Where Did You Find God Today?

I hear my chime clock slowly sounding out the Westminster melody as if each chime is arduous. Time to rewind it. It also is behind a bit in time, so I will need to readjust it. I do this every week, well, like clockwork, and have for decades. I know it can only function so long without me winding it again with the key, so I keep that key handy next to it.

Are we any different? Well, yes and no. A wind-up clock rarely runs too fast. I have discovered I can.

After a four-day hospital vigil by the bedside of a relative, I realized how run down I have become. I have been “wound up” too much and using up too much energy on my own too quickly and so my stamina became depleted. I need to be rewound.

I have the key right next to me at all times which can regain my ability to function – it is God’s Word and prayer. God’s Word is the key, and prayer causes the key to turn around and around so that I have the ability to get in gear again.

Jesus said to the crowds, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew. 11:28-30).

While on earth, Jesus often went away to pray to the Father. He knew when his human body and mind needed to be strengthened in order to function. And Jesus knew Who held the key.

Why do we think we can handle it all if Our Lord in human form could not without God’s help?

Today, I am taking a rest. I am praying, reading His Word, and blogging about it. Already I feel His strength surging in my soul, mind, and body. His Holy Spirit is ministering to me. Soon, I will be ready to get back out there and do what He has called me to do.

If you feel run down and not functioning well, perhaps this key will help you as well. Here are some verses that may help: https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=weakness&version=ESV

Note: I wrote most of this in 2016 when my cousin posted this meme on Facebook …it is still true today. I have revamped the blog a bit.

How true. God will never leave us empty.

You forgot to fill the tank on the way home last night. You remember now that you are headed out the door for work. Ugh.

You’re running on fumes. But you have to keep going. There has bound to be a filling station just up the road. You watch for the signs. The gauge teeters on the E.  Your eye shifts to the tachometer to see how many miles you have gone. Your brain calculates how many more you possibly could go before the engine dies. You hiss a prayer and tap the steering wheel. Come on, come on. I need you now. Where are you, gas station?

If only you had taken the time to stop and fill up before you headed out. But you were running late. It started to rain. You didn’t want to get fume smells on your hands.  You were too rushed to notice the gauge. Whatever the excuse, the fact remains… you didn’t.

Please, God, please. find me a gas station. I need to refuel.  You begin to promise you won’t do this again, but you know you will.  Then you see it. The sign. And guess what? It advertises the cost to be twenty cents cheaper a gallon. Ha!

In our spiritual life, does it work any differently? Many of us run on fumes as a habit, then when a crisis hits, we ask God for a few gallons just to keep us going for now. Usually, He obliges. But why do we not store up enough ahead of time in our tanks? Oh, time is the issue, right?

You were running late. You were too tired to read the Bible last night. You thought I’ll read that passage tomorrow. Then the alarm went off and you hit the snooze button. So you put it off. I’ll pray on Sunday in the pew before the service begins.

I get it. I have done that myself. And regretted it.

God’s Word fills us. We need it daily. We should never go out into the world without a full tank of His promises, love, mercy, and grace in our hearts and minds. But we do. Our lives get hectic. We dash down the road. We keep telling ourselves, I’ll read my Bible when I find the time … soon. And before we know it, we are near empty. That is when Satan can mess with us.

Over the past ten years since I began this blog, God has been faithful to find ways to show me He is there, and He cares. Even when I am rushed and running on empty — there it is. A sign.

And that sign beckons me to not be satisfied with just a few gallons to get me by until I have time but to make the time for prayer and Bible study so I can be filled up.

Are you on fumes? Look for His sign to draw near, make a turn off your busy path, and stop for a while to refuel.

For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. John 1:16

Like many Christians, each year I pray for the word God wants me to grow into for the upcoming year. Last year it was perseverance … and boy did I need lessons in that! This December the word “GRACE” kept floating to the surface of my brain.

Grace is undeserved favor. God extends us grace, even though we do not deserve it. You cannot earn “grace”. But you can choose whether or not to receive it. It is freely offered, but sometimes that is hard to accept. What’s the catch? Surely God wants something in return. You can’t get something for nothing. God sighs, “My child, through Me you can.” … but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).

