 | RestoringVoice Dec 27 |
"When the Lord blesses you with riches, you have nothing to regret." Proverbs 10:22 I just finished reading Stones of Remembrance A Rock- Hard Faith from Rock-Hard places
by Lois Evans and Jane Rubietta. One of the last chapters highlighted the story of Achsah,
the daughter of Caleb, found in Joshua 15. They talked about how she asked for a blessing from her father. They correlated it to God's desire to bless us. God's blessing is so much more than we can ask or dream of. Every good blessing comes
from Him. Yet so often we look at the pain in our lives and think it comes from God. I believe God can use our pain, but I don't believe He causes it. He is a perfect and good God. If He caused our pain it would be wrong, to ask Him to take it away. It would be sadistic of Him to cause pain hoping in our pain we would cry out to Him. I have allowed my children to experience pain to learn from it. When my kids went through a biting spell or punching spell, I gave them a taste of the pain it caused. Enough for them to experience the pain, but never enough to injure them. I would never intentionally hurt my child hoping they would come to me to fix it and for comfort. If I would not do that to my child, why would I question if God would? I was a young parent not a perfect God. God takes what the enemy means to destroy us and uses
it to propel us in to the next season of our life. He doesn't cause the pain. He may allow
it because we live in a fallen, sinful world. Not that our sin causes it to happen; sin in general allows the enemy
and our flesh to have it's way. But God is there wanting to bless His children. Even through the hardships He wants to bring good from it. He wants to bless us with every spiritual blessing.
He already has through Christ Jesus. The blessings are ours for the receiving if we will just allow ourselves to accept
them. There is nothing we can do to deserve His blessings. We just need to accept what He offers. Some blessings are available to us all. Others are part of our calling and destiny. They come in places and ways we may not expect. Sometimes they come out of broken places. When I think about the compassion I have for the hurting, I am taken back to the brokeness in my own life and those who showed me compassion. I am often reminded, an humbled because I know it is by the grace of God, by His blessings on my life
that I am now on the helping side of the pain. There is no other explanation
for a teenaged mother, with a divorce and three children before the age of twenty-one,
from a home with a father who was a sexual offender, and a mother who stayed by his side would grow up to be a child
welfare worker that worked to restore families broken by abuse and neglect. Or why in a
family with a mother who graduated high school, a dad who dropped out of high school and a grandmother with an 8th grade education that I would graduate a year early from
high school (even as a teen mom) and go to college becoming the first in my family with a master's degree. That is God's blessing. There is no other explanation for my marriage.
We met when I was in junior high, although our paths ran parallel many times before
even through my childhood. We married when I was eighteen and divorced before I turned
twenty. We were brought back together after my father was diagnosed with cancer. God restored our marriage and we
celebrated 23 years together this past May. God's blessing comes when we least expect it. His blessings come in packages hidden
from plain sight until the blessing fully manifests and we can see it could only come from God! Although we may wish we didn't walk through the difficult circumstances to get to the blessing, when we look back it is without regret. Prayer - Lord. I thank You for the many blessings You have given me in my life. I am humbled by Your favor towards
me. Help me to continue to see Your blessings unfold in my life. Give me eyes to see those spiritual blessing as well as the
natural. In Jesus name. Amen. |
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