“God whispers to us in our pleasure, He speaks to us in our conscience, but He shouts to us in our pain” (C.S. Lewis)

                Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world and God can use pain in our own life to get our attention.  It may sound drastic sometimes, but God will actually allow a person to experience hell on earth, in the hope of awakening their faith.  A righteous love makes the hard choice to release a child to the consequences of their rebellion.  God’s love is not always a pampering love, but it is always a perfecting love.  The problem we run into is how we think; we have a way of only looking at things in the natural, even though we serve a supernatural God.  When we don’t see a way out, that doesn’t mean God doesn’t have a way.  Even when we can’t fathom why something happened, God has a plan.  With men, things may be impossible, but with God all things are possible.  Most people simply live to survive, but with God in our life we should be living to thrive.  God’s power is limitless and He supersedes any human law.  All He asks in return is for us to do is believe and have faith in Him.  When we dare to believe, God outdoes Himself supernaturally every time.  When we delight ourselves in the Lord, He will give us the desires of our heart.  If we will keep God in first place, if we will honor Him with our life, He will even cause people to want to be good to us and His blessings will chase us down and overtake us.  Think for a moment about your enemies wanting to do good to you.  I think about the line out of, “The Breakup” with Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Anniston where he says, “Why would I want to want to do the dishes?”  With God in control, anything is possible, even things we thought never could or never would happen.  In order for this to happen, we must move from the place where we are at and pitch our tent in the land of hope.  When we do, we will find the land of more than enough and we will discover that there is nothing too wonderful or too hard for our Lord.  When we take the limits off of God, He will amaze us and He will give us the secret petitions of our heart.  God has endless ways to bring our wildest dreams to fruition and that is why Proverbs 3:5 tells us, “Lean not on your own understanding.”  God is in complete control; He knows what we need and He knows how to get it to us.  He has us in the palm of His hand and He orchestrates everything.

                Sometimes we find our calling and our destiny on the road we travel to avoid it and even though we can go days without thinking about God, not a moment passes that He is not thinking about us.   Everything we walk through shapes us like the clay on the potter’s wheel.  Back in my pottery days, I can remember a time when I was making a vase.  During the final phase of pulling the clay and shaping the pot, I felt pain on my finger and jerked away.  An imperfection in the clay had cut my finger and I thought the pot would be ruined, but after the bleeding and the pain subsided I looked at the pot and realized that I had created something totally unique as well as something beautiful.  God can use any imperfection, any trial, and any pain in our lives to make us unique and beautiful and though our weeping and pain may endure for a night, joy and peace will come in the morning.  Though there might be times when things get so bad that we are willing to stop being His children, God will never be willing to stop being our Father.  Nothing can separate us from God’s love.  “Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)  As a society, we are fascinated and fixated with figuring things out; we want to know the why and the how, but when it comes to God we must not forget what Isaiah 55:8-9 tells us: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD.  As the heavens are higher than the earth; so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”  Once we understand that it is His will that the world be saved, it is then our job to align ourselves with His will.  When we make even daily decisions, we should be asking ourselves which outcome would contribute more to the kingdom of God.  By spending time in God’s presence, we learn His will and just as complaining kindles God’s anger, praying kindles God’s compassion and the power of our Lord is triggered by it.  Our prayers and petitions move God to change the world and actions in heaven begin when someone prays here on earth.  Long before we knew that we needed someone to provide for our needs, God already had.  Everything we have comes from God and we only give Him what is already His.  All of us are here by grace and at some point all of us have to share some of that same grace with others.  God is calling each one of us to accomplish His will, but He can use anything or anyone He wants, even the devil.  Satan is still a servant to God and his pride was his downfall.  He was not satisfied to give God worship; he wanted His throne.  Because he sought to be like God, Satan fell away from God and has spent all his days since trying to convince us to do the same thing.  Satan has no power, except that power which God allows.  Satan can’t touch us without God’s permission.  Our Lord is our Shepherd and the wolf cannot get to the sheep without the permission of the Shepherd, and the Shepherd will only permit the attack if, in the long term, if the pain is worth the gain.  No one has suffered more than our Heavenly Father. No one has paid more dearly for the allowance of evil and sin into the world. No one has so continuously grieved over the pain of a race gone bad.   No one has suffered like the One who paid for our sin with the crucified body of His own Son.   No one has suffered more than the One who, when He stretched out His arms and died, showed us how much He loved us.   It is this God who, in drawing us to Himself, asks us to trust Him when we are suffering and when our own loved ones cry out in our presence (I Peter 2:21, 3:18, 4:1).  Trust God because He will never leave you and He will never forsake you.