Thursday, January 27, 2011

Big Things

It's time to remind myself of the big things God has done in my life.  Do you ever do that--make a list of the miraculous things he's done over many years?  Without such a list it's easy to forget what a faithful, omniscient God we serve.  Feel free to make a short list from your own life in the comments section?  It would bless others!

God's miraculous works in my life:

- A very small percentage of people come to the Lord after age 18.  The Lord grabbed hold of me at age 31!  I still cry tears of joy over it, knowing how blessed I am.

- When I was thirty-two years old, a wonderful Christian man stepped into my life.  We met during a church hiking event.  Nine months later we married--me at age 33, him at nearly 41--first marriage for both of us.

- I was engaged twice in my twenties, while a non-Christian. The Lord kept me fickle and single for a purpose.  I thank Him often for that, even though it's painful to look like I could be my two-year-old's grandmother.  Divorce is one of the ugliest things humans do, and as Christians, we have God's power to avoid it--to forgive and persevere through His power, not our own.  (I don't mean to imply here that you should stay in a home with an abusive husband.  Be safe.)

- I have four wonderful children who bless my socks off every. single. day.--despite the fact that I started baring children ten years later than most women, and in my teens through my late twenties battled a nasty case of endometriosis (thank the Lord for blessing me with a laparoscopy and a good OBGYN surgeon).

- I had $26,000 in outstanding student loans when I married in 1999.  My husband hated that debt and prayed regularly that we'd be able to pay it off in a lump sum, by some miracle.  I thought he was a bit crazy to keep praying that, but in 2005 the housing market had boomed enough in California that we were able to pay it off with the sale of our first home--a home we'd owned less than four years!

- I lost my first baby and two months into the grief, I wanted the Lord to take me home.  I hurt and I didn't feel I had anything to live for.  Not too many years after that, I thanked Him for that experience--for the heart-wrenching pain of lying in a maternity ward, knowing I would soon be dilated enough to deliver my dead baby at 21 weeks gestation, while all around me on that hospital floor, active, loud heartbeat monitors advertised the joy that wouldn't be mine.  I knew I'd be going to a funeral home, making arrangements, while the other women learned to nurse their beautiful new babies. Yes, I still thank Him for that experience.  It was a gift--changing me in ways I could never have willed to happen in my own heart.

What kind of God turns some of the worst pain you can imagine, into a conscious blessing?

My God!


John 20:30, 31 “Many other signs therefore did Jesus in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book: but these are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in his name.”


Rom. 10:17 “So belief cometh of hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.”


.....to be continued.

1 comment:

TinaSue said...

Those are big things! Wonderful! Blessed me to read about His goodness to you!!!

Blessings!
Tina