Today is day three of the fast and yesterday was an amazing day. My husband is doing the fast with me. There’s a gift in a husband and wife who is in agreement together to meet the Lord. It always gives me unexplainable joy! Yesterday we read the devotional from our church together on our bed. It included messages and bible verses picked out by the Pastors from our church. I read the words aloud. At the end of it, my husband looks at the familiar last name and said, “Hmm. I’m going to see if my supervisor knows him”
Sometimes I speak what I think without thinking, LOL. Of course never in a way where it would hurt anyone, but I said, “There’s hundreds of people with that last name. What are the odds?! No way.” Followed with my laughter: Ha haaaaaaa. That past Sunday was actually the first day of the fast. Pastor Franklin requested those who needed prayer to lift up their hands. My husband was one, I also raised my hand but I wasn’t sure what I needed prayer for. So my hand was raised like halfway. Anyway, a woman I recently met came up to us, asked what we needed prayer for, and prayed for us. I can’t really describe the feeling I get when someone is eager to pray for another. What a selfless act and an act that requires such deep understanding towards another person. It’s difficult, especially if you don’t know the person, but you pray for them anyway.
Later on, after our scooter day at the trail, his supervisor replies. Turns out… that it’s his BROTHER. Like, how in the world can that revelation just come perfectly aligned like that? Well, God. God who reveals things in the perfect time. As always, that requires us to take that step first.
I started thinking…
what if I decided not to do the fast?
or what if my husband decided not to either? There would be no way he would see that name on that page.
There would be no text.
There would not be a reason to make a conversation.
I showed my husband a picture of the pastors from the website. A few minutes later, I told him that his wife was the one who prayed for us. We were both flabbergasted. The chain events of things was just really overwhelmingly magical.
I think reading this from an unfamiliar place like you are, I’m not sure if this looks like God working in us in a mysterious way that we don’t realize. But from our point of view, it was a huge thing. A choice to fast. A choice to meet God and spend time with Him. In return, He showed us a person. or well, personS. Haha.
Today’s message in day three journal talked about who we are and why we are.
I used to really hate how much empathy I have. WIth that, connecting the empathy to what will happen using worldly and Godly sense. Whenever we read the bible, we gain wisdom that we can’t get anywhere else. WIsdom comes from God and the bible is God’s Word.
He reveals to us plainly should we choose to open His book and hear His Words.
I can see that for His Kingdom, why I am the way I am is beneficial and probably is my calling. In this world though, it is a curse. It took me years to get a hold of separating what are my feelings and what are the feelings of others.
Yes, it makes me a good friend and listener, but oh dear, how much it can destroy my soul.
God taught me to lay all my burdens to Him. To accept what I see and hear as something that is for HIS Kingdom. I no longer saw my empathy as a curse. I no longer see my mindfulness and awareness as something that can destroy me. I now see it as a gift to encourage others to be running after God and seek relationship with Him. I will be honest, while it does not destroy my soul, I still haven’t learned how to dial down my anxieties. It can still be very limiting. I think today I’m all over the place. I don’t know how to explain what I see.
All I know is that God is good.
Time and time again, He shows up whenever I open the door. He is a beautiful God who has a beautiful heart. Something we will never quite understand. I am usually pretty great at connecting two points of stories together, but today’s is kind of jumbled and all over the place. What does today’s message have anything to do with yesterday’s happenings? I don’t know lol.
I do think that God orchestrated my parents to come live with us here in February, rather than January or December of last year. He wanted us to do this fast. He wanted us to do this fast together with the church. There’s a shaping here happening. There’s a pruning here happening and if I’m not wrong, He’s preparing us to witness to my parents the way He wants us to.
I still don’t know how it will happen, but Pastor Derozette from OCC sees it. She said when God saves one, He saves the household. She tells me to look up the verse in the bible. God saved even the servants who didn’t believe. As chills run up my spine, my cousin from Indonesia brought up this exact verse to me a few days ago. There’s no WAY that these two random people who doesn’t know each other could bring up a verse as a mind game to trip me out.
So maybe that is the connection.
The fast is trying to reveal something that has something with all these. Pruning, revealing, accepting, letting go of anxieties, witnessing, and full trust in the Lord. He knows everything and we do not.
I’m ready for the pruning, Lord.
