Victory to those anointed
I have a dear friend that reminded me once to speak prayers of praise and thanksgiving, to speak glory into being. I shared that once with a friend in need, and her prayers were answered three times over. I sat back and thought through so many of my blog posts and the stories of survival, perseverance, and miracles. God is and continues to be present in our everyday lives, and for that I am thankful. It is so easy to dwell in the darkness and become overwhelmed with all the chaos that goes on around us, but God is still present. I used to read miraculous stories in the Bible, but I never thought there could still be miracles today…until I was healed, until I saw others healed. We are not so different than the Israelites that wandered for forty years. They saw miracle after miracle yet still struggled to obey and believe. How thankful are we that God gave us Jesus so that our sins may be forgiven, so that we have hope in Him.
God did not leave
I am not sure where or when I heard this story for the first time, but it has stayed with me through the years. The setting is usually a study or a room filled with wall to wall books and two comfortable chairs. The room is warm, inviting. The individual occupies one chair, and God occupies the other. In the season of intentional prayer, the individual feels close to God and then life happens. They find themselves going to the study less and less and eventually the weight of the world is a heavy burden they feel on their shoulders, they stand alone. They feel far from the God that they once held close. Eventually, they go back to the study and find God sitting there, in the same chair…waiting. The room still feels warm and welcoming, He had never left, the individual had left. So many times in life I have gone back to this story as a reminder that God never leaves me, I leave Him.
A solitary place to pray
During one of Rob’s deployments, I found this amazing little mountain house that was built in the 1920s. It was a home that I dreamed of as a kid. She had good bones and I imagined all the memories created there through all the years. It was a two story white farmhouse with a front porch that faced the road. It sat on over 20 acres of land and had a creek running down the middle of the property. The minute we drove up to the property, I knew this would be our home. It was a solitary place, you had to drive over 30 minutes to the nearest grocery store (that has its own challenges when a dog steals your Thanksgiving turkey-story for another day!) To anyone else, it looked like an old farmhouse in the woods. To me, it was peace.