuable creatures, will he not take care of us, who are far more valuable?
Of
course, the birds provide for their immediate future through
labor—building nests and obtaining food for their young. But they don’t
maintain one nest in the mountains and another at the beach. Neither do
they fill their cellars with freeze-dried worms. Birds do the work that
God created them to do; they sing when they work, they don’t hoard, and
they instinctively trust their Creator to take care of them. Should we
who know God’s grace do any less?
Jesus
says, “Accept my sovereignty and goodness, and you won’t have to worry
about tomorrow. Trust me.” All of us trust in something. The more
dependable the object of our trust, the less we need to worry. The stock
market isn’t God, the Wall Street Journal isn’t the Bible,
your asset manager isn’t your priest, and financial experts aren’t
prophets. (Prophets were put to death when their prophecies didn’t come
true!) That doesn’t mean the stock market is bad, but it does mean it’s
not trustworthy. It may do well for a day, a month, a year, or even a
few decades. But because the stock market is uncertain, it can only
produce anxiety when it becomes the object of our trust. God is the only
totally trustworthy object. Therefore, he’s the only one who cannot
betray our trust.
Why
is this truth so hard for us to accept? If we believe that God can
create us, redeem us, and bring us through death to spend eternity with
him, why can’t we take him at his word when he says he’ll provide for
our material needs?
If
God calls on you today to share your resources with another, you must
not say, “I can’t, Lord, because I don’t know where my own provisions
are coming from.” Yes, you do know where they’re coming from.
They’re coming from God. You may not know the form this provision will
take, but you do know the Source. Like the poor widow who had no cash
reserves, you know that God will take care of you, even if there are no
visible resources.
If
God has control of everything, and God takes care of his children, and
God gives everything necessary to those who walk with him; and if you
are his child, and you are walking with him—why worry? Worrying never
helps anything anyway—but has hurt plenty. Read more: http://www.epm.org/blog/2015/Jul/20/provision-not-worry#ixzz3hNuU7hLh
My son, Sam,and his sand art! He is just awesome! I had no clue that as he was running around with this stick and his little brother, Dillon, was chasing him that it was turning into a picture. I thought Sam was just running around making lines for Dillon to run on...but he had a plan and a design on his mind...and it was cool and fun.
But to compare it to how God has a plan and a design, and to remember that we run circles and chase lines and we have smiles and falls and waves that wash away our lines...He still has a plan...a very big plan and a design that is much bigger and far-reaching and intricate than we can imagine. He is the one who can take our lines and our washed-away efforts and dreams and our crumpled up selves and He makes us into something beautiful for His glory. He is so good.
Christianity Today called Elisabeth Elliot "one of the most influential Christian women of the 20th century," and I couldn't agree more. She was a woman who helped shape my teen years and is a woman I still look up to for inspiration and guidance through her many books. If this is the first time you're hearing about her, I suggest reading "Through the Gates of Splendor." It's the true story of how her husband and four other men were tragically killed on a missionary trip to Ecuador. It's through this loss that Elisabeth shares some of her deepest words on pain, suffering, and hope.
She died this morning (June 15, 2015), and I can only imagine the party happening in Heaven. Here are just a few quotes from this great woman.
“The fact that I am a woman does not make me a different kind of Christian, but the fact that I am a Christian makes me a different kind of woman.”
“I realized that the deepest spiritual lessons are not learned by His letting us have our way in the end, but by His making us wait, bearing with us in love and patience until we are able to honestly to pray what He taught His disciples to pray: Thy will be done.”
“Today is mine. Tomorrow is none of my business. If I peer anxiously into the fog of the future, I will strain my spiritual eyes so that I will not see clearly what is required of me now.”
“Where does your security lie? Is God your refuge, your hiding place, your stronghold, your shepherd, your counselor, your friend, your redeemer, your saviour, your guide? If He is, you don't need to search any further for security.”
“One reason we are so harried and hurried is that we make yesterday and tomorrow our business, when all that legitimately concerns us is today. If we really have too much to do, there are some items on the agenda which God did not put there. Let us submit the list to Him and ask Him to indicate which items we must delete. There is always time to do the will of God. If we are too busy to do that, we are too busy.”
“Work is a blessing. God has so arranged the world that work is necessary, and He gives us hands and strength to do it. The enjoyment of leisure would be nothing if we had only leisure. It is the joy of work well done that enables us to enjoy rest, just as it is the experiences of hunger and thirst that make food and drink such pleasures.”
“But the question to precede all others, which finally determines the course of our lives is, 'What do I really want?' Was it to love what God commands, in the words of the collect, and to desire what He promises? Did I want what I wanted, or did I want what He wanted, no matter what it might cost?”
“God has promised to supply all our needs. What we don’t have now, we don’t need now.”
"Don't dig up in doubt what you have planted in faith."
"The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances."
“When ours are interrupted, his are not. His plans are proceeding exactly as scheduled, moving us always (including those minutes or hours or years which seem most useless or wasted or unendurable).”
BONUS: "Leave it all in the hands that were wounded for you."
GOD'S ACCURACY
Author unknown - Thanks to Jalisa Wenger in Pennsylvania for sending this.
God's accuracy may be observed in the hatching of eggs. For example:
The eggs of the potato bug hatch in 7 days;
Those of a canary in 14 days;
Those of the barnyard hen in 21 days.
The eggs of ducks and geese hatch in 28 days;
Those of the mallard in 35 days;
The eggs of the parrot and the ostrich hatch in 42 days.
(Notice, they are all divisible by seven, the number of days in a week!)
God's wisdom is seen in the making of an elephant. The four legs of this great beast all bend forward in the same direction. No other quadruped is so made. God planned that this animal would have a huge body, too large to live on two legs. For this reason, He gave it four fulcrums so that it can rise from the ground easily.
The horse rises from the ground on its two front legs first. A cow rises from the ground with its two hind legs first. How wise the Lord is in all His works of creation!
God's wisdom is revealed in His arrangement of sections and segments, as well as in the number of grains:
Each watermelon has an even number of stripes on the rind.
Each orange has an even number of segments.
Each ear of corn has an even number of rows.
Each stalk of wheat has an even number of grains.
Every bunch of bananas has on its lowest row an even number of bananas, and each row decreases by one, so that one row has an even number and the next row an odd number.
The waves of the sea roll in on shore twenty-six to the minute in all kinds of weather.
All grains are found in even numbers on the stalks, and the Lord specified thirty fold, sixty fold, and a hundred fold - all even numbers.
God has caused the flowers to blossom at certain specified times during the day, so that Linnaeus, the great botanist, once said that if he had a conservatory containing the right kind of soil, moisture and temperature, he could tell the time of day or night by the flowers that were open and those that were closed!
Thus the Lord in His wonderful grace can arrange the life that is entrusted to His care in such a way that it will carry out His purposes and plans, and will be fragrant with His presence.
TRUSTING GOD MORE Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee. - Isaiah 26:3. I find that the more we know God, the more we can trust Him! Studying the "Names of God" is just one practical way to know Him more, and build our faith, and trust in Him even more.
