Filling the Gap Ministries

“The eternal God is your refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms. He will drive out your enemy before you, saying, ‘Destroy him!” Deuteronomy 33:27

At 32, I finally understand why my dad used my brother and I as illustrations so often in his sermons: kids are great material. Yes, they are hilarious but they also say those things that are so very profound and leave you speechless; Especially when it comes to things about God. The other day, Canaan (my 4 year old son) and I were discussing things about God and I was answering his questions the best that I could (no one told me that when your kid is about 4, you need to take a class in theology!). You know, the usual questions about how God made everything and everyone, and how…why… and when. I had just finished answering a question that had something to do with God and dinosaurs. I breathed a sigh of relief, (thinking the conversation had ended and hoped I had answered his questions without making anything up when Canaan asked me a question that I think I will never forget. He said, “Mommy, how can I hug God?” He continued with, “I just want to hug Him but I don’t know how.” I felt a lump rise in my throat and wanted to cry right then and there. I wanted to cry because of the love I knew Canaan had for God. To him, a hug is one of the biggest ways to show someone you love them. I wanted to cry because Canaan’s question made me check my own heart. How often do I really tell God how much I love Him? Do my actions reflect that my heart beats for Him above all else? I knelt down by Canaan and told him the only answer I could think of. I told Him that we show God how much we love Him by telling Him in prayer, showing Him by our actions, and telling other people about Him. Later that day, Canaan went on about his business, but that question about hugging God stayed with me. I looked up the definition of the word ‘hug’. It means, “to press tightly, especially in the arms.” I started thinking about God’s arms and the times they were there for me. How that during my trials, God’s arms were around me, protecting me, sheltering me, comforting me. Sometimes His arms were stern, as a loving disciplining father, directing me and keeping me from making harmful decisions. There were even times that I ran away from those arms and then wondered why I didn’t feel Him near and felt afraid. I am slowly learning that as God’s child, it is absolutely necessary to press into God’s arms. This not a suggestion or something you ‘could do’…it is a must. I was turning through my Bible and saw that Deuteronomy 33:27 was underlined. Out to the side are the words, “Proof that God Protects”. As His people, we MUST believe this verse. This verse cannot be skimmed over, it must be broken down and studied piece by piece. The beginning of the verse tells us that God is eternal. He exists even when we don’t believe He is there. No doubts that you or I have about Him, makes Him less powerful or effective. He is eternal. He has always been here and always will be. How? I don’t know; that’s one of the reasons I call Him God. The next part of the verse says that He is our refuge. He is that place of shelter in times of distress. His word doesn’t say that times of distress won’t come, but that when they come, we will press into the arms. The last part tells us that God will protect us from our enemies. I think that sometimes, we believe that people around us are where are battles are. But we forget that our biggest enemy is Satan. I believe that if God protects me from Satan himself, He can handle anyone on this earth that threatens me with harm. This whole verse is powerful, but I must say that my favorite part is the middle… ‘underneath is the everlasting arms.’ Underneath means ‘beneath the surface’. This tells me that at the end of every trial, every tear, every struggle, there are the arms… His arms. To me, stepping out on faith feels like I am just free falling. Falling and falling and having no idea where I will land. How wonderful it is to know that at the end are His arms. The arms are everlasting. There is no end to His help. You and I never have to wonder when God will leave us or abandon us. He won’t. Perhaps you feel like you are completely alone in a trial in your life right now. Maybe it is comfort you long for from His arms because of the pain that you feel. You must press into His arms. Perhaps you need protection from the fire that is flames from those around you. You must press into His arms. When you do this, He will deal with your enemies and not a hair on your head will be singed (Daniel 3:27 ). There are a million reasons to need God’s arms. We must remember that as His people, we must not worry about ‘what the arms will do’. Our job is to press tightly into them. I guess there is a way to ‘hug’ God after all…

Love,
Corrie

My prayer for today: Lord, thank you for Canaan and showing me that I need to press tightly into your arms. Thank you for loving me, disciplining me, comforting me, and just simply holding me up with your everlasting arms. Help me to rid myself of arrogance and pride and know I am nothing without you…

“As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the maker of all things.” Ecclesiastes 11:5

