For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11 NKJV
My friend delivered a sermon that changed my life. He wasn’t my friend back then. Only afterwards. And he didn’t know he was delivering a sermon that would change MY life. He actually was delivering a sermon to deliver a sermon, trusting the Lord had use of it somehow. God had him pegged for many reasons – and like a string art project, God wraps some paths (mine included) around His servants’ pegs on a board crafted by the Holy Spirit to “paint” a picture of Jesus’s calling.
I listened to recordings, a couple years LATER, music also but just a couple days later, that’s how distant and yet close that the string art string stretched, but the boasting couldn’t. My friend actually had his sermons recorded but not by his knowledge. The sermons were recorded due to the church’s ability and a device, which in a roundabout way I had an opportunity to support financially and in follow up with people asking my help, as it was to make copies of the sermons for the homebound (those bound to their homes) – but I had no idea it also would help me homebound (those bound for travelling Home to the Lord). And so I didn’t know when I supported that, that it was something that was going to be supporting my own journey Home. That I would be receiving the great gift of sermons, and songs too that would change me.
I believe that the Lord works in mysterious ways. This is true and TRUTH and I know it says it in the Bible. But I know it from my own life experience too. This history and this mystery means that I cannot boast. My friend cannot boast, none of us can boast.
I also must therefore credit the Lord (and my friend must credit the Lord), especially the Holy Spirit’s flow putting us each in the right time at the right place AND in the right place at the right time. For the Lord… For the Lord…
It’s as if before the Lord of hosts, no one can fulfill his own boast.
It’s not us, it’s the Lord.
JUST ASK JEREMIAH! Although we are not His exiles to Babylon, we are His flock to gather.
Amen
Jeremiah 30:1-3 NKJV
This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Write in a book all the words I have spoken to you. The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will bring my people Israel and Judah back from captivity and restore them to the land I gave their ancestors to possess,’ says the Lord.”
Jeremiah 17:7-8, 12 NKJV
Thus says the Lord:… “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, And whose hope is the Lord. For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, Which spreads out its roots by the river, and will not fear when heat comes; But its leaf will be green, and will not be anxious in the year of drought, Nor will cease from yielding fruit. … A glorious high throne from the beginning Is the place of our sanctuary.
Jeremiah 22:16 NKJV
Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Was not this knowing Me?” says the Lord.
Jeremiah 23:23 NKJV
“Am I a God near at hand,” says the Lord, And not a God afar off? Can anyone hide himself in secret places, So I shall not see him?” says the Lord; Do I not fill heaven and earth?” says the Lord.
Debbie Upper 