It's amazing to think how God brings us to different places in our life! He is always planning something spectacular to happen to make us fall even more in love with him and I admit that most of the time its really hard for me to see these things. But I know throughout my life, looking back on the hardest hours I can see how God was working upstream in my life! He has ways of getting our attention like I have never seen before! It blows me away all the time to think about the creator of the universe desiring constantly to have a relationship and to love on everyone in the world! Why would he care about someone so small as me and why would he want to use me to do his will? This is the devil trying to distract us from the Lord, and I can say I have been distracted by the devil plenty of times but the Lord never fails! He is faithful and loves me so much that he never leaves me to defend myself against the evil in this world!
This year has been kind of a tough year for me and to be able to see how the Lord is working everything out for my good and in the end it will bring him the glory so that his light may be seen by those in the darkness. Everyone goes through hardships, its just a fact of life and I read something encouraging in a book called Second Guessing God by Brain Jones that I wanted to share.
In Joshua 3 it talks about the story of when the Lord led the Israelites out of Egypt after 400 years of captivity! The Lord was leading his people to the promise land but the journey took longer then expected because of the Israelites diobedience. So for 40 years they wandered in the desserts. Think about how defeated they must have felt to finally get out of captivity and look forward to finally be able to live in the land the Lord had promised them for so long, but know they found that they had to wait another 40 years for their disobedience! I know I would start blaming other people and become frustrated with the Lord. But the Lord did not just get up and walk away from his people! No! he still loved them unconditionally and had a plan! He still held true to his promise! The Lord is faithful!
So finally, after the 40 years were up, the Lord prepares to take them to the promised land.
Joshua 3:1,"Early in the morning Joshua and all the Israelites set out from Shittim and went to the Jordan, where they camped before crossing over."
Now ll that was left was to cross the Jordan River!
But Joshua 3:15a it tells us the condition of the Jordann river at this time
" Now the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest."
Just imagine all the Israelites standing in front of this roaring and flooded river. Just feet away from the promised land! There are sick, crippled, mentally disabled, and the old all standing there in awe of the situation. I would be angry with the Lord and question why he would bring me so far just so a flooded river could prevent me from reaching this land.
Joshua 3:15b-16
Yet as soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water's edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing. It piled up in a heap a great distance away, at a town called Adam in the vicinity of Zarethan, while the water flowing down to the Sea of the Arabah was completely cut off. So the people crossed over opposite Jericho.
Scholars found that the town of Adam was 19 miles upstream from where the Israelites were crossing, far beyond anyone's sight.
In the book Second Guessing God, I was really encouraged by the message the author got from this story about the Israelites reaching the promised land. This is what the author got from it that I really wanted to share!
"I believe the same situation occurs in our lives today. Here's the powerful truth the children of Israel learned that day: God is always at work upstream in our lives. Where's God? Whenever we face a problem in our lives - sickness, job loss, depression, tragedy, or discouragement - God is at work upstream in those situations, beyond our line of sight. The only thing the Israelites could see was the problem right in front of them. They could have concluded that since that raging river was there, God wasn't actively involved in their situation, but they would have been wrong. He was there; they just couldn't see him at work."
How many times do we get frustrated when we feel like God does not care about the problems in our lives, or that he is just leaving us high and dry! God never will forsake us! He is always there even when we can't see HIM! how awesome is that to know that we have the Savior of the universe always working to bless our lives! There is no greater thing than this!
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