Laced With Grace

Have you ever had one of those days where you decided to throw yourself a big pity party?  You didn’t invite anyone but before you could really get into your pity party an uninvited guest showed up? Well this happened to me at the beginning of the summer…            

I started my summer burdened with some financial worries that threatened to overshadow my entire summer vacation.   Fortunately, early in the summer I visited one of my LWG sister’s blog and in the background there was a song playing by the Katinas.  I’d never heard it before and the words just stuck in my spirit.

 ust a little while longer I wanna pray
Can’t get You off my mind so I came to say
Thank You Lord, just for loving me, 

The line Thank You Lord, just for loving me, kept running through my mind the entire day. (Pity party interrupted) It reminded me that If I could not think of anything to be thankful for, just the fact that He loves me is reason enough to be thankful.  That same day I made up a playlist of about nine or ten songs all about giving thanks and I listened to them just about everyday during the summer.

 Thank you for the cross Lord
Thank you for the price You paid
Hillsong

 There were days where I’d start feeling a little overwhelmed and one of those songs would come to mind and I’d start talking to Him, start thanking him, just for loving me, for the price he paid for me, for his amazing grace…”  Do you know it’s impossible to have a pity party when the Holy Spirit shows up? 

When I think about how you saved my soul
I’m compelled to praise you
Like a woman out of control
So I lift up holy hands
I take advantage of this chance to say thank you

Yolanda Adams

I’m so thankful that the Holy Spirit interrupted my pity party.  It changed the direction of my summer.  Also, the biggest financial worry that I started the summer with, He totally took care of it.   

With all my heart with all my soul
Everything within me says thank you Lord
Thank you Lord
Lord I thank you, Lord I thank you, Lord I thank you…
Hillsong

But I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you shortly, so that I also may be encouraged when I learn of your condition.  For I have no one else of kindred spirit who will genuinely be concerned for your welfare.  For they all seek after their own interests, not those of Christ Jesus.  (Philippians 2:19-21 NASB)

A friend with a kindred spirit is a priceless gift from God.  He or she can only come from God.  God definitely has a unique way of bringing people together.  I’ve been blessed to have a number of close friends over the course of my lifetime.  As I’ve matured over the years, my friendships have also changed.  Some have endured, some have faded away and new friends have also entered into my life … all in God’s perfect timing.

Recently, I happened to stop by a blog I hadn’t read in a long time and found a post regarding the kindred spirit friendship of Paul & Timothy as well as that of David and Jonathon.  When I read one commenter lamenting that she doesn’t think these types of friendships exist any more, I wondered why this is so.  While I don’t believe they are “extinct”, because I am fortunate to be a part of one, I do agree that they are rare.  I also wonder if the reason for the rarity doesn’t lie somewhere within the above passage, specifically because deep down people “seek after their own interests, not those of Christ Jesus.”

Priceless friendships require both parties to be seeking after Jesus with all of their hearts.  Both parties should be passionately seeking God’s will over their own, pouring over the Bible in prayer for answers.  They need to pray for each other, spend time with each other and be sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s prompting to either exhort or listen to the other.   Pride and self-serving agendas should be put aside.   These are the prerequisites for priceless relationships.   

Finding one person meeting these prerequisites is hard enough to find…and a relationship takes two! Even Paul could only find Timothy to be genuinely concerned about the Philippians and I’m sure that even Timothy wasn’t all of these things all of the time.  I’m wondering how much richer our friendships would be if we all persistently sought God’s help to mold us into His image.  Maybe we could become priceless friends.

To ponder:
1.  Do you have what it takes to both “sharpen” and be “sharpened by a friend? (Pr 27:17)
2.  How much are you seeking God?
3.  Who do you need to become?

A few years ago, my husband was told that the company he worked for was going to fold.  They told him this on Thursday and we had finalized the purchase of our home on that Monday.  So, here we were, with a brand new house payment and the very real possibility of no job in the near future.  He had a few months to figure out what his options were.

Behind Door number 1 we saw opportunities to move to another state.  Not a very good option since we just bought a house.  Slam!

 Behind Door number 2 we saw jobs that used some of his skills, but were not really in his field.  He sent in a few resumes with high hopes but it seemed that everywhere we turned, we kept running into closed doors. Slam!

Door number 3 was a management position in our area.  Once again, he went through the interview process, wondering if this job was a fit, but also feeling a little desperate as his last days at work were drawing near.  Thankfully, that door was shut also.  Slam!

In our small community, it can be difficult to find a job and we didn’t feel like God was calling us to move so what were we supposed to do?

I would guess that each of us has had similar experiences.  Doors closing left and right.  It can make a person feel frustrated and wondering about God’s plans, OR it can be comforting.  My husband quoted a verse to me during this frustrating time…a verse that I never quite understood. 

Psalm 139:5
You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.

I think the idea of being hemmed in sounds a bit like being trapped, just like doors slamming all around me feels.  Like when I got stuck at the bottom of the bed as a child all wrapped up in the blankets and I couldn’t figure out how to get out and I panicked.  But I don’t think that’s what God does when He hems us in.

Yes, we may feel a little trapped because we can’t see which way to go, but He is making our choices simple by closing doors we shouldn’t barge through.  He hems us in to protect us from wrong choices and bad decisions.  It’s like being wrapped in a blanket of comfort, security and protection.  And no matter how many doors He closes, He always leaves open the prayer door.  We can still cry out to Him when we can’t see which way to go and He will answer.  And eventually, He will open the right door for us at the right time.

In the end, we discovered that God had a perfect plan for us and it didn’t require moving or taking on a new job at all because my husband could stay at the same job in the same office doing the same work but with a new company.  God knew which door had been open all along.