I have tried more and more over the past several years to accept the grace He so freely offers, knowing I can never be worthy and being okay with that. I thought, am I not making progress here, Lord?

I heard that unmistakable though-voice whisper… I want you to go deeper, Julie. So I have been meditating on that.

Then the ah-ah–more like an oh-oh–moment hit me.

Grace – GIVING the RECEIVED ACCEPTANCE that CHRIST EXTENDS.

Through faith, I can receive God’s grace, but do I pass it on? How often do I extend grace to others instead of grumbling beneath my breath when they are rude or not courteous? How often do I pray for the person who lashes out at me unfairly instead of getting hurt or huffy? How forgiving am I? Do I take that part of the Lord’s prayer to heart — forgive us our trespasses AS we forgive those who trespass against us?

How can I give something I refuse to receive myself? Before I can extend grace, I must not only receive it so I can pass it on, I need to put it into practice on myself.

My late husband was always critical of me, and now that he is gone, I find I have taken up the role myself. I have a tendency to be way too hard on myself. I push myself to the limit, get angry and even badmouth myself if I do something like drop a glass, or stumble over a corner of a rug. Or catch my sleeve on the door latch, or… well, you get the idea. I need to extend grace to me. Only then will my heart be open to extending it more to others.

If God can give me grace through His sacrifice on the cross, and if I am to be more Christ-like in order to draw others to His mercy, then I must let that grace gush out of me to myself and then to others. Because only through grace, can mercy and love freely and honestly flow. Lord, let me be a sieve that drips grace onto my own arms as I pour it over others’ heads.

When I choose grace, I can see others, and myself, through God’s eyes. The cataracts of criticism will fall away. The ways of God will be more clearly seen. My heart will be softened and my soul receptive.

Lord, give me the grace, through You alone, to extend that grace to myself and then to others, knowing none of us are deserving of it, but can give it if we humble ourselves to Your will and toss away our human prejudices, jealousies, and tendencies to judge. Amen.

I have a habit of saying The Lord’s Prayer each morning to start off my prayer time. Memorized as a child, I have said it tens of thousands of times over my life. But, living alone and couped up in my apartment for over a year now due to health concerns, I began to wonder why I kept reciting it in the plural. Our Father…give us this day…lead us not into temptation…

I realize that at the time Jesus told his followers to pray in this manner the concept of being an individual was a foreign one. The community was interconnected. Worship was always corporate. Shame was a huge deterent to temptation, because what you did effected others.

Today, people tend to think in the singluar in our Western world. Some call this the “me” generation. My needs, my wants, my life, my decision, my body. My, oh, my.

So I started to recite the prayer in the singular. My Father….forgive me…lead me….

It felt as odd and uncomfortable as putting my right shoe on my left foot. And I realized why. God did not design us to be solitary beings. We were created to belong. Believers form the Body of Christ, and though I live alone, I am never alone. What I do does effect others whether I realize it or not. My prayers effect others. Saying the Lord’s Prayer is an intercessory gesture. I am praying not only for myself but for other believers as well–that they realize God is their Father in Heaven, that they be given their daily needs, have a forgiving heart, and not be led into temptation but be delivered from the snares of the evil one. I am prayignng for people I may never meet, but God has, and He knows their needs.

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. James 5:16

Christ, who is always present even when we don’t “feel” Him nearby, unites us. I have felt the Spirit prompt me to pray for others, haven’t you? I am confident He prompts others to pray for me when my spirit and attitude deflate and I become more vulnerable to the whispered lies of the devil.

No matter who you are, where you are, know this: you are never alone. John Donne was right. No man is an island, despite what Simon and Garfunkel sang. God is with you, and He cares. He cares enough to connect you with other believers whether you realize it or not. He is, truly, OUR Father in Heaven. May His kingdom come and His will be done, here on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

I have written briefly to you, exhorting and declaring that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it. I Peter 5:12

I sucked in my breath. The surgeon was to stick a long needle into my SI joint nerve and I was not to be twilighted during the procedure. “We need you to react to the needle to see which nerves are irritating your body.”

