If you're a true fan, you know.
Bad days are going to come. I think they are most likely to come on the heels of a great day! This past Sunday we hosted a great service at our church with a prison chaplain who was once incarcerated himself. At the beginning of the discussion to host him, we realized what a great potential there was for this to be a real outreach to our community and we were NOT disappointed. We included other churches in the service and had more than 300 people in attendance from our community, the metro area, and from surrounding states even! We livestream our services on Facebook and a number of people watched that way as well. Lives were changed, addictions were broken, and healings occurred. God is good!
Here in our area we are experiencing flooding similar, but not quite as severe, as a flood we had in 1993. You know...one of those 100 year floods. It's getting crazy with levees breaking up and down the river. In our immediate area, a small section of the levee has broken and took out a water intake pump so we are on orders to conserve water. It's loads of fun, but could be so much worse!
In 2017 we had a lot of rain around this exact time of year and for the first time since moving into our home in 2004 we had water in our basement from the water table being so high. It was awful! I told my husband a couple of days ago that I was getting concerned about it again. When I woke up this morning, sure enough. Standing water. We didn't have much time to deal with it this morning with trying to get kids ready, to school and I had to preach today.
When I got to my office this morning, I knew I had to get my head in the game and my earlier cup of coffee and stop for a Dr. Pepper wasn't going to suffice. So I sat at my desk and began playing the new Paradoxology album from Elevation Worship.
I just needed to soak in the presence of God. At the last song, my Spotify playlist just began shuffling and wouldn't you know it...every single song that came on was about trusting God and a reminder of His faithfulness. I was able to refocus and square up. I shared the message to our group and had lunch with them and then went home to try to take care of things there.
I spent the majority of the afternoon and evening cleaning and trying to get water up. If there is a silver lining it is that because of the water I purged 4 trash bags of clutter! That is an amazing feeling!
Here's the point. I knew we were expecting more rain tonight, even thunderstorms so I have been praying and asking God to stop the rain or at least give us some relief. Around 5pm I checked our local weather app and looked at the radar to find that as the evening would go on, the majority of the storms and rain were just scooping right around us and very little rain was showing going through our direct line!
I know many will say this is coincidence or have some other excuse as to why it happened the way it did but here is what I know...I decluttered, cleaned, dried up 3/4 of the water that we had and, glory be to Jesus and in faith speaking for it to remain this way, we are not seeing any new water!
Gentle reminders and a softly spoken message of rebuke through a song about trusting Him is how God chose to tell me today that He sees me, knows me, and is holding me in His hands and that it will all be okay in the end. I just have to trust Him and keep my eyes fixed on Him.
I pray this encourages someone else, may be even you, right now, to trust our good Father.
Great message. God is good all the time even during our struggles. Love this site.