When I was younger, I used to love to cross stitch. Of course, back then I seemed to have more patience to sit there for hours. Moving the needle in and out, hoping that soon, what I was ‘attempting’ to make would look something like the picture it came with One day, I was about to continue with one of my projects. As I went to get the cross stitch piece I was working on out of my sewing box (yes, I had a sewing box! What of it!!), I noticed all these knots and strings on the back of my picture. For a second, I was amazed that so many ugly looking pieces of strings and knots could actually turn out to make such a beautiful picture. God has since then brought my ‘cross stitching’ days of glory back to my mind. He reminds me that His children (myself included!) are always looking at the knots and strings of His will for our life, questioning, wondering, why, why why? Yet, our Father, the designer of our life, is looking at the finished product. He knows the purpose for every string, every knot, every turn, and every loop. We plead for glimpses of that finished product, but sometimes they come and sometimes there is only silence. What does this mean for us as God’s people? He will tell us in this post…

I think I could learn something new about God every second of my life until the day I die and I would have still never scratched the surface of who this magnificent God really is. However, at the present moment in my Christian walk, He is working with me on belief. A question that I have often asked myself is, “Why can’t I just believe God?” The answer to this question goes back to the Garden of Eden. Believing God seems like such a simple concept. Though the concept is simple, God’s people often find it to be so difficult. The reason is sin. God told Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of life. He didn’t tell them every detail or go over the complete plan, but He told them what He wanted them to know for the moment. You know, the ’strings and knots’? But then, Satan came into the picture. He gave Eve reasons (illusions) of why she should eat from that tree and not believe God. Sin is still the reason God’s children find it difficult to believe Him today. You see, sin creates distance between us and God. We often think of sin to be murder, stealing, big lies (as opposed to little white ones), sexually sins, etc. But in God’s eyes, sin is sin and sin equals distance. Do we ever think that pride is sin? Arrogance? Putting other people (even if it’s our own family) before God… it’s sin too. The reason we fail to believe God is because we allow (notice I said ‘we’ allow) sin to wedge itself between us and God, slowly creating distance. Satan does this by telling us lies. You may be saying, “Corrie, what lies? I know when I am being lied to!” No. Satan is very good at deceiving. Have you ever found yourself asking the question of, “Will God really help me in this trial?”; “What if He doesn’t rescue me?”; “What if everything I know about God really isn’t really true?” My friend, these are the lies that take our eyes off of our Father. And the moment we look down, the waves seem to wash over us, crashing, smothering us as if to feel as though we are drowning. So, how do we believe God and not the lies? How do we wait when we only see the ’strings and knots’? I believe the answer is in God’s word. I started looking at people in the Bible who God gave instruction to trust Him, believe Him, with only knowing very limited information: Abraham- God tells him to just pack up everything and everybody, move’m out and follow Him! Strings and knots. Abraham is also a good example for us to see what can happen if you want to flip over the cross stitch to see the finished product way too early! (But after that, Abraham did believe God for the rest of his life); Moses-God tells him to go tell this big scary tyrant to just ‘let the people go’ and if he didn’t, to threaten the big scary tyrant with a bunch of plagues! Strings and knots. Mary-God tells her she is having a baby (and we all know all the biology that was missing there!) and the baby would be the Messiah! Strings and knots. David, Samuel, Job…strings and knots. I could go on and on of people who believed God when they didn’t know what the completed picture would be like. So, if sin existed then as it exists now, how did they believe God? The reason is the relationship these people had with God. These people spent time with God, talking to Him and listening to Him, confessing sin so that they could be close with Him. When they became afraid, they drew closer and closer to God (James 4:8). That is the answer for us today. We believe God when we are close to God. The closer I get to God, the more I seek to be like Him. The more of His identity I can take on, the less sin can wedge its way in between us. When the distance is gone, trust is built! Spending time with God also includes reading and studying His word. But, in order for God’s word to bring us comfort, encouragement, power, etc, we must be able to believe the one who wrote it (Proverbs 30:5). What about you? Are you struggling to believe God in a trial right now? The way we can believe Him is to confess the sin that is causing the distance between us and God. We must stop buying into the lies of Satan and allowing him to intimidate us into doubting a God that is true. I love to read Hebrews chapter 11. It is a chapter completely devoted to God’s people who believed Him when they only saw the ’strings and knots’. You and I must be willing to believe God even though the wind howls around us. We must choose to believe Him when Satan stages the illusion of no hope being anywhere in sight. When Satan roars in our face, we must remember he was stripped of power at Calvary and that he is a lion with no teeth. We are God’s people. We must prove faithful. I will end the post with Lamentations 3:21-24: “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail.. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness, I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for Him.” ****Here’s to ’strings and knots’!

