Christian Living

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God’s Mysterious Ways

Isaiah 55:8 say: For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.

There are times in this life we can look at our circumstance at a particular time and say like John said when he saw Jesus up on the beach cooking fish that morning; “It is the Lord!”

To us, He seems to come in and out of our lives like the wind. We don’t always feel His presence when we want to, but sometimes when we least expect it, He is there and we know it and we can say again: “It is the Lord.”

I haven’t been experiencing God much this past week. Our relationship has been a little cool. Oh, I’m not blaming Him, I blame myself. I have fallen back on my bible study and prayer time somewhat. I guess I have been a little down, although I’m not quite sure why. Could be that mid-life thing. I am the ripe old age of fifty now, and my body is not quite keeping up with my busy lifestyle anymore. There just doesn’t ever seem to be enough time (or energy) to do everything that needs to be done.

But it’s at these times when we need to seek Him all the more. In James chapter 4, verse 8 he says “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.” When I get this way, God in His mysterious ways always brings me back to Him, if I seek Him.

Have you ever noticed that God usually uses people to acknowledge to us His Holy presence? Saturday, I went with my middle daughter, Bonnie to purchase a used car. She doesn’t have the best of credit and does not qualify for a loan with the big car manufacturers. So, we resorted to the “tote the note” type car lots. After several hours of going from lot to lot, we still hadn’t found anything that ran decently at a price she could afford. After about the fifth car lot, she was ready to give up. We were both tired and discouraged and on our way home I said silently; “well, Lord we tried.“ I saw one more small lot and decided to pull in for a last look.

Turns out the man that ran the car lot was a Christian but we didn’t know it, yet. I was talking to him as Bonnie was checking out the cars. I told him how we had been looking all day, only to find raggedy cars with 100,000 + miles at high prices and even higher interest rates. He was very personable and said he thought he just might be able to help. I thought to myself “yeah, right, that’s what they all said.”

Bonnie found a very clean little car that she really liked, the down payment on the window was less than the cash she had, so we asked about the purchase price. It was within her budget! Tires were good, engine quiet and smooth running, ac worked, and the exterior and interior was immaculate. She drove the car around the block and decided this was the one. So the man asked her to come inside to see if she could qualify for the loan. That’s when she started getting nervous. I told her to be completely truthful on the credit application because he would run her credit report anyway so it was best to be up front about it. Several minutes after he took her application to another room he came back and sat down at the desk. This is what he said:

“Ma’am, I appreciate your honesty on this application. I just ran your credit report and your score is less than 600 which is considered poor by the world’s standards. But, just like Jesus Christ took my poor character and all my sins and nailed them to the cross, then He cleansed me white as snow - I am going to turn this paper over and you can see that it is white on this side. There are no black marks on it. That’s what He did for me and what he can do for you too. He can give you a fresh start in your life. And I want to help you by showing you that I am willing to give you a fresh start on your credit. If you make every single payment on time, you can build your credit back up. I am going to finance this car for you.”

I was blown away and all I could think of was “it’s the Lord. He is here, when I least expected Him to show up.” Wow….

She got the car and we thanked this kind man and left. I praised God all the way home.

Then, my grandson, Dillon who just turned four came over to spend the night last night while his Mom (my youngest daughter) and Dad went out of town. This morning it was raining pretty hard when we left for Church, I couldn’t find an umbrella and we were already running a little late. Oh well, we will just get wet, I thought. We got to Church and there were no parking places so I had to drive down the street and park on the side of the road. I was grumbling a little about it and while I hurriedly dragged Dillon by the arm he said “Hey Nana wait, I don’t want to run!”

“We gotta hurry - we’re getting soaked, come on!”

Then he said “Hey, Nana, you know what? Jesus loves you.”

Just like that, that’s all it took. It was the Lord - again. This time working through my precious little grandbaby. Well, I had to stop right there on the side of the road (in pouring down rain) and give him a big hug and say “Yes, He sure does and He loves you too, so very much.” Footnote: What a beautiful smile that kid has!

Why do I let myself fall into the flesh? Why can’t I always look for God in everything around me? He’s always here. We just have to look for Him. He mysteriously shows Himself in the most unlikely events at the most unlikely times. But He is always here. We are just spiritually blind sometimes.

When you start to feel like God is far away in your everyday life, slow down. Go outside. Walk in the rain, you won‘t melt. Smell the flowers. Feel the breeze and just know “It’s the Lord, He is here.”

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