knowledgeofgoodandevil

I can’t stress enough what a personal God, God is. (That was an awkward sentence). But it’s true. This past year, God has shown me over and over, reminded me, who He is. I’ve known Him for a long time, but like everything, I had grown complacent. God wanted me to experience Him and remember who He really is.

I told you last week about my secret prayer request. But there were so many things God has done to remind me that He is there, near me, and that He loves me. That’s the beauty of the Christian life. God says He will supply all of our needs. But He doesn’t leave it at food, shelter, and clothing. He goes much, much deeper than that. He designed us. He knows our needs are far greater than food, shelter, and clothing. He knows we have emotional needs, spiritual needs, a need for belonging, etc. And God is comprehensive. He insures that ALL of our needs are met. And this past year has been a Job experience for me. Like Job, who sat on an ash heap, scratching his sores, that was me. Then, God came along and asked Job, “Do you know who I am?” God presents him with a list of things only God can do. Great things, amazing things, and then He asks Job, tell Me who can do these things.

This past year I’ve sat on my own ash heap, scratching my own sores and feeling sorry for myself. And God has come, “Tell me, who can do these things?”

Who loves you like no other? Who can clothe the lily of the valley as glorious as it is clothed? Who takes your prayers and places them in golden bowls? Who knows your every thought and desire? Who has given their life for you? Tell me if you know.

I do know. I…do…know. I temporarily forgot, but I do know. God loves me. He knows everything about me. And just when I feel I have reached the bottom, God reaches His hand to me, and lifts me up.

Several weeks ago, I woke up to a bad morning. I had received three pieces of bad news and I was back in the pit. I secretly said to myself, “When is it ever going to end?” Can’t I just have some good news from somewhere? That morning, I went out to do some errands in the morning. When I got back home, my hubby said I had a letter from an old friend from college. I sat down on the couch and opened the letter. My friend was thanking me for the encouragement she had received from my blogs. She talked about one particular blog and what it meant to her. I was floored. The letter couldn’t have come at a more perfect time. I quickly sent her a message, thanking her for the letter and how perfect the timing was. She responded and said she carried the letter in her purse for some time, because it was so small, she kept forgetting to mail it. She finally mailed it and it arrived in my mailbox at the exact time I needed to read the words she wrote. That’s not a coincidence. That is the work of the same God who confronted Job about who He really was. The same God that has confronted me and reminded me that He loves me.

Friends, I can’t tell you enough, how personal God is. We know He’s great and powerful and omniscient. But God is so deeply personal. He knows exactly what we need, when we need it. And when we let Him, He Will satisfy all of our needs, ALL OF THEM.

Last week I didn’t post anything. The enemy was doing what the enemy does best, wrecking havoc on believers. I was locked out of my website. No matter how many times I tried, I couldn’t get in. I had to spend an hour with a tech person to help me back in.

Obviously my messages are speaking truth. So I shall continue.

This whole time since September has been a struggle for me. I applied to so many jobs. Couldn’t land one to save my life. I struggled with self doubt. I questioned everything about my life. I questioned if God really loved me. I questioned taking twenty years off to raise my family. I questioned what I did wrong to struggle so. In the mean time, I made a special prayer request that had nothing to do with my current problems. It was just a preference. I live in Southern California. I’m an Alaskan transplant. We just sweated through one of the hottest, humid summers in Southern California. So I made a request of God. “Please Lord, give us a cold, wet winter.”

It was my secret prayer. I didn’t tell anybody. I just kept it to myself. But God used that prayer request to speak to me. Every time I struggled through the waiting time, when I felt I had hit bottom, it would rain. We desperately needed rain here in Southern California, so it wasn’t a bad thing. I would go to bed, sometimes, stressed and unsure of what to do. When I would wake up, I would hear rain falling outside my bedroom window. It seemed, every disappointment I struggled with, would be met with rain. Sometimes, it was even a rainbow.

Sitting under the cloud of lies, not believing God cared about me, He would signal to me with rain. EVERY SINGLE TIME.

So last Saturday, doubt began to creep into my mind, again. Those old thoughts of self doubt and struggle came and overwhelmed me. I decided to go to bed. Things always look better in the morning. So the next morning I woke up to…rain. It was Sunday morning. It rained on my way to church. It rained on my way home. Then, sitting in my house, awake, alert, the rain started pouring hard. I was texting a friend at the time. She said there was light rain at her house. But my house, it was raining cats and dogs. It was as if God was yelling at me through the rain, “I LOVE YOU! I HAVEN’T LEFT YOU! I HEARD YOUR PRAYERS!”

God loves His children. He never leaves us or forsakes us. At times, if we listen to the lies the enemy dishes out to us, we will feel like God has left. But that’s a lie. And God in His infinite wisdom and love will reach out to His children, and signal to us, that He is still there. It will be through something that only you and God are aware of. It will be personal that speaks directly to you. That’s how God is. He’s a personal God. He’s good. And He loves His own.

And to Southern California, you’re welcome!

Walking through the waiting time, that I did, opened my eyes to so many things. Isn’t that why God has us in the waiting time? We learn things. We learn things about Him and we learn things about ourselves. It strengthens our faith, for the next time.

A friend of mine asked me why I had to remind myself that God loved me, as I went through the waiting time. He died for your sins, of course He loves you, she said. I thought about that.

Yes, I knew God loved me. But that thought was somewhere in the back of my mind. At the time, I was sitting under a cloud of lies. I heard lies in my head: God was mad at me, God didn’t really love me, God tolerated me, but I was such a screw up, He didn’t really want to help me. I felt like an ugly step child, hidden in the basement. I wasn’t able to be upstairs with the real family. I was locked away…tolerated.

