After reading my devotional Streams in the Desert this morning (that I absolutely love and recommend to everyone), I was thinking about how amazing it is that I am where I am today. The devotion was about God creating friction in our lives so that we can have more power and can do the things that He has called us to do. (I will post the devotion at the end of this post so you can read it too)
Over the years there have been so many things that have finally brought me to this point and I know there will be so many times that the things I face today will change me and mold me for what the Lord has for my future.
Today I looked back to April 9 in the last few years. 2 years ago today I went through a major trial in my life. I found myself not knowing how I was going to get through another day and what I was going to do for my future. All of my plans crumbled down in one conversation and my whole world was shattered. Part of me knew the Lord would help me to move on and that He had a plan through that time but so many times over the next few months and even year I found myself praying and crying asking God what I was going to do and how I was going to get through this.
The Lord kept carrying me and teaching me how to be completely dependent on Him and to trust Him with my future plans.
Last year April 9th I found myself getting on a plane with a bunch of high school seniors flying to the Dominican Republic. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life past the next week and didn’t even completely know why I was going on the trip. All I knew was the Lord told me I was supposed to go and I trusted him with that.
I was so blessed on that trip and really gained more of a heart for people outside of America and the Lord revealed to me that I was going to have to leave America and go somewhere for Him. Little did I know, the next month I would be committing to move to New Zealand. I even remember on that trip talking about if we could ask the Lord to send us to one country where would it be? And I answered that I would love to go to New Zealand.
This year April 9th I am living in New Zealand. I have opportunities every day to share the Lord’s love with people and get to disciple and encourage so many people. If it had not been for the trial 2 years ago I would never have the strength and courage and dependence on the Lord to move to New Zealand. If it had not been for April 9th last year I would not have had the drive and desire to give EVERYTHING to the Lord.
The things we are going through now are shaping us for our future. We need give it all to the Lord and allow Him to use the friction He creates to give us power for Him.
Here is the devotion:
All these things are against me (Gen 42:36)
All things work together for good to them that love God (Rom 8:28)
Many people are wanting power. Now how is power produced? The other day we passed the great works where the trolley engines are supplied with electricity. We heard the hum and roar of the countless wheels, and we asked our friend,
“How do they make the power?”
“Why,” he said, “just by the revolution of those wheels and the friction they produce. The rubbing creates the electric current.”
And so, when God wants to bring more power into your life, He brings more pressure. He is generating spiritual force by hard rubbing. Some do not like it and try to run away from the pressure, instead of getting the power and using it to rise above the painful causes.
Opposition is essential to a true equilibrium of forces. The centripetal and centrifugal forces acting in opposition to each other keep our planet in her orbit. The one propelling, and the other repelling, so act and re-act, that instead of sweeping off into space in a pathway of desolation, she pursues her even orbit around her solar centre.
So God guides our lives. It is not enough to have an impelling force—we need just as much a repelling force, and so He holds us back by the testing ordeals of life, by the pressure of temptation and trial, by the things that seem against us, but really are furthering our way and establishing our goings.
Let us thank Him for both, let us take the weights as well as the wings, and thus divinely impelled, let us press on with faith and patience in our high and heavenly calling. —A. B. Simpson
In a factory building there are wheels and gearings,
There are cranks and pulleys, beltings tight or slack—
Some are whirling swiftly, some are turning slowly,
Some are thrusting forward, some are pulling back;
Some are smooth and silent, some are rough and noisy,
Pounding, rattling, clanking, moving with a jerk;
In a wild confusion in a seeming chaos,
Lifting, pushing, driving—but they do their work.
From the mightiest lever to the tiniest pinion,
All things move together for the purpose planned;
And behind the working is a mind controlling,
And a force directing, and a guiding hand.
So all things are working for the Lord’s beloved;
Some things might be hurtful if alone they stood;
Some might seem to hinder; some might draw us backward;
But they work together, and they work for good,
All the thwarted longings, all the stern denials,
All the contradictions, hard to understand.
And the force that holds them, speeds them and retards them,
Stops and starts and guides them—is our Father’s hand.
—Annie Johnson Flint
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