Sometimes A Day Needs A Bit More Attention

OK, so this is a first, two posts in one day.  (Trust me, I will definitely not make this a habit!)  This morning I shared with you all my unfavorable characteristic, procrastination .  There are times when I run myself ragged trying to get things accomplished because of it and then there are times, such as I am about to share, when I sit in amazement of how things work out.  (No, I am not talking about my finals.)

Each day I get a devotional emailed to me called Daily Hope; it is a devotional from Purpose Driven Connection, based on the famous book The Purpose Driven Life.  (Which I still need to complete.) Anyway, I finally pulled out the ever growing stack and started to read them; yes, much like I would a book.  I got to #3 in my pile today and came to the devotional from April 25, 2011.  It is excerpts from this devotional that I am going to share, then share the why.

"I'm a mess.  I'm nothing and have nothing: make something of me! You can do it; you've got what it takes God." Psalm 40:17 (Msg)
  • Jesus warned us that we'd have problems in the world.  No one is immune to pain or insulated from suffering, and no one gets to skate through life problem-free.  Life is a series of problems.  Every time you solve one, another is waiting to take its place.
  • God uses these problems to draw you closer to himself.
    • "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those who are crushed in spirit." Psalm 34:18 (NLT)
  • Your most profound and intimate experiences of worship will likely be in your darkest days--when your heart is broken, when you feel abandoned, when you're out of options, when the pain is great, and you turn to God alone.  It is during suffering that we learn to pray our most authentic, heart-felt, honest-to-God prayers.  When in pain, we don't have the energy for superficial prayers.
  • "When life is rosy, we may slide by with the knowing about Jesus, with imitating him and quoting him and speaking of him.  But only in suffering will we know Jesus." -Joni Eareckson Tada
    • We learn things about God in suffering that we can't learn any other way.
  • Problems force us to look to God and depend on him instead of ourselves.
  • You'll never know that God is all you need until God is all you've got! (emphasis mine)
So that was my devotional, that even in my procrastination, a negative quality, God knew the perfect timing to teach me a valuable lesson.  Yes, I have problems.  Yes, they are big and ugly and insurmountable - to me.  BUT, to God, they are nothing.  What I needed, and he rightly knew, was a change of perspective, a change of focus, a closer walk with him.

What did I learn from this?  Oh, that the additional curve balls this day threw at me, and it did throw some nasty ones, really weren't unapproachable, I just needed the right guide to get me home.

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