God Moments In Your Day
Dear Friends,
My friend and I had arranged to meet up for a coffee one morning this week. We chose the cafe which is attached to a local hospice where patients receive palliative care. The cafe is open to anyone and the profits go directly to the care of the patients. My friend and I enjoy meeting up there. It has a lovely atmosphere, it's bright, relaxing and peaceful.
We had planned to catch up on each others' lives and also to share what we had been learning from our personal study on the book of James. Usually we sit towards the back of the cafe area, but today we had chosen to sit near the entrance and enjoy the warm sunny day. We had not been seated for long when a lady, who we hadn't seen for a very long time, walked in. I assumed she was there to meet someone. But she stopped near us and asked if she could join us. Naturally, we said she was very welcome to.
As we chatted together, this lady shared that she was just having a coffee before going on to visit someone else. She hadn't been inside this building for some time. The last time being when her husband was under the hospice's care just before he died. You can imagine how hard it must have been for her to walk in alone for the first time since his passing. She didn't stay long, but thanked us for letting her join us. My friend and I then still had time to share what we had planned all along but had thought we would have to forego for the sake of this lady.
I'm sharing this with you because I believe this was a "God moment" in our day. We both felt that God had orchestrated events so that we were in the right place at the right time. So that we could be an answer to prayer for this lady. So we could help her through what must have been quite difficult and so she didn't have to face it alone.
We're told in Psalms that The Lord directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives. Psalm 37:23 (NLT)
If we had chosen a different time to be there we would have missed her. If we had chosen our usual place to sit we probably wouldn't have seen each other. If she had chosen to come on another day we wouldn't have been there for her. As far as I was concerned, this was God directing our steps and taking delight in the detail of each of our lives.
I believe that not only were we able to be a blessing to her that morning but we too were blessed by the experience because we had been available for God to use us in some small way.
The following verse is a great way to pray at the beginning of a new day as we seek to make ourselves available to God:
Let me know Your ways, O Lord; Teach me Your paths. Psalm 25:4 (AMP)
We need to ask God for his direction because as it says in the Bible:
The very steps we take come from God; otherwise how would we know where we’re going? Proverbs 20:24 (MSG)
When you and I live surrendered lives to God, when we make ourselves available for his purposes, when we allow him to direct our ways, then I believe we can regularly experience these God moments in our day.
Paul writes about daily offering ourselves to God in Romans 12. I really like how the Message paraphrases Romans 12:1-2. When we do what Paul is teaching here we will daily experience those God moments.
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. Romans 12:1-2 (MSG)
Sometimes we miss these God moments because we are just too busy or too focused on our plans for the day. I think we also miss them because we are looking our for what we would describe as big, out of the ordinary, God moments.
Yes, I believe that God does big, unimaginable things in our life, but I also believe he is continually working in the small, everyday moments. Moments such as allowing someone to join you at your table in a cafe, or driving a neighbour to their hospital appointment, or listening to a work colleague about their worries and concerns, or babysitting for a young married couple so they can enjoy a night out or looking after your child when they're poorly with the flu. And many other seemingly insignificant events which God has orchestrated so that we can be a blessing to someone and in turn be blessed by God.
How much more meaningful will our day be if we enter it with the attitude that we are surrendering ourselves to God and his will for our life. How much more purposeful our lives will be if we are looking out for those small but significant God moments.
It will lead us in to a deeper, closer relationship with our God as we look for him in our day to day activities. What a joy we can experience as we partner with him to do his will here on earth.
To Think About:
Look back over your day. Do you recognise any God moments?
What do you think you need to do so you can see these God moments in your life?
Have you submitted your life to God and asked him to direct your ways? If you have, what difference does this make in your life?
Vicki
If what you read was of interest to you, then you may like to know that my book "Dear Friend...52 Weekly Devotions to Encourage, Challenge and Inspire" is available to buy from Amazon. (It's content is material adapted from previous blog posts.) To learn more, click on the link below:
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