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Guided By an Unseen Hand – Part 2
Just two months ago, I wrote about trusting God’s hand even when you can’t see his plan. In a short time so much has changed, and yet the challenge to walk by faith remains. After a year and a half of waiting, praying, trusting, my husband was offered a new job. But it didn’t come in the package we expected. The trials of the past year opened our hands. Eventually we told the Lord we’d go anywhere—we just wanted to be used by him to make a difference. And he answered. My husband was offered a job nearly four hours from where we currently live. We’ve both grown up in…
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Guided By an Unseen Hand
It was a year to remember—but not for the reasons I hoped. Just two weeks after finding out we were expecting our third child, my husband came home with news we always feared. He’d be moving on from the coaching job where he’d served for thirteen years. Our family would be moving on from the community where we’d raised our children. We walked forward into an unseen, unknown, and unexpected future. Where would our soon-to-be kindergartener go to school? Where would we live? How would we make ends meet? The uncertainty continued for months. My husband jumped on a seemingly endless carousel of job interviews before ending up at a…
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Adequacy Is Found in God’s Unlimited Resources
For most of my life, I’ve worked in areas of my strength. I knew where I would excel and picked jobs accordingly. But this month, I started a new role, a position that I did not seek but which became clear I needed to fill. I felt prepared in many ways since I’ve assisted my boss (my husband) for the past eight years. But now I’m in charge and I’m painfully aware of my inadequacies. Greater responsibility increases the potential for failure and disappointing others. How will I do what is expected of me? My life verse feels apropos at this moment: Not that we are adequate in ourselves to…
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Blessed Be the Name of the Lord
I am writing this past midnight and I really shouldn't be up. My body is weary yet my thoughts rest solely on my Mom's second procedure in a week to remove her breast cancer.
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The Pain Train
The Pain Train. All aboard. Like Mumbai’s commuter railway during rush hour, no one wants to ride it. No dining car and no sleep car. One thing is for certain—this locomotive is no luxury liner. My junk and I hauling at 1999 modem speed, I anticipate the very next stop. I want off this thing. But the train keeps moving. I run to the caboose and notice the train tracks behind me that disappear into oblivion. How long have I been on this thing? And who bought my ticket? What a cruel joke. I pray the train derails. I’ll rush to the front of the train and…
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Job, Brokenness is the only Way to Godliness
Now in this, you are not right– I answer you, for God is greater than a human being. Why do you contend against him, that he does not answer all a person's words? "For God speaks, the first time in one way, the second time in another, though a person does not perceive it. In a dream, a night vision, when deep sleep falls on people as they sleep in their beds. Then he gives a revelation to people, and terrifies them with warnings, to turn a person from his sin, and to cover a person's pride. He spares a person's life from corruption, his very life from crossing over the…
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Job, Do not Despise the Wisdom of the Youth!
With Job's three friends he was also angry, because they could not find an answer, and so declared Job guilty. Now Elihu had waited before speaking to Job, because the others were older than he was. But when Elihu saw that the three men had no further reply, he became very angry. So Elihu son of Barakel the Buzite spoke up: "I am young, but you are elderly; that is why I was fearful, and afraid to explain to you what I know. I said to myself, 'Age should speak, and length of years should make wisdom known.' But it is a spirit in people, the breath of the Almighty, that makes them understand. (Job 32:3-8 NET)
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Job, With Friends Like These Who Needs Enemies?
When Job's three friends heard about all this calamity that had happened to him, each of them came from his own country– Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They met together to come to show sympathy for him and to console him. But when they gazed intently from a distance but did not recognize him, they began to weep loudly. Each of them tore his robes, and they threw dust into the air over their heads. Then they sat down with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights, yet no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his pain was…
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Job, God is Your Solution!
Then Satan answered the LORD, "Is it for nothing that Job fears God? Have you not made a hedge around him and his household and all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his livestock have increased in the land. But extend your hand and strike everything he has, and he will no doubt curse you to your face!" (Job 1:9-11) We can see two things in this passage: God controls a hedge of protection (1) around His people that Satan cannot penetrate (Psalms 125:1,2. Psalms 91. 1 John 5:18). God blesses the work of His people’s hands and increases their possessions (Deuteronomy…
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Job, God is not Your Problem… Satan is!
Now we will jump to the beginning of the story of Job’s struggle. Specifically, what caused this suffering to come upon Job?
