What God Can Do With Spaces & Seasons
“For I, the LORD, love justice,
I hate robbery in the burnt offering;
And I will faithfully give them their reward,
And make an everlasting covenant with them.”
(Isaiah 61: 8 NASB 2020)
- God uses opportunities.
- God uses occasions.
- God uses our pains & our struggles & our distress.
- God can use EVERYTHING to accomplish His purpose in sending Jesus to the world.
- God can use EVERYTHING to accomplish His will & to establish His everlasting covenant with His people.
- God can place you and He can place me into spaces & into seasons—to reflect the character of Christ to the world He created.
- God uses ALL to bring His Salvation to ALL people.
Today, I am made aware why God has brought me to this place, and I am made aware of what God can do with six months X (“times”) 2 = 1 complete year.
To help reveal how I came to this realization, let me first tell how God has blessed me with two beautiful twenty-three-year-old girls to love. This weekend, yesterday night in fact, we came together for the second time within a month—an amazing feat considering they live more than 5,000 miles away from my home, but with God, all things are possible. So, as we drove from Germany to The Netherlands yesterday, I was not driving but riding in the back seat, and this allowed me the blessed opportunity to see the changing terrain. I noticed how the land went from the gently rolling hills of Germany to the flatness of The Netherlands, and God placed this thought into my head: It is like driving from Kentucky (the land of your adulthood) to Indiana (the land of your childhood). As I saw the changing land, I returned in my mind to my childhood and the reasons why I loved the flat expanse of Indiana so much.
You know, oftentimes, God needs to take us back, to help us recall our first love so that we can spiritually grow. Yesterday, I began this regeneration.
We journeyed, driving through the curving hills and quaint villages and sped northwest toward the flatness of a land where one can see far and wide when still and looking in all four directions.
You know, oftentimes, God needs to take us back to a similar place, to remind us of His Grace. He does this so we can become sanctified, His purpose for us—His children—to prepare us for the work we are to do while we are here on earth and so far away from our home in heaven.
As the four of us sit together in this place so far away from my home, in a foreign land, (my husband & my American daughter & the Dutch daughter God brought, & me), I was led early this morning to read Luke’s account of Jesus reading the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue.
Rather than writing about this passage, I would like for you to go with me into The Word of God.
“And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read.
And the scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to Him. And He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
“THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME,
BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO BRING GOOD NEWS TO THE POOR.
HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO CAPTIVES,
AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND,
TO SET FREE THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED,
TO PROCLAIM THE FAVORABLE YEAR OF THE LORD.”
And He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all the people in the synagogue were intently directed at Him.
Now He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
And all the people were speaking well of Him, and admiring the gracious words which were coming from His lips; and yet they were saying, “Is this not Joseph’s son?”
(LUKE 4: 16-22 NASB 2020)
Six months is such a long time.
One half of one year.
6 months + 6 months— 182 + 182 + 1 more day for me = 1 complete year.
- Six months is a long time—or at least I think so—as I contemplate the place God will place my American daughter and her husband once his training is complete.
- Six months is a long time—or at least I think so—as I contemplate the season of time my Dutch daughter and I will be apart.
So, today I pray, & may you also pray.
Yes, as we reach this milepost, this marker in our lives, let us (each) pray:
“Father God use me.
Focus me.
God consecrate me for Your service.
God use the opportunities and the occasions and my pain and my struggles and my distress.
God use EVERYTHING to accomplish Your purpose—why You sent Jesus to this world.
God use EVERYTHING to accomplish Your will & to establish Your everlasting covenant with all Your people, with Your children, with ME.
God place me, place each one of Your children into spaces & into seasons—to reflect the character of Christ to the world that You have created.
God, we pray, asking You to use us in this SPACE & in this SEASON to bring Your Salvation to ALL the people we will encounter while we are here.
God, we know You are faithful as the prophet Jeremiah proclaimed—
“For I know the plans that I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans for prosperity and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” (Jeremiah 29: 11 NASB 2020)
God, we know You have established Your everlasting covenant with us, just as the prophet Isaiah proclaimed—just as Jesus, our LORD and SAVIOR read aloud in the synagogue.
- Help us, God, be faithful subjects to Your sacrament of salvation You have placed into our being.
- Help us remember our vow, our promise we spoke as we said, “LORD, I do promise to be forever faithful to You.”
Father, thank You for the way You bring us back to our childhood place, the place of our first love—the place where we first knew—JESUS—as Redeemer, Savior, and LORD.
Thank You for placing us in SPACES & in SEASONS where we can return—to YOU GOD.
God, Thank You for Your everlasting covenant, and thank You for the eternal reward You promised & sealed within us through Your Holy Spirit.
Father God, help us this day walk worthy—and in honor—to YOU.
Help us be useful vessels.
Trim us. Create us to be exactly what You want us to be.
Use us to reach others who are lost, who are walking in eternal blindness.
Accomplish Your will & Your purpose through our obedience—to YOU GOD.
We pray for all these things, asking You, Father, in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.”
Isaiah 61: 8–God’s Everlasting Covenant with His children