Here is some of the sweet encouragement we received!:
"Only fear the Lord and serve Him faithfully with all your heart. For consider what great things He has done for you." 1 Samuel 12:24
Just a reminder of what I read in my devotions recently…God promises to give us enough grace for today, for the moment, for the minute, not for tomorrow or for next week, but for NOW, His grace is sufficient! Also, I read Habakkuk yesterday and he begins by basically yelling…”Violence!”, "this is terrible!”, and then continuously calls God his “rock", his “holy one”, his faithful stability. He says all this stuff that isn’t going right and then says, “…yet I will rejoice in the Lord”, and ends the book with nothing solved but still says, “The sovereign Lord is my strength….He enables me to go on the heights.”
"For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ." 2 Cor. 1:5
I look forward to seeing how God upholds you all in His Righteous, Right hand (Isaiah 41)
"You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You." Isaiah 26:3
Jesus, I thank you these events are no surprise to you, and that before the foundations of the world were laid you saw fit to orchestrate and bring about your plan. I thank you that you love us and the Pichura's so much, that you want our joy to be found in you and not in our circumstances. I pray that these events would drawn Bryan, Kristin, Micah, Samuel, Grace, Faith, Titus, Caleb, our family, and the Cloverdale family, into a deeper trust and faith in you. I thank you for the picture of the shepherd and the sheep you give us in scripture. That as dumb sheep, you don't call us to clean ourselves up and stop being sheep, but to come in all our frailty, anxiety and fear, and even unbelief and to just follow and trust the shepherds leading. I thank you that you are patient with us, and although you have your glory and our best in mind, you also meet us right where we are at. And so Jesus, I pray for the Pichura's, that you would meet them right where they are at, and open the doors for what you, and only you could do. Father we want to see you name proclaimed, we want to see your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. And so I pray that you would allow a miracle to take place, and that through these events, a taste of your kingdom would be revealed in this "mess." For your glory, Jesus.
Amen.
I know we all know Romans 8:28..."And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose." I know this verse is true, but sometimes it is just hard to see the reality of it! Well, Seeds tags on verse 31 as well, and that was the part that really hit me! "What then shall we say to these things? If God if for us, who can be against us?!"
It is my prayer that God will sweetly remind you that He is ALWAYS for us, and never against us. And since He controls every little, and BIG circumstance, NO ONE can stand in His way...NOTHING is ever against you (well, people and things CAN indeed be against us, as they are now, but they are not against what God is doing!), even when it seems so much the opposite, God is always FOR you! I have been fervently praying for a miracle, and that God will continue to sustain you and reveal His goodness to you, even when He seems to never relent in throwing you one thing after another.
"Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I shall rescue you, and you will honor Me."
Psalm 50:15
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