When I am asked to share my testimony...this is what I share. I feel this past month or so, that I am being called to return to that vulnerability that created my current relationship with God. I need to be reminded of how far He has brought me:
My daily devotions one day read: His Word declares that ALL things work
together for good. Not just the good
things, but also the bad things, not just the successes, but also the failures,
and even the things that you look at in your life and would call somewhat
neutral – ALL things. He promises to
redeem ALL things. As soon as we look to
God more because of something,
anything, then it is all worth it right there – That is where God’s
redemption begins.
Romans 8:28 And we know that God causes everything to
work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to
his purpose for them.
When I was young my grandparents took
me to church every Sunday. When I was
five, my family moved to Blackwell where I “grew up”. I was involved in youth group. So I believed God existed, I never doubted
that He was real, but what I want to share with you today is a story of finding
my relationship with God and what it means to me to maintain that relationship.
My family owned a small sporting
goods store. Looking back is awesome
isn’t it – you can see everything so clearly?
20/20? There were several red
flags we chose to ignore. To condense
the absolute worst three years
of my life down for you – After about 5 months the guy we bought it from sued
us. We counter-sued. For someone who has never even had a traffic
ticket, this alone, rocked my world. Four months after that was the May 2010 hail
storm that hit around 7:00 in the morning – you know the one that dropped the
giant hail stones in Edmond and rained hail on Tonkawa. Two months after that, our store was broken
into and vandalized. Our insurance
agent, failed to put a theft rider on our policy and we had failed to catch it. Six months later, record snow fall, two feet
in two weeks. I took a baseball to the
windshield, our home heat/air unit decided it had worked long enough and
stopped working the summer that set record heat around 110 most days, 90 most nights. One month after that, and 7 months to the
day, our store was broke into and vandalized again. It was more than we could bounce back
from. We lost our income, our home, our
pride. We were completely
devastated. We were on food stamps – I
continually ask God to Bless that man that had to deal with me that morning
because I think I ugly cried uncontrollably for about 10 minutes before I ever got
any words out. From there I had to go
enroll my kids and burst into tears as I asked the Principal if I could have an
application for employment and an application for free lunches. My teacher-friend grabbed me and
whisked me off to her room where I cried and poured my heart out about all we
were going through. Her husband was a
preacher and he called another preacher to see if they
could help us get the air conditioner working.
The person that preacher called to see if we could get some help
started the conversation out like this “You live in a nicer house than
me, so not many people are going to want to help you and the only reason I am
helping you is because a preacher asked me to”.
Yeah… We were using the food bank,
we were filing for bankruptcy. I found
myself in a place that I never thought I would be. That I never thought I would
be. But God had bigger plans.
I was reading a book by Beth Moore,
“When Godly People, Do Ungodly Things”.
She says “I am convinced the ability to remember as if it happened yesterday is a gift, even though some days
it feels like a curse. It’s worth any
bad memories if I never forget God’s goodness to me.”
God gave me a choice. I could wallow in self-pity, protest how
unfair life was, wish that things had gone different, be defeated by people who
chose to say ugly things not just about us, but to us, let envy eat at me for
those that seemed to have it all going well –and I did that for a while. BUT –
I eventually relinquished my control and chose to give it over to God. My trying to maintain control was most
definitely not working! I lay on the
floor crying and wanting to melt into it and screamed “Where are you – I can’t
do this anymore”. And God scooped me up
and sat me in a chair – like I literally have no idea how I got in that chair. The next thing I knew I was opening the
YouVersion App on my phone and the Verse of the Day was
Ephesians 2:8-9 For by Grace you have been saved through
faith. And this is not your own doing,
it is the gift of God. Not a result of
works, so that no one by boast.
I had fallen away from God, I had
neglected to accept His gift. And I have
to tell you as mortifying as it was for my family to have to go through those
few years. Today, this day, I am more
embarrassed to tell you that I had completely stopped communicating with God in
any way, shape, or form. I had been
active in the church, the community, the schools, I was the ‘Yes Girl’. I was a ‘people-pleaser’ but not necessarily a
God pleaser. And then God said
HELLO!! I saved you by my Grace. Stop doing and start believing! By Grace you have been saved by faith, it
doesn’t come from you, you can’t earn this.
Joel 2:25 God can restore what is broken and change it
into something amazing. All you need is
faith.
That’s it. Faith.
God doesn’t say, run this by your family and get back to me. He doesn’t say research some examples of how
this worked out for other people. We
don’t need an explanation from him, we don’t need a Plan B, we don’t need to
run it by our best friend for approval.
And we sure don’t need to question God’s authority over the
situation. Faith. Faith to know
he totally has this covered. God saying
“hey, I got your back”. Faith that He is
all-knowing – He knows how it ends. Rev
21:4 – He will wipe every tear from their eyes.
There will be no more death or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the old
order of things has passed away.
Now, with all that being said. IT’S HARD!! I am by no means standing here, telling you
that having full faith is easy. It is
our human nature to want to control the situation, to have some idea of what we
are getting ourselves into. We tend to
want to tell God what is best for us, instead of trusting that the other way
around – His way - has an outcome that is beyond anything we could have
imagined. When Job was tested and came
out saying in 42:3 You asked “Who is this
that questions my wisdom with such ignorance?
It is I – and I was talking about
things I knew nothing about, things far too wonderful for me. Do we not wonder about God’s motives as Job
did?
