God Showed Up
“Come and hear, all you who fear God; let me tell you what he has done for me,” (Psalm 66:16).
We all go through seasons where we struggle. Life is a rollercoaster, and sometimes we’re going up, sometimes we’re going down. For believers, seasons of struggle can often also be seasons of doubt. I know they are for me.
I am a control freak, and someone who judges actions, not words - if I can’t see, feel, or empirically prove it, I doubt its existence. Which, ironically, is the antithesis of Faith.
For a large chunk of the past many years, I have been struggling with a couple of issues, and in large part struggling to KNOW God exists.
Lucky for me, God knows this, and recently, He Forrest Gump-ed me. In the middle of a very serious bout of doubting God existed, God showed up. Twice!
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law,” (Galatians 5: 22-23).
I have auditory processing, and certain sounds are extremely soothing and pleasant for me. Crickets are one, and I have a sound machine that plays crickets every night when I go to bed. Another is windchimes, and I have a set that is special to me and especially soothing. These windchimes are right outside of my bedroom window.
A few days ago, someone came to our front door. My daughter answered (I was in my room working), and it was a new neighbor in the apartment building right next to us. She came by to ask if we would move the windchimes because they were keeping her awake at night. Even though I love my wind chimes, the situation felt like an opportunity to grow some Fruit of the Spirit - Kindness. So, we took them down. A couple of days later, I opened my front door to find a bottle of wine and a hand-written thank you note taped to it. Our new neighbor revealed to us she has a condition in which she is hyper-sensitive to sounds, and she thanked us for moving the windchimes.
God showed up in the form of an opportunity. The opportunity to be kind, make a new friend, witness to a potential new believer, or maybe even reinforce the love and presence of God to a struggling believer. It cost me nothing, but I gained so much. I still have my crickets.
“I call on you, my God, for you will answer me; turn your ear to me and hear my prayer,” (Psalm 17:6).
Last week, I was having a VERY hectic Friday at school. The last period of the day was my prep period, and there were a thousand things I needed to do before I could leave campus and enjoy the weekend. One of those things required me to go to the front office, sign attendance verification reports, and get them turned into the Attendance Office before the clerks left. I walked REALLY fast to the office (sorry friends - I don’t run), and when I got the papers out of my mailbox, there was also a check stub for extra duty pay and a couple of other items. In addition, the attendance forms had some inaccuracy issues I needed to get straight with the attendance clerks. Sometime during my frantic dash to get attendance taken care of and back to my classroom to wrap things up in time to go pick my daughter up from school, I misplaced my check stub!
I did not notice I no longer had it until after I had mad-dashed around my classroom getting it set up for Monday, dealt with a student who had come by asking for something that took me a few minutes to find and then started packing up my things. As you can imagine, I went into full panic mode. I dug through all of my stuff at least five times. I did not find it, but I did find an old one that at least showed that no sensitive information was on my pay stub. But as previously mentioned, I’m a control freak, so the thought of NOT having it really bothered me.
I knew the only thing I could do at that point was pray, so I let the Holy Spirit guide me on HOW to pray in this situation. I prayed for God to cover my pay stub in His protection, and that whoever found it would be a safe person.
I had to go pick up my daughter, so I left it all in God’s hands. To be honest, I was still bothered I had lost it. Later that evening, I was scheduled to sell tickets at our home football game. As I was grabbing my things to leave, I checked my social media and saw I had a message on Instagram. The message was from a security guard at my school. He is a close personal friend and a fellow believer. He was letting me know he had found my check stub!
Though I have a degree in English, I cannot find the words to adequately express the emotions that overwhelmed me. It was as if, for a moment, I LIVED Psalm 46:10 - “Be still and know that I am God.” At that moment, I KNEW as absolutely as humanly possible that God exists, and that He is I AM.
A missing pay stub with no personal information on it is not a big deal. This moment, though, wasn’t about the pay stub. It was about God revealing Himself to me through an answered prayer in the specific way I prayed it. When my friend brought it to me later that evening (he happened to be working security during the game), I asked him where he found it. He had found it right outside of the main office door, and though he usually doesn’t pick things up, he felt compelled to do so this time. When he saw my name on it, he was glad he had picked it up because he recognized it for what it was.
“This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways,” (Hagaai 1:7).
What we do defines who we are and what we believe. I was able to be an example of the love of Jesus to a stranger, and in another moment, I was the recipient of that love and experienced a direct and specific answer to prayer. Titus 1:16 says, “They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.” If we claim to be a believer and follower of Christ, then our actions MUST prove that claim. We know what to do - the Bible specifically tells us. Further, if we claim to be believers and followers of Christ, then our FAITH must prove that claim through our actions. James 2:17 says, “In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”
In this blog, I have testified that God gives us opportunities to show through our actions what we believe. I have testified that when we are faithful and pray according to His will, God answers prayers in a way that leaves no room to doubt His existence nor His love for us.
Now, I want to challenge us to live 1 John 3:18: “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”
We do this through the cultivation of the Fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-24): Love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. We prove this cultivation through our actions.
Because if we don’t, that’s not the end of it. We have a choice, but to be on the wrong side of God’s plans is a choice that won’t go well for us. In the next chapter of Galatians, after Paul has outlined the Fruits of the Spirit (right after the acts of the flesh), he gives us a warning.
“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life,” (Galatians 6:7-8)
Satan would have us believe, through his voice in this world, that God isn’t serious about what He says. Even in the Garden of Eden Satan asked Eve, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’” (Genesis 3:1), and then he mocked God by telling her, “You will not certainly die, for God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil,” (Genesis 3:4).
From the beginning, Satan has tricked us into believing God isn’t serious - but He is! What we do etches who we are into Eternity, and what we do, because of free will, dictates what God will allow Himself to do in our lives.
Choose wisely. Choose God. Then, testify to all of creation, “Come and hear, all you who fear God; let me tell you what he has done for me,” (Psalm 66:16).
AMEN
