OVERNIGHT

OVERNIGHT

Evidenced in my “Seasons for a Reason” book, I find many life lessons in my flower gardens and in nature.  As I stood looking down at the bare ground that had been covered by a blanket of colorful flowers just one day before, I knew  there was something to learn from this devastation. “That’ll preach,” Michael and I say to each other often when we see a story in something.  The “deer incident” discussed below pretty much mirrored the summer I was having emotionally.  Husband Michael has been down for over three months with a back injury and our lifestyle has been so altered (temporarily) by one turn of events.     

Every evening darkness descends, and for the most part, our world is still and quiet. After a few hours, the light returns and pushes the darkness to the horizon to wait until time for nightfall again. Over and over, the cycle continues and each new day brings new challenges and blessings.  Darkness/Light. Night/Day. Labor/Rest. Chaos/Calm. 

Imagine my astonishment this summer morning when I walked out to my gardens to observe the blooms and beauty, only to discover that the deer had eaten ALL my flowers.  ALL is a little exaggeration, but they had devoured 90% of the ones outside the fence and 100% of the ones in my two newest beds.  All the hard work (sweat!), the purchasing of plants, the digging, the planting, the watering, the caring.  And now in ONE night – GONE! Irreplaceable in this season. Tears were shed, but to no avail – tears won’t grow any blooms back.  Deer had eaten the plants all the way to the dirt, and uprooted some.  And… this was a week after I caught the rodent who had been eating my patio flowers. For about two weeks running, I had gone out to the patio each morning to find another plant with blooms eaten totally off. 

  

Your life can change forever within one day’s time; literally overnight.  One phone call. One diagnosis from the doctor. One knock on the door. One conversation.  The light of morning can bring a whole new stage on which you are to play out the remainder of your days.

Satan roams the earth like an animal at night, trying to steal and destroy enough to make us doubt our faith. He can seemingly destroy a beautiful life in one night.  One day. One season. He doesn’t care what we have planted, watered, love and cared for.

BUT…  what Satan means for destruction, God will turn around for good.  God always offers hope into what seems to be a hopeless situation.  He gives us all the tools we need to rebuild, regroup, and even be refreshed during the new season.

I do not have the strength in the Mississippi summer heat to replant my flower beds this year, but come Spring I will be out digging, re-planting, watering and caring for more plants. Flowers and flowering shrubs bring me much happiness, so I will continue to fight the animals for my gardens. I will research what plants will survive and I will plant those.  I will seek wisdom of other gardeners and be more careful what and where I plant. 

I believe God will give me the same wisdom with my life – I will continue to study His Word daily and seek His face, His plan, His favor.  I will plant only holy things in my heart so that the fruit of His Spirit will be manifested in my interactions with others and my service to His Kingdom. I will surround myself with friends and encouragers to help strengthen my faith.

I know that after heartaches and struggles have come against me and left me worn and weary, in a matter of time my Heavenly Father will restore beauty to my spiritual garden, and He promises to pour blessings back into my life that will more than compensate for the trials I have faced. 

Our lives may change and be totally different; but God is always good!

Psalm 34:19, “A righteous man may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all.”

Psalm 91:1-6  – “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.  I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” Surely, he will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence. (Pestilence: fatal epidemic disease. Pandemic. Plague). He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. (Rampart:  fortification, as around a city.  Stone wall.  Defensive wall.  Castles had a rampart and a moat.) You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday.”

Psalm 91:14-16 – “ ‘Because he loves me,” says the Lord, ‘I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.  He will call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him. With long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation.’ “

Jesus said in John 16:33, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.  In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart.  I have overcome the world.”

Rebecca (Becki) Logue

Author, "Seasons for a Reason"

and "Eat It and Hush!"

www.rebeccalogue.com

TAKE YOUR SOLUTIONS TO THE LORD

TAKE YOUR PROBLEMS SOLUTIONS TO THE LORD!

What?  I thought it was “take your PROBLEMS to the Lord.”  (“Cast your cares on Him,” you know!) Well, yes, we can cast our cares on Him and He can bear them all, but what if we take our SOLUTIONS to Him?

My friends who worked with me in Contracting Division of USACE, Vicksburg District, will remember a Division Chief who would tell the supervisors under him, “Don’t bring me a problem without a solution.”  I was his administrative assistant and when I first heard him say this, I thought it was a little twisted.  He was the boss; he was supposed to have the answers; he should be advising his section leaders what to do. But he ultimately taught them to be thinkers and solvers rather than just waiting on someone else to command them.  They, in turn, were able to assist their own employees with more wisdom. Yes, he had to approve their actions, and yes, he would offer advice and stand with them, but it empowered them so much more to have developed a plan to present to the boss for approval. The supervisors had been to many of the same seminars he had and they had access to the reference manuals just as he did, so he taught them to dig into available resources and get answers for themselves.

Our Father has mercy and grace more than we can comprehend and is so patient with us as we pour out our hearts to him on a daily basis.  But, let’s look at our prayers from a different angle.  What if we bring Him a solution and have the faith that He will answer according to His will and His definition of “good?” I’ve heard it many times, “Don’t tell God how big your problems are; tell your problems how big God is!” We can sometimes make ourselves even more depressed about our situation as we cry out to God to “fix it.”  On the other hand, if we enter His courts with praise and declare His promises over our situation, we can build ourselves up in faith.

