God Is Rolling Up His Sleeves

This morning as I was taking a jog, I went down to the beach and just watched the waves crash. I just stood there for a few seconds and just listened to the waves roar. I couldn’t help but feel like those waves. They reach a high peak and then boom – crash. But then the water smooths out. That’s the part I forget about – that our waters will one day be smoothed out.

Yesterday in church we sang one of my most favorite songs called “His Eye is on the Sparrow.” I told Dan right away that this song was going to be hard for me to sing. As we started, the tears started to come. Dan just held me as we stood together singing “and I know He watches me.” That song has always brought me so much comfort and was it coincidence that we say that song? No, it was one of God’s divine appointments.

When I was jogging, I was thinking “okay God, what should I blog about today? I am having such a hard time saying what is on my heart.” I get back and check my email. I open an email from a dear friend of ours – someone who has known Dan since he was born and someone who has known it all. She had thought of us as she read the devotional from Insight for Living from Chuck Swindoll. This is what it said:

September 24, 2012

I’d like to underline a major truth in this world of ours that I don’t pretend to understand. Here it is: The best framework for the Lord God to do His most ideal work is when things are absolutely impossible and we feel totally unqualified to handle it.

That’s His favorite circumstance. Those are His ideal working conditions.

God does His most magnificent work when the situation seems totally impossible from a human point of view, and we feel absolutely unprepared and unable to do anything about it, yet our eyes are on Him. . . . That’s when God rolls up His big sleeves and says, “Step back out of the way a moment, and watch Me work.” Time after time, He brings us to our absolute end and then proves Himself faithful.

That, my friend, is the story of the Bible in a nutshell.

I just sat and wept. Wept out of relief knowing that we have the freedom to step out of the way to watch God work. But also wept out of just feeling still so overwhelmed. Dan and I feel that what we are going through feels impossible and that we feel totally unqualified to handle it.

Then it says…That’s His favorite circumstance.

Ah. I breathed a sigh of relief. We feel so unprepared. That is how we felt on Saturday as we sat on our basement stairs and just cried. We feel we can’t do anything about our situation at times too. We just feel helpless and broken. BUT – imagine God hearing us say those things and God saying “okay, let me roll up my sleeves and get to work.” THAT IS WHAT HE IS DOING! God is protecting us; putting us behind Him, as we watch our Father work. I think about our parents. How many times have we asked for help as children and they did something for us? How comforting that is! That is what God is doing for us. Though it doesn’t feel like that at times, He IS faithful.

We look at our weeks and months ahead and think “there is no way we can do all of this.” Yet I think of how much work God has done in our life already. It has been one week since God has taken our little ones back to Him. We are in a different place than we were last week Tuesday. There is some hope restored. Though we still feel incredibly unqualified, we know God will give us the tools we need. We know God will qualify us and use us as His instruments.

Today though, we rest in the fact that God has rolled up His sleeves. That He sees our tears. He hears our frustrations and doubts. It is out of sheer humility that we accept God’s desire to work on our behalf. His favorite circumstance I think is when we move out of the way and let HIM do the work.

How refreshing on a day that brings so many mixed emotions. What a blessing it is to read that devotional – another divine appointment of God’s!