I was fretting.
Again. About finances. Again.
I went to church and worshiped.
Came home and got right back into the fretting.
So I went to my sewing room to finish quilting a special
blanket I was making for my sister’s writers’ conference auction coming up in
June. I often pray as I stitch along,
but this day I was fretting, figuring in my mind the balance in my checkbook
and wondering how and where to find the money to pay the bills due by month’s
end. Then I felt God speak to me.
“Taffy, what are you doing?”
Now God knew for sure what I was doing. He saw me sewing. But as I took a look at the quilt I was
stitching I knew exactly what he was asking.
You see, my sister’s writers’ organization has a theme each year for
their conference, and my sister asks me to make a quilt for their auction based
on that theme. This year’s theme was
“loaves & fishes”. I had put
together a quilt with blocks of realistic looking bread fabric, and underwater
fresh fish scenes. I put a cuddly,
striped fleece on the back of the quilt, and planned the quilt label to read “Wrap
yourself in God’s provision”.
My first response to God’s question was guilt, and
shame. I was busted! Here I was creating a beautiful quilt to
speak pictorially of God’s amazing provision, but not believing it myself. The God spoke again.
“Look at me.”
God called my attention away from myself, back to him. As I gazed at the Lord, I saw he was smiling,
not condemning. He was inviting me to
put aside my negative thoughts, and believe him again, to seek him first and
trust him that all the other things, including finances, would be provided to
me. “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all
these things will be given to you as well.” Matt. 6:33
There are
lots of negative things to focus on all around us, things that we cannot
ignore, like paying bills, troubled children, chronic diseases like cancer
affecting those we love. But God. God asks us to set our minds on what he says
for whatever situation we are going through, to believe what he says over what
may be staring us in the face at any given moment. To hope again, to believe again that God
really is good, then to find the scriptures that speak the truth over the error
in our thinking at any given time, and choose to believe them. When hope rises up, faith comes right
along. I love the way Kris Vallotton of Bethel Church
Healing Women at Shore Vineyard is in the midst of a seven
week CD series on Tuesday nights studying Joyce Meyer’s Battlefield of the
Mind. All ladies are welcome join us
on the “highway to heaven” as we learn together how to choose to live out of
God’s truth.
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