Through the storms and through the valleys Gods words always reigns supreme. I admitted to you all in a previous post that I had not read the entire bible. For me, and probably many of you, God uses my bible reading time to speak to me, convict me, work on me, and teach me. Many people can go through their bible reading plans and studies and such through a year plan, or whichever. But for me, as I read my bible, I often ask God to lead me through it. Lead me to the passage that I most need to hear for whatever his reasons may be.
Let God Lead
I let the holy spirit lead me though the bible. Each passage as I read it, for me, it just makes the most since because I can see what God is trying to teach me this way. Sometimes God leads us to passages that we most need to prepare us for things to come and keeps us away from other passages because they need to be fresh for other moments in our lives. Or at least that’s how I see it.
There are so many hardships going on in the world. It has been a hard year for all of us. There has been a lot of sickness, sadness, loneliness, and just this strangeness that settles in when you actually think about the situation of this pandemic. But for our family we have been blessed and I am thankful for that. By far, this has not been our hardest year as a family. I hate to say it as I look out at the world but as a family, we have endured harder years.
God has been bringing me through a rapid fire amount of new studies back to back, which is not something he normally does. He normally repeatedly takes me back over certain issues and certain things until he has finally worked through these sins, convictions and issues in my life. But these new studies that I have been lead on our unique in that many of them are pointing to two common issues (what he is really working on me with) prayer and praise. Not just praise, like thank you. But like a heart wrenching pouring out of thank you unto God. The throw your hands up in the air, the face to the ground, complete surrender kind of praise.
He is so powerful. And over the last few months I have been asking (begging) many, many hard, impossible, insane things of him on my knees and he has been delivering.
More Praise than Asking:
So, I want to tell you guys this, never underestimate the power of prayer or the power of praise. Because for everything we ask God for, we should be praising him that much more. If you look at the psalms, which is one place God has me in now, you can see the prayers and they are almost all more praise than asking. And if you really evaluate your life. Like every single little detail, there is really more things that you can be praising God about than asking him for.
How to find the Praise (even in these times)
One thing I have taken to doing instead of just reading my bible just once a day I have it laid out on my counter top along with a little notebook. I started this specific notebook years ago but I’ve had others in between. It is a gratitude journal. Throughout the day, I just jot down line for line things that pop into my head randomly that I am grateful for, no mater how small. So, each night I can bring these many praises up to God, and praise him for allowing my life to have these (many) blessings.
If you aren’t able to just jot things down as they come to you throughout the day, I used to do it in the car before I would go pick up my daughter from daycare. I had a notebook where I would jot down prayers in the mornings while I was putting on makeup before college, I also at one point used to carry it in my bag and write down my thankfulness list when I was in the bathroom at college (yes, with crohn’s you have a lot of bathroom breaks). These were all pre-covid era examples for me. But even though I knew praise was important and prayer was important, it wasn’t until this fall that God has really showed me how much that praise factors in, and how important that is.
The Bible On the Mountain:
During this hard time I can imagine many people are turning to the lord for answers. But after all this is over, we must remember to abide in him in the mountain too. I don’t share many of my bible studies or bible journalings. around the blog, but this one I’m going to share for an illustration of importance. So, I mentioned earlier that our family has had worse hardships than this year. Back in 2018 we had a horrible year. During this time, we had hospital stays, deaths, my daughter was diagnosed with asthma, and I my crohn’s started flaring again. It was a horrible year for every single person involved, there was heartbreak and many tears. There was just sitting on the edge of your seat kind of fear where your heart just drops. Words just do not describe this year.
BUT this year did not come as a surprise. I knew there were hard times on our horizon and that they would be some of the worst we had ever seen so far. God gives us these warnings because God uses many ways to speak to his people. But one of them is through his word. In December of 2017 I was lead to a study in the bible of Nahum. I was lead to this study by prayer. I ask God to show me what I needed to know, closed my eyes, and opened up the book. Not exactly a scientific method there. But the bible does say if you have faith the size of a mustard seed that you can move mountains. So, when it opened up to Nahum back then I thought, ok, never read this book. Something new. I had actually not read anything around this book or even heard of anything from it so I began.
After I had completed Nahum in December of 2017 it had become my God is in Control book. And, you know what? For the next year I would need to know countless times that God was in control. He was preparing me for this upcoming trial.
From Nahum 1:3 KJV “…the Lord Hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.”
This is powerful. God is in control during every single storm in our lives. I don’t know how many of you out there need to hear this today but it is true. It is his promise.
God used this very small book of Nahum in December of 2017 to teach me and convict me of many things but the most important was to prepare me for the year that had been ahead of me. I was on more of a Mountain during this time period and I would be lead into a deep valley of my life next. So, one thing I want to encourage you in is that God grows you and works on you in every single season. So, don’t leave on the mountain when this pandemic is over and we all return to our lives. If you have found God, stay with him.
So, for my bible journal “take away” at the end of Nahum I did this verse:
Thank you for joining me today, I hope these words were encouraging for you during this time of extreme hardship.
Brie
