Because God Knew

There's nothing quite like the moments when God shows you why He did something.

I've had a lot of those moments in the past three days.

Matter of fact, in the last three days, I've welled up with gratefulness on different occasions for every single really hard thing that happened to me in the past year.

Really? All of it? Everything? Genuinely grateful?

Yes.

On Monday, I was dealing with a client and suddenly I was so grateful for what God has taught me over the past year through one of my sibling's major struggles that has affected our whole family hugely. My heart filled with compassion for this girl and the struggles she's gone through. Knowing her issues made me realize how big and scary her problems could become in pregnancy. Normally, I would be hesitant to work with a client who would be unpredictable and volatile and potentially extremely difficult to work with. But, instead... I understood. I knew what to expect. I wanted to love THIS girl and give her a chance. I thanked God that I felt compassion for her because I've watched my own sibling struggle through the same issues.

I had this strange sense of gladness that I knew and I understood and I cared deeply. I would have tried to know and understand and care in the past, but I couldn't have. Because I really didn't know. I do now. Without even thinking, I breathed a little thank you to God that I was no longer another one of those people who really didn't and couldn't understand this. I breathed a thank you that I DO understand it now.

Monday night I received a phone call from a crying mommy. As I calmly told her what to do, step-by-step, I remembered a frantic evening last winter when the same thing that had happened to her baby had happened to me. I had made some frantic middle-of-the-night calls to experts who had given me wonderful advice. I passed the advice that had worked so well for me on to the mommy and thought, "For the first time ever, I'm so glad that happened to me last winter!" I never thought I'd know why that happened. Suddenly, I imagined all of the many times I may be so grateful for that knowledge over the course of my life. And I only have it because I lived it. Thank you, God!

So, I was grateful for those things.

But something else that happened last year? I have managed to thank God for it many times because through the hurt and disappointment and bitterness of the whole situation, God plowed up the "fallow ground" of my heart and dug deep into my soul. I've thanked Him for using it in my life to make me grow; to take away the stagnant places. But, ever had a just deep grateful, from the bottom of my heart, "You knew what you were doing, God!" well up in me before? No.

Today I did. Someone I love deeply is in almost the same exact situation. Except, well a few things are different, in a not-good way. I wanted to tell those dear people what I was thinking and hope they'd listen. But I knew I would be dismissed as not understanding. Or would I?

I actually know exactly what is being felt and thought. I can speak to the heart-wrenching hurt because I lived it. I can. I can.

I can.

Because God knew what He was doing in my life last year.

My mom, the dearest person on earth to me, was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer at the beginning of April. She was given a year to live. Now, of course, only God knows our days and the time that she has. But, there are days when the possibility of her soon being gone - my mommy - forever gone from earth and my life - are just too much. It seems a little surreal.... surely that's not really going to happen... now? My mother... never see me get married? My mom never be the person I can call when I'm a mom who needs advice...? Really??

On days when I want to run away and cry instead of go to the next prenatal or just pretend it isn't true, I am stilled to remember that

God has known what He was doing every day of the good life that He has given me.

God knows what He is doing with every day of my life that stretches out into the future.

He knows!

He knows!

Merciful Refusals

Never forget that some of God's greatest mercies are His refusals.

He says "no" in order that He may, in ways we cannot imagine, say "yes."

All His ways with us are merciful. His meaning is always love.

- Elisabeth Elliot

His Loving Heart

Jesus, I am resting, resting

In the joy of what Thou art.

I am finding out the greatness

Of Thy loving Heart...

It's true... when the heart is most broken and bitterly disappointed,
the Goodness and Tenderness of God's loving Heart becomes all the more precious.

Not Called You Say?

" 'Not called!' did you say? 'Not heard the call,' I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity; listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. And then look Christ in the face, whose mercy you have professed to obey, and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world."

- William Booth

Think Through Me

Think through me, Thoughts of God,
My Father, quiet me,
Till in Thy holy presence, hushed,
I think Thy thoughts with Thee.

Think through me, Thoughts of God,
That always, everywhere,
The stream that through my being flows,
May homeward pass in prayer.

Think through me, Thoughts of God,
And let my own thoughts be
Lost like sand-pools on the shore
Of the eternal sea.

- Amy Carmichael, Toward Jerusalem

My Heart in Line with God's

I came across this quote in Matthew Henry's "Quest for Meekness and Quietness of Spirit" a week or two ago and scribbled it on a scrap of paper that's been floating around in my Bible as a bookmark ever since.

"When God's anger is kindled, ours must be stifled; the law of meekness is such that whatsoever pleases God must not displease us."

Every time I see that little scrap of paper, it convicts me of my weakness to just "be nice" about wrong things that others do. I am by nature, a very non-confrontational person and prefer to let people do things that I may not feel comfortable with, just because I don't want to "say anything." (I think I'm gradually getting a little better about standing up for right after nearly twenty-five years of hard lessons about what doing nothing yields.)

Of course, I know that many times it is appropriate to "put up" with the actions of others that I may not like or agree with. Most often, it is NOT my job to point out others' sins to them.

Perhaps some of my aversion to confronting others about sin (or even calling it distasteful and sin in my own mind) comes from the many times I have seen someone pick at the speck in their brother's eye, forgetting the beam in their own eye. There is almost nothing that I hate more than seeing one Christian doing that to another person, ignoring the totally hypocrisy in his/her own walk with God.

I continually remind myself, that my job is not to "straighten out the world"; my job is to rule my own heart and actions and keep them in line with God's heart. But in focusing on my own sins and ignoring those of others, I must not grow gradually comfortable with sin in other peoples' lives.

It is easy for me to grow calloused towards the ugliness of sin. Certainly, my attitude should be that of Jesus towards the woman caught in adultery - compassion and mercy - but in showing compassion, I must not loose sight of the horrific stench of the sin. I must not become soft towards little vices in other's lives, excusing things because it's them and not me doing it and "maybe they don't know any better."

Sin must always be exceedingly sinful in my eyes, if I want to have my heart in line with God's.

Because sin is what brought death upon all men. Because all sin is rebellion against the laws of a perfect, holy, and just God. Because sin is what nailed the sinless, loving Son of God to the Cross of Calvary. Because sin is what destroys lives, tears apart families, crumbles nations, and results in eternal damnation.

Sin is never only "sort of bad". Sin is never excusable. Sin is never okay in any body's life. And certainly, sin is never harmless.

God hates sin. He never made any excuses for it. People throughout Biblical accounts died for their sin - and rightly so - all of us deserve death for the great insults we have hurled at our Loving Creator with every breath that He gave to us in our vile and sinful state.

THIS is condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. John 3:19

Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us (!!), and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. I John 4:10

I must love people and intercede for them and show them mercy and grace - far more than I ever calculate any of them to deserve - but I must agree with God that sin is ugly and horrific beyond my comprehension. And I must seek to daily see things from His eternal viewpoint, not my warped, earthly eyes.