“There’s an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on the earth…” Ecclesiastes 3:1
I’m preparing to speak at a women’s brunch at a local church this Saturday and we’ll be talking about Jesus–the Author and Finisher of our faith.
I like to look back over my life, prayerfully–asking God to help me remember and to see his fingerprints–and I never fail to see where he’s been working without my knowledge at the time.
I see him in my first love of a toddler typewriter and the keen ability to understand English far better than math, in the way I loved to spin stories. In times when I was afraid of punishment at school, but he showed me mercy.
God is with us in it all. Sometimes we can’t see it and we believe he might be absent or angry at us. Why else would he not intervene when others’ sins spill into our lives and hurt us so deeply, so out of control to fix it. These are valid questions. Human nature. God isn’t afraid of them, but he also doesn’t always answer the why. Instead he waits on WHEN. When we’re ready to trust that even in bad situations, he is good. Always good. Always faithful. Always cherishing us and loving us. Yes, even when evil touches us, ravages us and leaves us broken and brittle and even bitter. He is still faithful and good.
Our circumstances can’t be the measuring stick of God’s love for us, or his faithfulness to us.
All the chapters of our stories have been already penned in blood. We just have to be faithful to keep turning the pages.
If you’re going through a hard time, questioning if God loves you, I want to leave you with this, believer.
“If God is for us, who can ever be against us? 32 Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? 33 Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. 34 Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us.
35 Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? 36 (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”) 37 No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.
38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[p] neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. 39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:31-39 NLT
