Three Requests

I don’t even know why I was scrolling through old pictures the other day, but I found something spectacular.

I also scrolled through old blog posts I have written but never posted, and found one that I wrote back in October about Joshua 4. 

When you just need to remember –

Sometimes its easy to hear life whispering that lie that God isn’t there. Or that He is there but He is busy taking care of someone else, and doesn’t have the time for me.  I feel like I am constantly waiting – but for what? I need to remember…

Joshua 4 tells the story of Israel passing over the Jordan river.  God tells Joshua to pick twelve men to find stones from the river and set them up where they were staying.  “When your children ask in times to come, ‘What do those stones mean to you?’ then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever.”  (Joshua 4:6-7)

I read these verses this week and realized – I have to remember. I have to remember all the times God has proven that lie to be just that – a lie – and He has shown up and been there for me.  He is not too busy, he does care.  About little old me. And you.

He did something amazing for the Israelites, and since they are really stubborn and easy to forget the good He does – He commands them to memorialize that time.  Put rocks down to remind yourselves that He cared and protected and made a way.

We need to do the same.  My way of doing this is (surprise!) writing.  I have journal after journal that I have used as a way of communicating with God.

So after I was so frustrated the other day, I flipped back through my current one and stumbled across an entry from last April that reminded me of a huge breakthrough God brought me.  And I caught myself whispering, “Oh, I forgot about that!”  It is all about remembering.

And the irony is that this happened again.  As I flipped through old pictures, I found one that I had taken of a page in my journal back in November:

After what I am assuming was a rough day at work (most were), I wrote these three prayer requests. 
Also in these photos I found a picture from about a week and a half later; a picture of the couches that my friend’s family had given to us…for free.

After we got the couches my Dad had said, “You should take a picture of them, and start a journal of answered prayers.”

If you don’t know the events of my life in the past seven months, this picture of my journal probably doesn’t drop your jaw to the floor like it did mine.

In January I lost my job.  At the time I was a mess about it, wondering how this could possibly be fair…

A month later I found an internship on Google that just happened to be in my hometown.

Here I am, seven months TO THE DAY that I lost my job, with a summer job that I LOVE, living with my parents. (For some that might have a negative connotation, for me it just abundantly fulfills my third prayer request.)

I can’t get past it. Three requests, “ranging from fairly simple to pretty much a miracle.”  I wrote it.  I asked…and God answered. He said yes - to all three.

This is why I write.  It is my Ebenezer (1 Samuel 7:12); my way of remembering that God is SO faithful and loves to lavish His children with good gifts.

It seems silly in retrospect that I was ever sad about losing my job.  I wanted it; I asked for a new job.  Sometimes things do not happen in the order we expect, but God is still faithful.

Sorry this is a longer post, but I just.can’t.get.over.it.

I hope it hits you like it hit me –

God is faithful to God’s promises. 
He does not leave us or forget us. He sees us.  He calls us by name, we are His!!  If you ever doubt that – just start keeping a prayer journal and see how He answers things in His own timing and His own way.  He is a God who loves to surprise us.