Love,
Corrie

My prayer for today:
Lord, forgive me for wanting to rush ahead of you in your plans for my life. Those strings and knots that I have seen have been so purposeful in my relationship with you and they still are. Help me to wait on you and boldly follow you with total belief in who you are… not only for what you do..

“For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore, encourage each other with these words.”     1 Thessalonians 4:16-18

“Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming.”
Matthew 24:42

As I have shared with you before, after God gives me the post to write, I immediately begin to pray for Him to give me the next one. Then, rather than panic, I have learned to wait for Him. Just a few hours ago, God overwhelmed my heart with this particular post. I must say, it is perhaps one of the most encouraging and exciting post He has ever given me. I hope in reading this, God will change the perception of your day today…

I am sure many of you celebrated the Fourth of July with fireworks (unless you are like me and live in the woods and can’t because you might start a forest fire that would burn for days!). Anyway, tonight at my church, we continued the celebration by gathering together to honor both our Lord and our men and women of service. We also had the privilege of hearing our Congressman, Robert Aderholt, share his heart. After the service, hot dogs and ice cream were served. And then came the fireworks. As we all stood outside, everyone seemed to stop eating and talking as the fireworks show began. The sky was beautifully lit up with an array of color and explosions of loud sounds that indicated the beauty that would soon come behind them. All of a sudden, God allowed me to see something wonderful and exciting… so exciting that I have chills again writing about it. There, all around me, stood 2 or 3 hundred people, gazing up at the sky. They couldn’t take their eyes of what was happening in the sky. Suddenly, I felt as though I had caught a tiny glimpse of what it will be like when our Lord returns for us. I feel as though some times, we begin to think that our lives, our trials, are to hard to bear here in this old world. Satan plants the doubts of ‘is this man really coming back for us?’ My friend, God placed this post on my heart tonight to encourage you who are weary. This includes me. So many of us are undergoing trials that seem to take away our very breath. The endurance for another day seems almost to hard to bear. We must remember that we are not orphans who have been abandoned or discarded. We are sons and daughters of the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords! We are royalty, but we wait as though we are forgotten children. You and I must understand that HE WILL BE BACK! Prophecies have been and are continuing to be fulfilled. It is getting closer and closer to the day when the trumpet sounds and our eyes are drawn to the activity in the sky, once again. But this time, not for fireworks. The Lord Jesus has come to do as He promised! Our loved ones ,who have accepted Him through salvation, will rise first and then us–His children! We will be changed! My heart beats faster as I write this post. But as much as I long to see my Saviour and those who have gone before me, there is much work to be done. Jesus did not tell us to rest with our feet up while He went to get everything ready. No, you and I must share with others about the day of our Lord. Even though I know I will be a part of that glorious day, if it were today, I would be heart broken. Heart broken for those I have not told about my Lord. Do you know if your spouse has accepted Christ into their heart? Other family members? Your best friend? What about that person who is sitting next to you right now? I have failed my God miserably in this area, but I am going to strive to change that. Perhaps your are going through a difficult trial in your life right now. You never seem to be able to ‘get everything together’ here on Earth. If your are God’s child, He tells us that we are aliens and strangers to this world. We are temporary. And for that reason, we must depend on God and His power to take us through the ‘land of the living’. We have work to do, guys and gals. He is returning. What we have read is true. My heart tells me it is. But for today or tonight, whenever you are reading this, I challenge you to do something that I did tonight: Look at the sky for just a moment. If you are His child, anticipate that day where we will be caught up in the air, the trumpet… the rapture. As for our trials we face today, 1 Thess. 4:18 tells us that the return of Christ should encourage us as believers. But until that day comes, we must continue to do the work… His work.

Love,
Corrie
(Note: If you have never asked Christ into your heart to be your Lord and Saviour, I would be honored to share with you how to do that. Please contact me by phone or by email (both my email address and phone number can be found on the home page of the website). It will be the best decision you will ever make

My prayer for today: Lord, how thankful I am that you have gone to prepare a place for me. A place that I can’t even imagine. I nailed you to that cross and you gave me eternity in return. I don’t know what to say except that I am thankful. I will proclaim who you are until you return.

“Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead–since he was about a hundred years old–and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.”            Romans 4:18-22

My husband, Shane, and I had the privilege of attending a Christian marriage retreat, specifically for coaches and their wives, this past weekend (coachesoutreach.org, by the way;-). It was wonderful! In the worship sessions, we studied the first 5 chapters of Romans. As I was reading along with the pastor, we came across the above verses. It seemed at though time stood still for me as I read these verses over and over again. It was as if they were written in darker ink than any of the other text. The entire day and night, I thought about these verses. Then, God spoke to me and said this would be the post…

You cannot study God’s word without learning about Abraham. If Abraham lived in our world today, he would totally be on the front of every tabloid magazine. Why? Because he had an incredible life story. If you only knew the ending of Abraham’s story, then you would think he had been this young, strong, well-educated man that was from a strong Christian home and had a beautiful young trophy wife to match. After all, who wouldn’t choose this type of man to say he was ‘the father of all nations’? Wouldn’t this type of man be chosen to begin the bloodline of Jesus, the Messiah, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords? The truth is, Abraham’s life story is incredible because of one thing: Abraham believed God. That’s it. We find in God’s word that Abraham’s father worshiped many gods, while Abraham worshiped the one true God. So, it wasn’t his monumental upbringing that moved God’s heart. And as for physical appearance, Abraham was an elderly man (and so was his wife for that matter!) when God decided to let the blessings begin. God showed me, after reading this text, that believing Him was the ultimate characteristic He is looking for. Abraham did not only believe God, but he put his hope in God when there was no reason to hope. The beginning of Romans 4:18 says, “Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed…” So here is a question: How do you hope in God when there is no reason to hope? The definition for the word ‘hope’ in the dictionary is very different from the definition of how ‘hope’ is used in God’s word. The dictionary says hope is: ‘to desire something, yet having no assurance that it will really happen’. The Bible tells us that here, hope means, ’strong and confident expectation’. That’s it. Abraham was confident that God would come through on the promises He had made. Perhaps you are at a place in your life today that you are finding it extremely difficult to find hope ‘against all hope’. Maybe you really wish God would come through, but that doubt that He just might not, takes your thoughts captive. How do we fix it? How can we have this confidence in God that Abraham had? Well, to be confident that someone will come through for you, you have to KNOW them. Right? I mean, would you meet a stranger or someone you talked to every once in a while, and ask them to do something for you and really be confident they would come through for you? I wouldn’t! But don’t we do it with God? We don’t know Him. That is the problem with the hope. Abraham KNEW God. Verses 20 & 21 say that Abraham was actually strengthened in his faith after facing the fact that he was too old for this to be humanly possible! How often do we totally give up when we see how big our obstacle is and we run the stats on if we can get past it? It makes me want to jump up and down when I think about the fact that Abraham knew God so well, that he was ‘fully persuaded that God had the power to do what He had promised him’!! If you read through Genesis, you will find many examples of where Abraham is talking to God. He went to God with his problems. I also noticed that Abraham didn’t forget to praise God in the good times too. The Bible tells us of numerous times Abraham stopped and build an alter and gave a sacrifice to God. This was done because He praised this Almighty God for just being with Him, being faithful. O how I forget to praise Him for just waking me up in the morning. If you feel hopeless about your situation, God wants you to know that He can provide you hope. To me, Abraham was the most blessed person by God in our history. God began a legacy with Abraham; a legacy that gave us a Saviour! God didn’t choose to bless Abraham because of his physical, mental, or emotional characteristics. It wasn’t about Abraham’s status at work or the money he had or didn’t have. It was the fact that Abraham believed God ‘against all hope’. You may say, “Corrie, it’s 2009 and my circumstances are alot different from Abraham.” This may be true, but thank goodness having different circumstances won’t matter… it’s still the same God.