Right. I know. I had been through this before…twice! Each time the pain escalated to excruciating. Lord, I did not want to go through that again…ever.

All through the previous night I kept laying it at the cross, but the past replayed in my mind like a scene from the Ground Hog Day movie–over and over. “Deep breaths. It will be over in an hour. You can do this. God is with you.”

The next morning, a hospital tech wheeled me–complete with open-in-the-back, no-size-fits-anyone gown, hair net, and bright yellow no-slip socks dangling from my toes — feet first into the operating room. Six or seven masked faces greeted me.

Machine beeps, warm blankets, drapes, then an icy scrub on my rearend. The odor of rubbing alcohol.

Here we go. I tried to loosen my tight muscles.

“You will feel a prick as I inject the anesthetic.”

Yep.

“That will be the worst of it.”

I hope. Lord, make it so.

OMG!! OOOWWWWWW.

I began to sob as the needle pushed in further and the contrast rushed through the nerve. The machine beeps increased rapidly.

“192 over 97, Doctor.”

Hands held my shoulders down. The nurse’s calm voice told me to breathe deep, one, two, three… Another hand held mine and squeezed. “It’s okay. You are doing fine.”

NO, I am not!!

The doctor said to hold still. That he was injecting more local anesthetic. The pain began to wane, the beeping slowed. I sighed.

“Wow, you really have been in pain, haven’t you? I never have seen such a reaction.”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t take any medicine?”

“I can’t. I am allergic to steroids, Lyrica, and most pain meds. Tylenol is my go-to if absolutely intolerable.”

“And you have been this way for how long?”

Had I not gone over all this? Had I not told my story to five other doctors so far? had he not read my chart? I sucked in another lung full of air. “Eleven months. This time. Before that two and a half years until I finally had the fusion surgery that has now failed and left broken hardware in my pelvis bone.”

Several masked faces in the room let out a gasp. The hand holding mine squeezed it again and another patted my arm.

The surgeon bent down and laid his hand on my shoulder. “I think we have enough info to go on now. I am so sorry you had to go through this. Let’s get you out of here and more comfortable. Ice pack, please nurse.”

I turned to see caring eyes and a crinkled brow above the surgical mask. He gets it! Finally. A doctor understands.

Sure, he was only the doctor assigned to do the diagnostic, not my treating physician, but perhaps now this surgeon would relay this event to that doctor and at long last, after months of being shuffled from one doc to the next and undergoing injections and imaging, he might develop a plan to treat me.

For the first time in almost a year, I felt listened to, validated. A doctor finally talked to me not about me as he stared at X-rays, MRIs, CT scans, and digital records. The first doctor in months who had actually physically touched me. (COVID has really changed medicine I guess.)

As they wheeled me back to post-op, I felt those Holy Spirit bumps tingle my arms. The reality whacked me in the forehead.

Had I been twighlighted as I wanted, this doctor would never have known my true condition. God had acted. God had been there and shown once again He cared. The Creator of the Universe arrived into time, my time, to interact. And all I had done was try to stave back panic. I felt humbled and convicted. Why do I not trust more? Where is the peace that passes all understanding? I am so sorry, LORD. I let fear trump faith … again.

Oftentimes, God acts in ways we do not expect. Answers may have to come out of pain and discomfort, or through unfavorable circumstances. A friend recently posted on Facebook …

Yeah, I get that… boy, do I ever. Maybe that day doesn’t classify as a miracle, but then perhaps it does. All I know is the DIvine interceded into the mundane. Eternity penetrated the temporal. Love came down and proved once again, “God’s got this.”

When circumstances seem too hard, look up – seek God. He is there, He cares, and He has a reason and a plan. He’s got this.

Easy to say. May I now find it easier to act on that promise and not react in my own weakness from here on in.

MAY YOU, who just read my witness, DO SO AS WELL.

Cast all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. 1Peter 5:17