1/24/08
And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. Romans 8:28

This one is important to me. I need to know that even when bad things happen, it all fits into Gods plan. Everything will be used to glorify God. Even evil things will be turned around and used for His glory.

I’ve been holding tight to that. Over the last year, a couple of awful, life-changing things happened. It would be easy to just be angry with God, wondering why he let these things happen. Surely, there can be no good that comes out of these awful circumstances, right? Wrong!

Even when we can not see what His plan is, or how He will fix things, we need to believe that He has not abandoned us. Faith and hope are important here. No matter how hopeless a situation is, there is always hope. Of course, God may not answer the way we want Him to. Changing my heart is sometimes part of the process. That change brings glory to Him, and also changes my expectations of how He will fix things for me. I know he won’t let me down though.

Some examples of how God has turned things around for me…

We built a family room in our basement in December. Weeks later, a water pipe broke, flooding our basement, ruining our new room. Just two weeks later, I can say that this has been turned into a blessing. Our family room is already fixed. It is better than it was before. We couldn’t afford to make it as nice as we wanted to, but the insurance money allowed for better than we had before. In fact, the abundance that we were blessed with allowed us to pay for some other wants/needs that we had and could not afford to pay for. God is good!

It was looking like I was going to have to send 2 of my kids to Germany for part of the summer against my better judgment on this issue. It was a very scary thing to send them to see there dad, halfway across the world. But God intervened. I do not have to send the kids on a plane so far away. They will still get to see there dad, and it will be a wonderful vacation for them all. God is good!

I can already see God’s glory in one of the heartbreaking things that happened last year. Like our family room floor, God is restoring things to better than they ever could have been before. We can only do so much on our own, but God can do so much better for us!

The other major thing that went terribly wrong has yet to be resolved. I don’t have any idea how God is going to fix things and that can be very scary. It’s OK though, because I trust God to make everything right and to protect us. There has been incredible spiritual growth, both personally, and within the family. So already, the situation has glorified God. It will even more so when He works his miracles and we have a testimony to share. God is good.

The building that our church has been meeting in for 3 years was destroyed this week. We will never meet there again. Although it is just a building, it is still a little sad to know that chapter has been closed. We have a new building, but it isn’t ready, and it will take some time to make it ready. But I have no doubt that this is God’s plan. We were praying for something to give, for something major to happen to help us get our building finished so our church family can move. I don’t see how, but this is it. Something major happened. This is the start to something incredible. God is Good, and He hears our prayers.