Thursday, September 30, 2010 — IDOK Devotion
Praying For These, to review please click here.
I am bone tired tonight; it’s been a productive day. Perhaps I’ll be brief. 🙂
Looking for something to share with you, I read a devotion written by Mary Graham and situated in a book titled Contagious Joy.
The subject devotion is entitled God Is in Control. I need this tonight. Not so much for workings within the walls here in Satsuma, but for others. Others more dear than my next breath — every loving mother knows!
Said devotion is 6 pages, so that means as much as I love ya, I’m not typing it tonight. But I will give you a summary and some quotes that hopefully will encourage you.
Mary was critter sitting, a hamster to be exact, for someone she dearly loved and the hamster went missing and prayers ascended to Heaven. And when he was found safe and sound, she wrote:
It was then I remembered that all the promises of God are true, all the time. He can always be trusted. He’s always there. He doesn’t judge our requests, feelings, needs, fears, desires, inadequacies, insecurities, or vulnerabilities. He doesn’t leave us on our own when our issues are too minor or too impossible to manage. He doesn’t say, “I don’t do hamsters.”
And Mary had other fears, inadequacies, insecurities and vulnerabilities that she could not manage. A big one — her mother, her once vibrant, accomplishing, the ‘glue’ who always held the family together was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. They begged God to make her well. Her mom was only 60. Mary said she prayed for her mother to get better, to feel comfortable and peaceful. But she didn’t.
God didn’t do what we asked, but now we know He did something much better. Second Corinthians 4:16 says, “Therefore, we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day” (NKJV). In many ways, the weaker my mother became, the more her sweet spirit impacted our lives. As a result, we were all changed, especially my father who, after years of resistance to grace, came to personal faith in Christ. Six weeks after my mother died, he died. By then, we knew eternal life was his.
No one knows how God works. He may decide to save a hamster and wait on the suffering of one of His own children. Sometimes He chooses to allow earthly suffering for His eternal purpose. All I know is He can be trusted, even when I don’t see the result. I have no need to worry, fret, or beg. He is in control, and He will accomplish His purpose. That is a joy I celebrate.
And last night as my beloved and I were discussing the Apostle John and Mary and JESUS and family dynamics a revelation came in a way like never before. JESUS knows, He empathizes with every loss we experience; even and in particular I think, ones we love so dearly – family. Do you have any doubts that JESUS loved Joseph? Do you have any doubts that Joseph was ‘Daddy’ to JESUS as a toddler, a lad, and a man? Do we not know that they had a ‘father/son’ relationship? Think about your own Daddy … JESUS had love like that for Joseph and yet JESUS, Son of God, able to raise the dead and heal the sick, ‘let’ Joseph die. He did not make him well; he did not raise him from the dead. Can we doubt now, can we ever feel He does not understand how we feel when He does not heal our loved ones in the here and now? HE KNOWS. He has stood where we stand. This did something for me last night and still today, and I hope it will for you as you come to this page.
Good night or good morning … Sweet Friends, Sisters and Brothers.
ABBA, do what You will with this; may it as You desire reach the screens of our IDOKs as they need. We collectively and individually bring all our concerns, proclaiming You are in control and You are trustworthy and we are grateful for what You have and will do for each of us, and for our IDOK Troops and our Praying For These loved ones; realizing and proclaiming before all these witnesses that we come in the NAME and MERITS and through the BLOOD of JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD. Amen and amen.
Holy hugs, kt
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