pieces

I love it when God is working, you can see it, you cannot see what he is doing but you know he is moving about.

I always find it amazing when he is working the same thing using many people too.  For instance, he may use one person to tell you the first part, then another situation to tell you the next and it takes getting up at 5:00am one morning and a few quiet minutes on the couch for you to put it all together.  Maybe it is just me.  But I love when he does this.

He did it recently.  I poured out a {brief} part of my life that I have been struggling with for years, okay, really more than that – almost decades.  I told this dear friend the Reader’s Digest version, we did not have all night, and asked for her opinion.  She did not tell me what I expected to hear, I expected to hear, well do this……

Instead, she said, be still.  Stop doing everything.  Be still and wait on the Lord.  I said, really?  You mean, don’t do “this” or “this” or even “that”?  Really?  Do nothing?  Then I confessed I have a REALLY hard time doing nothing.  Especially when I care a great deal about something, and I do care so much about this.  But really, nothing???  Yes, she assured me.  She gently told me that no matter what I do, I cannot change this situation, the hearts involved, that God needed to do it and he did not need me. 

 

This whole time (decades, really.) I have believed that it was up to me to do the right thing that would change everything.  I have been trying to fix it.  I am a fixer, I am not so much a “be still”-er. 

So I have been chewing on that.

Next, Kristen is leading another book e-study and I am simply listening in, not reading, just gleaning.  But the verse this week to meditate on is

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Phil 4:13

So, I have been really working on knowing I can Be Still, if I allow Christ to still me, my actions, my mind – if I let him direct my thoughts and me, I can be still.

Lastly, in Sunday school some friends just came back from 2 months in Uganda.  He shared Psalm 16 in Sunday school and I knew it was something I needed to spend some time with.  This morning, I was able to complete this pictures God has been putting together.

I am loving v.2 -

I said to the Lord, “You are my Lord, apart from you I have no good thing.” Psalm 16:2

So, apart from him, as in : in my own strength – I have no good thing.  Goes back to – when I am not still, when I am not resting in him in my trials, I am stepping on my own and “fixing” – I have no good thing.  I have no peace, no joy, no strength.

So, God used 3 people, to each offer a piece of a puzzle he was putting together.  But without some quiet minutes this morning I am not sure I would have seen the big picture – I am not sure I would have seen how it all fits together.

God is so good, sometimes we just need to slow down enough to see Him, hear Him, and Know him.

{so thankful for friends who speak the truth, for trusting even though it is hard, for waking up early…}