I’ve had a week I’ll tell you….it’s just been a different kind of week….
The week started with our fast at church. Mike fasted food, and actually did it! LOL We fasted TV collectively as a family. Austin fasted Facebook and I fasted Pepsi. Fasting for the 3 days was an EXPERIENCE. Chandler did great. Mike did great. I had PLANNED to fast Wednesday, and totally failed (but remember, I have to cook and feed 6 children lunch…so my temptation was just more than I could handle. I’m a failure.) and Austin….well, he discovered Monday night that fasting is not a FUN thing. No one is gonna come and pat him on the back or sing his praises in church. You do it for a purpose and to see God change things. I don’t know if he was just too immature to see that, or he was just being teenage-stubborn, but Monday night and Tuesday morning was a HUGE argument with him over that.
And then God showed me something in His word that changed everything. It was the most incredible thing, one of those truly inspired moments. In my daily Bible reading, in Yabiticus (as Brooklyn calls it) chapt 26:3-39 (I won’t copy all of it here, it’s LONG, I’ll only highlight):
“If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, I will send you the seasonal rains. The land will then yield its crops, and the trees of the field will produce their fruit. Your threshing season will overlap with the grape harvest, and your grape harvest will overlap with the season of planting grain. You will eat your fill and live securely in your own land……”
“If you obey….this is what I’ll do for you” God is saying. The blessings go on and on: He’ll provide every need before we know we have it, He’ll give us peace and prosperity, success, health, etc. “If we obey…”
And then starting in verse 14, it says:
“However, if you do not listen to me or obey all these commands, and if you break my covenant by rejecting my decrees, treating my regulations with contempt, and refusing to obey my commands, I will punish you. I will bring sudden terrors upon you—wasting diseases and burning fevers that will cause your eyes to fail and your life to ebb away. You will plant your crops in vain because your enemies will eat them. I will turn against you, and you will be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you, and you will run even when no one is chasing you!”
“If you do NOT obey, this is what I’ll do…” is what God is saying. It’s some PRETTY SCARY stuff in those verses: disease, fear, struggle, destruction, etc.
So when Austin got home from school after his terrible morning, I told him I thought God was showing me something and I wanted him to read it. I had him sit down with me at the kitchen table while I was folding clothes, and had him read the chapter outloud to me. I had him go back and read different points and asked him what he thought.
He said he knew it was for HIM, not for me. God gave me that for HIM to read….which is exactly what I was hoping he would see. We sat and talked at that table for over an hour, just mother and son and Christ. It was a divine moment.
This week had some HEFTY prayer times for me. I discovered that I can remove all distractions and actually sit in PRAYER for 30-40-45 minutes with ease. And I was on my face before Christ Almighty in some heavy prayers.
Then Wednesday night we had our special Prayer service at church. Beautiful. Just beautiful. There was a wooden cross at the front of the altar that we could “nail” things to.
I was overwhelmed and knew God wanted me to nail my trust issues to it. And yes, I’m confessing it here for the world to see. I’m not alone in my issues with God, so if my confession helps someone else, then there ya go.
I have a hard time TRUSTING GOD. There….I said it. Outloud. I doubt He will provide for me. I don’t understand how or why, so I just don’t put my faith in His provision for me. I’m really trying, and I’ve been in prayer with Him over that. He said He’ll do it, so I just need to TRUST.
So He told me to nail that to the cross at the altar.
Oh, you didn’t see me go up there and do it? Oh that’s because I didn’t. Again, I’m a failure. I don’t know why I didn’t, I just didn’t.
So there ya go. Again, my failure for everyone to see.
Thursday comes and I get this knock on my door around 9:30, I’m expecting company anyway, so I wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t company, but a strange man standing at my door. He is a contractor and was driving through the neighborhood and noticed my roof.
I have a bad roof. Pedro the Wonder Roofer fixed the 3 bad places last fall, and then a week later, a wind storm came through, and created 6 more bad places in my roof. I cannot afford a new roof. I cannot even afford to have the bad places PATCHED. I just pray for no rain please. And so far it’s been working. 😉 Sorry, farmers….it’s my fault.
I let the man know he is welcome to do an estimate, but we do not have the money to fix it. I step outside and we are looking at the roof, he’s showing me the 3 bad places in the front, and I tell him about the OTHER bad places in the back, I know they are there, pointing them out to me only makes me cry. It’s something I cannot fix, I just worry over it.
Somehow in the course of our conversation, we start talking about God and our churches and my photography (I don’t know how THAT came about, probably my photos all over my front door). He quoted remote scriptures that mean things to me, but are not those popular verses that everyone quotes, so I’m starting to get chills. He tells me that I have done for others for so long, God was going to bless me now.
Huh? What’s that?
Then he tells me he is going to fix my roof for FREE.
HUH?? WHAT’S THAT??
Free.
I said, “Get out!” HAHAHAHAHA! OH yes, I really did laugh too.
He said that God has some big plans for me, and I need to concentrate on those instead of my roof.
I just stood there and looked at him. I didn’t have any words.
Then he said, “God is your Provider.”
And then I cried. Only God knows my trust issues. I feel like I am the one that has to work my fingers to the bone, every waking moment, for our family to have enough. I don’t want Mike to work a second job again, that was terrible. So I take on more and more until I can breathe again…..or not breathe from the stress. I live in a state of chaos almost every waking moment just so we’ll have “enough”. But in the process, I have panic attacks….literal moments I cannot breathe and I feel like someone is sitting on my chest.
So for this man to tell me “God is my Provider” I knew this was different. This was special. My own divine appointment with God…
….and an angel named Joe.
And my roof is fixed. All 6 places. And do you know, out of all the various colors of roofing shingles out there, the ONE package of shingles he had sitting in the back of his truck…..matched my roof PERFECTLY! What are the odds of that? Thank You, Lord Jesus.