SANCTIFIED SUNDAY

As I look out my window at this beautiful, perfect painting of a snowy, winter wonderland, I am amazed! Only God can create such a picture without paints or crayons! Just from nature, He has graced us with this beauty. I don’t care what anybody says; a God who can do this can do anything! There is nothing impossible for God; the Artist!

 We all have struggled at times with the problem of little faith. Maybe like Abraham and Sarah, we have prayed for something for years, but God has not answered. We may have suffered some tragedy, such as the loss of a loved one, and we wonder where God was when this happened. Family problems, health issues, even a small thing that would be easy for God to provide and we wonder why God does not answer. Then the spirit of doubt creeps in. As humans, we tend to trust in ourselves most of the time and in God only when we really have to. If we trust in ourselves, then we glory in ourselves. But God’s purpose is that we glory in Him alone. He will graciously bring us to the place where we have no hope except in Him, so that we trust in Him and He gets the glory. He took me to that place; you would think I learned my lesson! But the problem is that even after we trust in Christ for salvation, we mistakenly think that we are competent to live the Christian life with just a little help from the Lord.  And so the Lord has to bring us again and again to the point of helplessness. Because I am still a work in progress, I put the superwoman cape on and off again and again.  I have to acknowledge my own insufficiency and depend on His all-sufficiency. God brings us to end of our strength so that we will trust in His ability to do the impossible. Look at Hannah, (Samuel 1); she was another barren woman who desperately wanted to have a son. The Lord wanted her to have a son, too. So do you know what He did? He closed her womb! Wait what! That’s a strange way to give a woman a son! Her husband’s other wife, Peninnah, who was not a godly woman, had many children. How frustrating for Hannah, crying out to the Lord for a son, to see Peninnah, who didn’t seek the Lord, with many children! But that’s how God works with His people. He wants us to see that without Him, we can do nothing. If Hannah could have had children on her own, like Peninnah, she wouldn’t have needed the Lord.  But when Hannah finally had Samuel because the Lord gave him to her, she sang a song of praise and gave Samuel back to the Lord to serve Him.

We should never doubt God’s goodness toward His chosen ones or His power to fulfill His purpose with them in His time and way. We may not understand His ways and the reason for His delays. But that doesn’t undermine the faithfulness or power of our great God, the God with whom all things are possible. God wants each of us to see that our situation is humanly impossible without Him. That way, we’ll look to Him for His power, praise Him when He delivers us, and He will be glorified through our lives. If you have any doubt that nothing is impossible for God, look around you at the sun, moon, stars, rainbows, beaches, ocean and the snow. God is the Creator; the Artist! Love and Blessings……