When someone asks me what it means to
be a Christian, I like to say “I am a work in progress”. I still have to work at it every day. I still have to stop and remind myself that I
need to give all things over to God in fullness of faith. Any amount of worry that I contribute to a
situation, does NOT ONE THING to change the outcome. I don’t think that God expects perfection out
of us, I think He is just as pleased with our effort. He is pleased with every opportunity that we
need Him, that we seek Him, that we thank Him – that is where redemption begins.
Have you ever wondered what you would
say to someone who you felt really, really wronged you? For my birthday a couple of months after we
had filed for bankruptcy, my brother offered to buy me a tattoo. A permanent reminder of ‘making it
through’. It was the end of January
before we finally got around to going.
We went to the tattoo parlor on a Saturday and they were packed. There was no way we were getting in that
night. So we came back the following
Thursday and there was a guy in front of us getting a tattoo that was going to
take hours, so we decided to make an appointment. We went back the following Monday– Third time
is a charm – and I am in the middle of getting my tattoo and in walks one of
the kids that broke into our store.
Seriously? I have tried two other
times to get this tattoo. And a voice
whispered to me ‘there is nothing you can say, nothing will make him understand
what he did to your family, nothing – now is not the time’. And then this little, what I like to call
‘Dome of Peace’ came over me. It started
at the top of my head and I could fill it work its way down over the rest of my
body. Wow, talk about a God moment – I
have never felt so calm in my entire life.
As awesome as the Dome of Peace was, let me tell you, my brother has a
bit of a temper and I am sitting there protected in my Dome of Peace smiling
and he is like what is up with you. And
I said…if I tell you, you can’t get mad, but that is one of the boys that broke
into our store and it is okay. And the
Lord kept me brother’s mouth and fists closed…that my friends, is a
miracle.
And I share, because I have had
a couple of intense God moments, times when I really needed Him there with me,
and without a doubt, He completely revealed himself. I have read devotions every day since that
day He lifted me up off the floor. And
what I have found is I need Him there in the good times too, because at any
moment something could rock my world and I need to be ready to lean on Him and
not on myself. Not only do I need Him
there in the good times, I want Him there. I want Jesus right beside me
sharing every moment of my life that allows me to thank Him for that moment of
blessings. I need Him beside me to fill
me with courage and compassion. Sharing with you is really great.
But I need God to get me through it - through the anxiety, through the
fear of judgement. I need Him in this
awesome moment to work through me so that I can be a better witness for His
kingdom.
And that is the reason that God
allowed everything to be taken from me – it is hard to witness when you don’t
have anything to witness about. I had to
start from a clean slate. I had to learn
to appreciate food on the table, I had to learn to appreciate a roof over my
head, I had to learn who to keep at arm’s length, I had to learn to appreciate
that the only prayer I prayed for months was for God to keep my little family
of four together – and you know what? He
did. I had to learn that it is all from
God, nothing is of me. Not one single thing I have or do – God has
had it mapped out from the beginning of time.
There is amazing freedom in “holy cow, I don’t have to, nor can I control
this!” And you know what else I
learned? It isn’t always about me! Sometimes we just were in the right place at
the right time which can feel like the wrong place at the wrong time. Only God knows, but maybe someone else in
this big giant picture of life is trying to work through their fullness of
faith too. Maybe they are lost and
working their way back and I am part of that puzzle, but it may not be about
me. I know it sounds insane to say I am
glad that all that crazy stuff happened to us because God in true form has used
it for His good.
But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my
power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more
gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.
Man, I am weak when He is
strong. I have learned to quietly endure
times that try my patience. I have
learned that it is okay to say No. I am
no longer a people pleaser – and guess what?
The world did not end because I chose to say No to something. I am learning to do things that God puts on
my heart, things that fill my spirit.
That is the only way that I can share His love with others. His light does not shine when I do things out
of obligation, when I have a bad attitude because I said Yes in order to avoid
hurting someone else’s feelings. I have
learned to go to God when I am feeling out of sorts. When the prayers just aren’t being expressed
from my heart the way I want, when the scripture just isn’t making sense. I have learned to breathe a sigh of relief
and thank God for the days that nothing happens. I need God in the times I am in stuck in
neutral. I want Him to know that I am
thankful I am not stuck in overdrive or reverse. Thank God I am not stuck in reverse.
We can’t go back, only forward. Aren’t we glad that punishment for looking
back isn’t like it was in the Old Testament, when the angels led Lot and his
family out of Sodom and his wife looked back?
I would have been a pillar of salt a long time ago. But, each day God gives us another chance to season
our faith. He is not asking for
perfection, He is asking for effort, for forward momentum.
Moses wandered the dessert for 40
years – No air conditioning or heat, no cars to get there quicker, no washer
and dryer, no running water, no Walmart, no TV to watch while they waited, no
GPS – Our waiting doesn’t sound so bad does it?
We are practicing having faith that God knows the way. That He is the great architect, the ultimate
destination planner, the ultimate travel agent, wedding planner, and life
coach. It may not always look like WE planned it to be, like we built it
up in our minds. But isn’t that the
point? It isn’t our plan, it is God’s. We have to have faith that the life we are
living is just as it should be. God has
us right where He wants us, with the people we need and the people who need us,
and the circumstances are just such that they steer us toward what God has in
mind for us – that may be hard times, that may be good times, it may mean neutral
times.
For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD,
"plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a
future.
He holds the plans that will
eventually, in His time, bring
us to fullness of faith. He longs for us
to look to Him for our every need, the good, the bad, the ugly, the
neutral. You are saved by Grace, God’s
gift, will you accept this gift? Will
you choose to praise God in every moment?
Will you choose to make the effort going forward? Be still.
Listen. Know that right now in
this moment, you are exactly where you need to be – you are being redeemed.
Amen.
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