Love,
Corrie

My prayer for today:
Lord, thank you so much for recording your journey with Abraham in your word. It makes me feel so much better to know that when I feel hopeless, hope can be found in you. Help me to remember to take the time to get to know you so that I may be confident in who you are and your power. Draw me closer to you so that I may depend on you for my every breath…

“Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine.”
1 Samuel 17: 40

Since I was a little girl, one of my favorite Bible stories is David and Goliath. When I read it as an adult to my little boy, I can’t help but visualize of how that day of battle might have taken place. Let’s look at the story more closely…

I can just see David, this young shepherd boy who came to The Valley of Elah that day, bringing lunch to his big brothers. I am sure when David left, he didn’t think bringing some cheese and bread would turn into such an eventful day! How creepy it must have been to hear the loud, obnoxious voice of a nine foot giant, yelling and screaming death threats! As his brothers shared their frustrations and fears of this angry man named Goliath, David listened. In 1 Samuel 17 verse 26, David couldn’t believe that someone would actually challenge the ‘armies of the living God’. Out of all the things David could have said, he is more worried about this man challenging the power of his God! No wonder the rest of them looked at him like, “This guy is going to kill us and your worried about what God thinks?” But you see, that is why David is known for having that phenomenal relationship with God. David immediately is defensive of his God. How often do we think about God’s feelings in our battles? Then, David stands to basically say, “Well, I’ll fight him.” God’s word says that people around him took this gesture as being arrogant and conceited. But the confidence that David exhibits, comes from the fact that he already knew the outcome of this battle. Why? Because he knew his Lord. David had such a close relationship with God that he knew God would prevail. I don’t think he cared much about the ‘how’, but the outcome was a sure thing. We fail at this time and time again. We have a battle and then we worry and stress over the outcome. Why? Because we don’t know the one who holds the outcome. The more I read God’s word and the more time I spend with Him, the less doubts I find that come in my head. The worry is diminished because I know God is for my good. God has shown me that David agreed to fight Goliath because he knew he was only the ‘body’ that God would use. It was God’s battle; not David’s. David could have made it his battle, but he knew from the beginning and continued to remember that the battle was the Lord’s (vs 45 ). Then I noticed that David meets with Saul because (let’s face it) everybody wanted to meet this fool that was going to take on this giant! Saul gives David an armor. David refused. God then leads David to pick 5 smooth stones for his slingshot. It is interesting to me that David refused the defense the King offered him. Often times, we are in a battle in our life. And rather than trust what God gives us to fight with, we feel we need more protection, so we put on whatever the world suggests. The world suggests alcohol/drugs to numb things just a little; it suggests that maybe we just need to run away from it all; the world suggests harsh words that lash and cut; the world suggests we fight with self-help books and talk shows; the world suggests we hold resentment and put only distance between us and the ones who hurt us. Then we wonder why we feel as though we are drowning and the battle rages on. God gave David 5 stones. Not 4, not 6…5 stones. David had these 5 stones, a staff, and a sling shot. If I were David, I probably would have said, “God, are you kidding? Don’t you think I need at least some kind of little dagger or a sharp- kind- of- something?!!! How about a bigger rock at least!!” David picked up the defense God gave him and defeated that giant. I guess what I am trying to say is that I want to be content with God in battle. I want to trust Him with every single aspect of my life. I want Him to control every part of me; my mind, my heart, my body. With this trust, I will be able to fight with whatever and however He leads. God placed this story on my heart tonight. I know many of us are facing battles in our lives at this very moment. If you are God’s child, He promises to be your defender. I noticed that none of the circumstances surrounding David ever became an obstacle for him. He never said, “I’m too small; I’m too young; I’m not skilled; everybody is talking about me and saying I can’t do this.” David knew none of these factors changed the outcome of the battle. David knew who was ‘really’ fighting this battle. How often we get side-tracked by the obstacles around us. For you see, it wasn’t the 5 stones that defeated Goliath, and it wasn’t the boy who slung them…it was God’s power which came because of David’s obedience to fight the way God wanted. We have to remember that if we ask God to fight the battle, then we have to fight it His way. What are your stones God has given you to fight with? Is it silence in the heat of an argument? Is it forgiving someone who has hurt you? Is it simply waiting on Him? Is it burying yourself in His word for more time with Him? To me, the stones are symbolic of David’s faith and obedience to God in the battle. This story tells me that the reason David won the battle with 5 stones is because David trusted the One who told him to gather them…