Of course, those were all lies. But that’s why I had to remind myself, over and over again that God loved me. The lies kept invading my mind, wrecking havoc on my brain and heart.

A Christian faces all kinds of temptations. Temptations to sin in so many ways. My temptation is to believe the lies the enemy dishes out to me, as soon as I’m walking the valley. As soon as I began to wait, having a prayer not answered right away, in come the lies. Lies upon lies. And the problem with the waiting time is that I’m already tired. I’m already spent. So when the lies come, I can’t combat them as easily.

So that’s why I had to remind myself that God loved me. That’s why I had to tell myself over and over again: God loved me, He heard my prayers, and He knows my need. I had those three truths as my weapon of choice. I could remind myself of exactly that. When I did, the power of the lies disappeared. I felt comfort. The more I told myself those truths, the better I felt. And when more lies were hurled at me, I had to tell myself those truths again.

And that is what you can do, as a believer. If your temptation is to believe lies the enemy dishes out to you, claim God’s truths. Tell yourself what you know to be true about God. He does love you. He does hear your prayers. He does know all of your needs and all of your feelings. He is the God of all comfort. He will come to your rescue. The waiting time might not be over, but He will be the balm for your soul. He will sooth you. And to feel God’s love, to feel the comfort He brings you is the greatest gift of all.

So believer, remind yourself of God’s truth and feel the enemy’s lies fade quickly away.

Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms out there. This coming weekend we will celebrate Mother’s Day.

When I was growing up in Alaska, one summer we spotted a robin’s nest, sitting low, near a trail we always walked. The nest was at eye level. We would pass it everyday. Everyday we would see the mother robin sit on those eggs, keeping them warm. Once in awhile, we would catch the eggs unattended while the mom probably went out to get something to eat. We looked in the nest and could see three pretty blue eggs, laying in her nest. One day, we got excited and could see the eggs were cracking open. We could see little beaks trying to break out of the egg. Later, we saw the tiny birds sitting in the nest. Mom seemed to always be gone now, having to go get food for her growing family. If you waved your hand over the nest, those three little beaks would open wide, hoping food would get dropped in.

The babies grew up and we saw the mother trying to gently push her babies out of the nest and onto their own lives. Even in bird world, mothers are comforting and nurturing.

Mother’s are comforting. Well, most mothers are. We’re designed to be that way. Women have this natural nurturing ability that men don’t have. I’m not ragging on men, just stating a fact. Men have other qualities they bring to children. But nurturing, that’s a mother’s job. It’s instinctual.

God likens Himself to a mother.

Isaiah 66:13 “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you, and you will be comforted over Jerusalem.”

God knew what He was doing when He designed women. He knew that nurturing would be an extremely important aspect of a woman’s abilities. God knew, because God comforts us in the same way.

Imagine that. God comforts us like a mother comforts her children. Believer’s are God’s spiritual children, adopted into the family of God through our salvation. And like a responsible parent, God takes on the role of father and mother. And He reminds us that He comforts us just like a mother does to her children.

You probably have memories of your own mother comforting you, nurturing you. There are probably times you can remember, when your mother was there for you, giving you encouragement or tender loving care. As we grow into adults, God takes on the role of mother. Like those little birdies, we eventually leave the nest, but God steps into our mother’s place and comforts us as our mothers would.

So go to God, believer, and get the comfort you desperately need. Seek after God and He WILL comfort you, just like a mother who knows her children so well, will comfort them.

Today I went to the memorial service of my long time Bible study teacher, Patricia Cranford Cameron. I went to her Bible study for fifteen years. I served with her as a small group leader for eight years. She died from Leukemia. It was completely unexpected.

When I first attended her Bible study, I was invited by a friend. The friend kept bugging and bugging me to go. I finally gave in, just to get her to quit asking. I didn’t think I had time for a Bible study. I had two small children and I knew I was going to homeschool them.

So I went to the Bible study, not expecting much. We sang a few praise songs, then it was time for the Bible study teacher to come out and do a lecture. She walked out onto the stage. I took one look at her with her big hair, and her very sophisticated clothing, with her nails long and polished and wondered what in the world she could ever teach me about the Bible. I sat in the audience with my chewed down nails, flat hair and about the only decent outfit from my closet that wasn’t torn up, ripped or stained. I actually had a secret pride in my appearance, kind of a John the Baptist, martyr kind of vibe. You know, the sackcloth and ashes kind of look. I figured I was holier than everyone else because my clothes really were holier than everyone else’s.

Patricia Cranford Cameron began to speak. She told a quick joke and I caught myself laughing. She began to speak about the passage they were studying at the time. She caught my attention. She didn’t speak with authority like you must do this or else! She didn’t have some watered down new age mumble jumble. She actually taught from the Bible and nothing but the Bible. She talked of Jesus and having a relationship with Him. Soon I didn’t notice the big hair and nails. Soon I was mesmerized by her Bible lecture. It was concise. There was no Jesus and… It was straight up, pure Bible. I was hooked.

I started going to the Bible study that fall, taking my one year old and three year old. They had Bible study classes for the kids as well. Again, straight up Bible study. This was something I could truly get behind.

I sat under Patricia for fifteen years and she never wavered from her commitment to the Bible. It was never watered down. She knew the Lord. It was clear. One time she asked me to share my testimony before the whole class. I was terrified. I sat in the front row that day praying desperately for God to help me do this. Just before it started I asked her how she did this every week. She told me it was love, plain and simple.

Patricia has gone to be with the Lord. The same Lord she talked about over and over in our Bible study. She is seeing the heaven, she talked about. She has met, face to face, the God she shared with whoever would listen. She is experiencing all of it that we believers look forward to. I will miss her. But the beauty of a believer’s death is that I will see her again. What a glorious thing! Goodbye Patricia. I will see you later.