The Faithfulness of My Good God

Do you know who is SO good?

Yep.

GOD IS SOOOOOO GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It really blows my mind how faithful God is to His children. He has shown and proved His faithfulness to me this past week in many ways.

The first big way that God showed His faithfulness was twofold, both having to do with the Ministry of Jr. Camp. No, I was not serving at Jr. Camp physically, but God gave me the opportunity to still be involved in that ministry here at home. It felt like He was telling me to be faithful to do the behind-the-scenes kind of ministry, aka being a faithful prayer warrior and a joyful encourager. Depending on my mood, I was excited, discontent, passionate and questioning about doing those things back at home. But through some godly counsel from a sweet girl facing the same situation and feeling the same emotions as me, I was able to see that those who are faithful in the seemingly little, persevering and 'not seen' ministry, are ones who are truly faithful to God. It's easier to serve God in 'big ways', like being a counselor or leading some big ministry. Don't get me wrong, those opportunities are still wonderful, but my point is that the 'little ways' are too. Anything that glorifies God is worth doing.

So what does this have to do with God's faithfulness, you may ask? Well, through God's strength and grace, I was able to be a consistent prayer warrior for the campers, counselors, and staff at Jr. Camp every day. God BLESSED me with many answers to prayer that I did not expect. I prayed for pretty general things for most of the people, that they would keep their focus on God and be a real servant etc. But more than once, during a conversation with one of my counselor friends about their week, they told me what God was teaching them, and it would be exactly what I had prayed for them specifically. Now that was not, COULD NOT have been my doing. This points to a sovereign God.

Similarly, God gave me and four other girls the opportunity to write letters to the counselors, and a second opportunity to write to the campers and staff as a youth group. Once again, many people who were at Jr. Camp came up to me and told me that God had used a letter I had written to them as an encouragement to them. This also points directly to my awesome God. In years past when I had written letters to those at Jr. Camp, no one said a word to me about them, which is totally fine. But this year, God BLESSED me. I didn't need or want to be thanked. But what a joy it is to know that my efforts to glorify God have not returned void!

Secondly, God has blessed me with amazing friends. A few weeks back, God taught me that I needed to be the kind of friend that I wanted to have. So I began to make a conscience effort to love on, appreciate, encourage, and sharpen my friends in the way that I would want to be treated. At first, it felt a little hopeless, like I was doing all this for others and not getting anything in return- and once again that's totally fine, I don't NEED that, its an extra want- but God still chose to bless me with wonderful, crazy amazing friends who have made all my efforts worth it. Sometimes I take for granted my friends, but God is really showing me that these people are precious blessings from Him that I don't deserve. God has proved faithful again!

And best of all, God has proven His faithfulness to me over a long span of time- 6 whole years of wanting something and not getting it. For those six years I was discontent with God's plan, up until this year, praise God. This year He gave me a contentment for where I was at and an acceptance of the stage of life I'm in now. I truly believe God blesses His faithful servants, because now, He has rewarded me with the very thing I longed for those many, many years. Right after I became content without it, of course. ;)

All in all, I see God's faithfulness the same way in both of theses situations. 1 Samuel 26:23 says, "The LORD rewards every man for his righteousness and his faithfulness." God planted in me the desire to serve others this week. He then gave me the strength and ability to carry out that desire. And now He is rewarding His servant with amazing blessings of joy and contentment that are perfectly indescribable and overwhelming. Not to point to the faithfulness of the servant, but of the Master. We servants have just obeyed the Master- He is the one worthy of all praise. Praise Him for HE IS GOOD!

"Praise Him for His mighty acts! Praise Him for His excellent greatness!"

I just want to praise God today because He gave me victory over sin. Halleluiah and praise be to my faithful God who continues to change this sinful heart!

A Humbling Day

I love how God works. He is faithful to teach me a lesson "the easy way", and then, I always have to learn it "the hard way" too, unfortunately. Sometimes I wish I could just learn something "the easy way", but I don't think I can... I must learn from experience, it seems.

So I am entitling my day yesterday "The Humbling Day." It seems every way I turned, my pride was brought low and I was broken. I am so thankful though, because it proved God's faithfulness to answer prayer. I had prayed the day before to be humbled, on account of studying humility in Bible Study, and boy did God come through on that one.

I will spare you the details of everything that happened in my day (but I will say that it included spilling the entire bucket of dirty mop water all over the carpet at work) but as I said early, it felt like everything I did that day fired back at me and broke me of my pride. From seemingly small issues like spilling the mop water, to big areas of sin being revealed in my life through good friends and good talks over Hawaiian tea, I was humbled.

The most radical thing I can draw from this experience, though, is that I am HAPPY to be humbled like this. I am thankful to God ALONE that I was able to respond to this humbling with a thankful and joyful attitude, genuinely happy to go through it. Now I know FOR SURE that that response did not come from me. That was God, plain and simple.