Fresh Start

My friend Leigh Anne posted a picture to Instagram at the end of December that explained a website called shereadstruth.com It's a website that is trying to bring women together by reading truths from the bible and reflecting on them as a community. 

Please and thank you!

If you want to check it out, click on the button that is posted on the top right of my blog.  :)

So, I have been reading the posts, but haven't yet written my reflections in the blog world.  Let's be honest - I'm terrible at actually keeping up things that have more than a week of "assignments."  I don't think I've ever actually finished a monthly photo challenge, month of thankfulness, etc.  But I'll write when I can.  That's all I can promise.  :)

So Day 1 was about Fresh Starts....fitting for the new year of course.  :)  The readings made me think of the last sermon of the year that my pastor preached.  It was one of my favorites.  I'll get more to it later.

Here is a part from Day 1 of She Reads Truth:

And knowing all of that – knowing that He was creating the plants and yielding the seeds that would one day be his cross, that the beasts of the fields would need to be used as sacrifices for His people – knowing this then, the Author and Creator saw it all and called it good.
But why? It may seem trite to say, but the answer is love. He made the world perfect knowing that it would become imperfect and that He would make it new again. And hard as it may be to believe, He did it for the process. God had the power to skip right to the end, or to never create the world to begin with. But he did create it, and he did it to show Himself to us, that we might know Him. That we might know the breadth and length and height and depth of his love for us (Eph 3:18); that we might experience His grace.

God doesn't need us, but He wants us.  Isn't that amazing?

Now, back to the sermon.  The sermon from my pastor was about 1 Peter 1:3-12.  We talked about refining. God sometimes puts "fire' in our lives to refine us.  God will not simply leave us alone.  We have two choices in responding - we can either be refined by the heat or burned by it.

I think the first response can sometimes be the hardest.  Sure, waiting on a job, the right guy to come along, etc. can be tough to wait on and some might consider that a "fire."  But what my mind keeps going back to is all the parents who lost their precious children on December 14th at Sandy Hook.  Believing that God can use that takes real faith.  As a mother, I think my natural reaction would be to become angry and cold, but that's not what the Word teaches us to do.  I'm not sure how long it would take me to come to that realization if I was coming home to an empty bed where my child used to sleep each day.

I still firmly believe that what happened that day was NOT God's will, but I also believe that God can use it.  I'm not sure how just yet, but I know He is bigger than all that hurt and pain.

She Reads Truth concluded with this on Day 1:

What will be your response today, sisters? Will you find comfort (even joy!) in the cradle of the Almighty’s hand? Will you rest in the hope that He will restore creation – that He will restore you? The newness came and it was glorious, and it is coming again!

“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation [that’s a promise]. But take heart; I have overcome the world [and so is that!].” (John 16:33, ESV, emphasis added)

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8,9, ESV)