Prayer is communication with God as He allows us to participate in the supernatural.  It is not just giving Him a list of requests, seeking answers that will make our lives better.  He has given us a model prayer, Jesus Christ as our mediator, the Holy Spirit to guide us, and His Word to give us all the solutions. 

Every answer that we need for living a peaceful, joyful, fulfilled life is contained in the Bible - His very words that have been brought to us by anointed writers. As we study His Word on a daily basis, we have a storehouse of resources to pull from in prayer. With faith, hope, and confidence, we can actually take a solution/answer to our loving God based on His Word and He is faithful to fulfill His Word (will not return void).  And as always, we pray, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done…”

Becki Logue

Author, Seasons for A Reason

Jude 1:20, "But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keeping yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life."  

Isaiah 55:11, "So shall My word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it."

ONE SMALL PRAYER

DO NOT DISREGARD THE POWER OF ONE SMALL PRAYER

I blinked my eyes a few times to focus on the stark white surroundings and the bright light above my head indicating that I was in a hospital. Questions started flowing… How did I get here?  What happened?  As I struggled to get my mind cleared, pushing through the fog of the drugs I’d been given, I would have little flashes of memory.  I remembered getting dressed for work.  I remembered turning onto a side street… a loud crash…the breaking of glass… muffled voices of EMT workers…the sound of a siren. I remembered waking for a moment, realizing I was in an ambulance and feeling my head throbbing and so swollen from the concussion. Now as I lay here in this ICU bed trying to put the pieces together, it just didn’t make sense.  I dozed back off waiting for the alarm clock to go off so I could get up and get dressed for work.  Surely I had been dreaming.  But the pain reminded me I was not dreaming.  With every slight movement there was excruciating pain in my hips (broken pelvis in 2 places), my knees, my arms, my head – wow I must have really hit something hard. 

As I started to rouse a little off and on, the nurses would send a family member into the room and they would fill me in on little details of the accident that landed me here in the Intensive Care Unit.  I had over-corrected when my car veered off the road on the right side and I ended up upside down in the ditch on the left side which was not quite wide enough for the entire little red Datsun. I was pinned in and emergency personnel used “jaws of life” to extract my unconscious body.  I guess somewhere en route to the hospital, I would become semi-conscious enough to give them phone numbers to call my family that met me at the hospital.  I would spend 3 days in ICU and 16 days in the hospital in Nederland, Texas, as my body healed from the injuries – 2 broken pelvis bones, a broken finger, a concussion, a chipped vertebra in my neck, 30+ stitches in my elbow, and multiple scrapes and bruises. It was years before I fully recuperated.  

And now… the REST of the story…

I had left my residence that morning around 7:20 and my wreck happened around 7:30. Miles across town, at 7:30 Linda (Gould) Burton was impressed to pray for this Becki she barely knew.  She stopped her morning activities and called my name in prayer. Linda and I had only met a few times at the church we attended together. (I was living in Nederland temporarily while my husband attended college in Houston and had only been going to Triumph of Southeast Texas for a few months). As Linda heard of my accident, she filled my family in on her side of the story - praying on my behalf!

While Almighty Sovereign God can control the whole universe and all our lives without our assistance, sometimes He invites us to participate in the supernatural. I am not able to articulate this on a theological level by any means, but I do believe that God allows events to happen where someone literally intervenes with their prayers to build our faith and to increase our trust in Him.  He allows us to become partners with Jesus Christ in our prayers.  (“…Christ Jesus who died – more than that, who was raised to life – is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.” Romans 8:34b) I don’t know how it works, but I do know that on August 4, 1984, a lady who did not know me well was impressed by the Holy Spirit to intercede for me, and my life was spared in a car crash that could have been fatal.  I don’t question it!  I don’t doubt it!  I know it happened just as she said and that her prayers stood between me and death! The doctor told me that I physically came within a fraction of an inch of being paralyzed from waist down or dead from the injury to my neck. 

I once thought “Intercessory Prayer” was a special gift for certain people of great faith or the pastoral team.  Sometimes these prayer warriors are called Intercessors, but all of us can pray for another person and be the intermediary for their answer from God.  Intercession is merely intervening for another at possibly a time when they are not even aware that prayer is needed.  I was driving routinely to work preparing for a busy day… and boom… out of nowhere, an accident happened. There was no time for prayer as my car flipped into a ditch and I was knocked unconscious.  But thankfully somebody on the other side of town heard the Holy Spirit calling my name to her and she stopped her busyness to call my name to the Father!  She did not have time to call a prayer meeting with her ladies’ group. She did not take time to call the Pastor and tell him to pray for me. There was no time to go and light a candle in the sanctuary. No, she prayed right then and there.  How awesome! 

Fast forward 35 years later…  This weekend (February 8, 2019) I got to meet Linda again after all these years and hug her and tell her how much I appreciate her praying for me that morning!  My aunt had a 90^th birthday party celebration in Nederland and I got to spend some time with Linda.  What a blessing! 

James 5:16, “The effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” 

Note:  it doesn’t say, a “long and eloquent prayer." Or a theologically correct dissertation.. Or any rituals. Nothing wrong with those prayers if they are sincere.  And when we know of a long-term need, we use every method we can to combine our faith. There is a time and place for all kinds of prayers and prayer groups.  But that day for me, all it took was just an EFFECTIVE AND FERVENT prayer by one woman of faith.