Love,
Corrie

My prayer for today:
Lord, thank you for this powerful story. Thank you for showing me the significance of David’s 5 stones. Help me to grow closer to you so that I may know you more. Help me to give my battles to you and be obedient to fight with what you tell me to. I trust you with my life, Lord. Be my defender…

Thanks to the ladies of New Prospect Baptist Church in Haleyville, Alabama, for allowing me to speak at their Mothers’ Day Banquet. The fashion show was hilarious and God’s presence was sweet as we opened our hearts to His word. I would also like to thank the women of Harmony Grove Baptist Church in Winfield, Alabama, for inviting me to share my heart at their Mothers and Others luncheon. After a time of wonderful fellowship (and the best mashed potatoes I’ve ever eaten!), we learned of the great spiritual responsibility God has entrusted us with, as mothers, until He comes. I had a wonderful time with my sisters in Christ!

Love,
Corrie

(Please read 2 Samuel Chapters 11-12 before reading the post)

“…and they said, “He is dead.” So David arose from the ground, washed and anointed himself, and changed his clothes; and he went into the house of the Lord and worshiped. Then he went to his own house; and when he requested, they set food before him and he ate.”
1 Samuel 12:19 (beginning in the last part of verse 19) – 20.

I love studying the Bible and all the people God chose to let us read about. But, you know what? There is one person that I am extremely thankful that God didn’t leave out… David! I love to study about David. To me, we can learn so much from him. When David was just a young boy, God let him defeat a giant and become a hero! Here is a man that God loved so much that he chose to be Israel’s king. He even favored David so that He allowed Jesus to come from David’s bloodline. Why? God loved David because David’s passion was making his own heart reflect God’s. In order to make your heart mirror someone else, you must know that person very well. David is one person that we can study in order to know exactly how to have a phenomenal relationship with God. That is one reason I am eager to learn about David. The closeness that was between David and God is what I want too. But, I also noticed another reason I am thankful for David’s story being told in God’s word. David shows us what to do when we mess up and how to ‘get it back on the road’ with God. Before God founded my ministry, I would find myself distant from God and had no clue how to ‘get back’ to Him. I kept wondering how I could keep this from happening with me and God again? God began to show me that preventing distance was all about maintaining closeness. Yep…Duh! Anyway, Filling the Gap is all about the relationship with God and learning that even though sin does distance us from our Father, the cross brings us back with Him again and again through forgiveness. Here’s the kicker: God gets all this. We kind of…. don’t. I always ask God to forgive me for allowing sin to come between Him and me but then I fail to believe He has forgiven me and continue wallowing in self pity(all the while keeping distance). Here’s where David comes in as a great example. In 2 Samuel Chapter 11, David sets his eyes on another man’s wife. To make the story shorter, David commits adultery with Bathsheba and then (to make matters worse) plots to make sure her husband dies on the front lines of battle. But then God sends Nathan to convict David of this sinful spiral he is in. Then, David closes the distance between him and God… he repents. David admits what he did was hurtful to God. David’s sin had repercussion. David’s child that he had with Bathsheba (apart from God’s plan) was taken from him by death. Now, what happens next is the whole point of the post that God placed on my heart. David was honest with God about his emotions and pleaded with God not to take his child. But when the child died, when God did what God thought was best, David worshiped Him. Unbelievable. David worshiped God. Why? How? I believe it was because David knew God so well that He trusted God’s plan for his life. It was that relationship that was in place before anything happened. This is the true meaning of Romans 8:28, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” This verse does not say “some things” or “only the things we do that are good”. God can even take our sin and work it out to be the very best for us! The question is do you trust Him? Maybe you feel distant with God right now in your Christian walk. We have proof and a road map on how to be close to God instantly. Tell God you want Him to forgive you, work on a new plan to keep from letting it happen again, and move on to worshiping Him. Why? Because God knows the very best for you and me. I want to have faith like David. I want to know that even when I fail the very God I love so much, I can trust Him with all my decisions. I hope you will too. The good news is that when we do trust God with everything, He proves Himself over and over again. David’s proof of Romans 8:28? A spiritual legacy that gave us a Savior!

Love,
Corrie

My prayer for today:
Lord, how often I fail you. I am so glad that you are the God of forgiveness and that you run to me before I even realize you are there. Forgive me for placing distance between you and I by not accepting that forgiveness. Help me to be like David. Help me to know that you do what you say you will do…