No One Ever Spoke the Way This Man Does (John 7:46)

Ruined!

Once you spoke to me,
Said my name,
I was ruined, desperate
To hear you speak again and again.

No one ever spoke the way this man does.
No one ever looked into my eyes,
Gazed into my very soul,
Saw it all and still chose me as his own.

It's All Good!

“I don’t want my goodness to catch you by surprise.”  That was a prophetic word I read on Father’s Heart Ministry this week.

And just why would the goodness of God catch someone by surprise?  It would if they were living by Murphy’s law:  “If there is anything that can go wrong, it will.” It would if they viewed God as the “God of the second shoe”.  I have struggled with that one.  Pinching myself, holding back from rejoicing over blessings as I wait for the second shoe to drop.

Recently I had been spending time with the Lord in the morning and then got up to go about the tasks of the day.  As I turned to leave the room where I hang out with God he spoke to me, “It’s all good.”  I stopped in my tracks and listened.  “It’s all good.  Do you believe it?”  I think I believe it, Daddy. 

A few days later I had sat down early in the morning to finish a quilt order, a photo quilt ordered for a birthday that was 5 days away and needed to get done and in the mail to the Midwest.  We were on vacation, and I had brought along my sewing machine and all the items needed to finish the quilt.  I set up the machine, laid out my supplies and looked for the quilt top, searched the apartment, searched the car twice, looked and looked, backtracked and searched, and the quilt top was nowhere to be found.  Finally I sat down and felt my heart sink to the bottom of my stomach.

What was I going to do?  I could not recreate the quilt and get it where it needed to go by Saturday.  The photo printing would need to be reordered, the fabrics bought again, all on my own dime since I had already spent the monies paid for these items.  The shoe truly had dropped.  The blessing of another quilt order to help in my fundraising effort for the Israel Prayer Journey had fallen through.  As I sat silent in my distress, Jimmy woke up and joined me in my efforts to find the missing quilt top.

After about 20 minutes of distress, we discovered a plastic bag with the missing quilt top right on top of the counter behind my sewing machine!  I cried in relief.

Then Daddy reminded me of what he had told me, “It’s all good.” And it was.

“Do you believe it?  Do you believe me?”

I want to.  I choose to. Not because I will always find the missing quilt, but because Daddy is a good daddy, a good God, and he doesn’t hide things from his kids, and pull the rug out from underneath them.  He’s not the God of the second shoe, waiting to drop it just when they were getting ready to rejoice over their blessings.

What a blessing to find that quilt top.  What a relief it was to get it sewn and in the mail later that week.  But what a blessing it would have been to have believed God on the front end.

I may not understand what’s happening or why it’s happening, but I do know my Daddy.  He told me it’s all good, because he is so good, and I can run to him when I lose my quilt top, get sidetracked in my plans, come to a seemingly dead end with no place to escape… and let him comfort and direct me because he already knows how he will work it out for my good.

“It’s all good.  Do you believe me?”