UGLY GRACE

God is not a one hit wonder

Back in November, I wrote about an amazing experience I had, Surprised by God.

And at the time, if I’m honest, a little part of me thought, ‘well, that’s amazing…now it’s time to get on with it’.

So, I dug deep, found my ‘Dunkirk spirit’, donned my British stiff upper lip and decided to march on and press forward, because that’s what I do. I do stuff. I fix stuff.

And once again, I suspect that my lovely, Heavenly Father laughed.

How do I know? Well, these past few weeks, we’ve been visited by Fergus again, the chap who speaks into people’s lives and says what he thinks God wants him to say.

I’ve had a fair bit of prayer recently and as a couple of things were pinpointed (that no one else could have known), once again, I felt that warm, familiar, comfortable embrace.

And guess what? God’s not particularly interested in me being stoic. My life as a believer isn’t meant to a painful, gritted teeth endurance test. And best bit of all, God is talking all the time.

He spoke really clearly to me in November.

He spoke to me recently, and he’s been speaking all the months in-between.

He’s not a God who turns up in mighty power at a special meeting and then walks away. He’s a God who is totally interested in the mundane details, in the huge joys, the dramas, in the daily struggles.

He’s not a one hit wonder.

And he’ll keep working with us and speaking to us, until he’s done with us.

And he’ll never be done with us.

I wish I could explain adequately what is going on at the moment, but I can’t.

All I know is, that once again, when I unclench my fists and turn my heart over to his control, to allow him to fix things (instead of me trying to!) really surprising things happen.

The projects I’ve been fretting over, which seemed to be stalling, suddenly burst into glorious technicolour.

The inclination to talk and strategise about various problems starts to become instead, an urgent nudge to pray about them.

I see a cashier at a till and I’m suddenly aware of how much God loves her and how much he wants her to know that. I’m too chicken (this time!) to tell her…but next time, I will!

I pray with a friend about a situation and I don’t even understand where the words are coming from, but they’re the right words God needs her to hear.

I pray and see this seemingly strange picture in my mind. I write it down (thinking I’m mad) but just hours later, I go to a service where the speaker repeats word for word, what I’d just ‘seen’.

The situation which I was ready to walk away from just a few weeks ago, suddenly starts to shift, to change in ways I could not have anticipated.

The doors which were firmly closed in my heart, are being quietly unlocked.

Just when I (naively) thought I’d got my relationship with God all figured out, he messes it up.

When I let go, when we let go, he breathes life into death and pushes up blooms through dark and cracked earth. He reminds us once again, that he is a God of surprises. He’s the fixer, the mender, the provider of solutions.

The journey isn’t safe, it isn’t predictable and it’s almost definitely going to mess with your head.

But we’re meant to do it with him, every single day.

His mercies are not one hit wonders, they’re new every day.

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