Journey4Jesus
Praying Gods Word in all areas of life… The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
LOOK UP…ALL IS NOT LOST
As we close out the last day of 2021, I thought it would be a good day to post my last prayer journal entry from 2018.
2022 is upon us and our world has changed and continues to change rapidly… God has been so incredibly faithful and despite all of the challenges we will face, I have full assurance that we don’t face them alone…
WHERE WE WERE…
As I travel back three and a half years ago, to when I wrote this prayer below, I was instantly transported back to all of those fears and feelings. Friends, this is me, broken before the Lord…when the floor drops out below you, you are forced to look up.
Fear and worry were my constant companions, and the devil was doing a fantastic job at condemning me. Even to type these words onto this post today came with heartfelt emotion. This was such a difficult time in our lives and it can be very scary to be vulnerable enough to share these innermost thoughts and struggles.
The truth of the matter is, I believe it’s necessary to share the ugly times because through that God shines in the Glory of his redemption.
Journal Entry:
March 2018
Heavenly Father,
Please forgive me Lord, forgive this discouragement I have been struggling with. Forgive me for being frustrated at not hearing your voice. Forgive me for my weak faith as I face these troubling times. Lord Your Word says “to seek Your face and You will guide our paths”. It says that “You will never leave us nor forsake us”, and it says “that You have good plans for us”
Lord God, I know these to be truths I can hold onto because they come from Your Word, but Father…. I am having trouble “feeling” them at this time. I am seeking You; in Your Word and in prayer, but You seem terribly silent. I am trying to hold onto the peace which You promised us, but You feel very far away from me and I feel anything but peace at this moment.
I am trying to hold onto and trust Your promises, but this just feels hopeless and overwhelming right now. Lord God, cover me I pray, with Your armour so that I can stand firm against the devil and his attacks on me. Protect my heart and my mind from the lies he is shooting at me. Prepare my feet to share Your good news in spite of my circumstances, and help me hold the sword firm and fight back with the Word of God, which is sharper than any two edged sword.
I pray for Your guidance Lord…Your direction… Your will… I am terrified that once again we are making all the wrong choices; what do we do to earn an income? How do we manage the mountain of debt we have accumulated? How deep into the pit are we to go Lord?
Please rescue us… we acknowledge that it was our own foolishness and sinful hearts that caused us to get into this mess. We repent of our selfishness our greed, our self-sufficiency and our pride. Show us Lord, if we are still holding onto any sinful attitudes or actions that have caused you to turn Your face away from us.
Cleanse us and redeem us for Your purpose and glory Lord. Protect us from this looming disaster and show us how to continue caring for those we love. Show us the right path and turn Your face back towards us Lord God. Hear our cries as we feel death and destruction closing in on us… death of our business, our resources and all that we have.
We will gladly surrender all these thing to You Lord, all that we have belongs to You, we only ask that You save us from destruction, that You lift us back up to serve You again. Draw near to us Father, send Your angels to minister to our grieving spirits. Open our eyes to see and our ears to hear… soften our hearts to the mysterious ways of Your Spirit Lord.
Be our lifeline through this Father, let us not lose our integrity which points to You, may You keep Your light shining within us. Give us a new way and a new song in our hearts because of Your Glory and Goodness, not that we may brag in ourselves but brag of what You have done in our lives…we surrender ALL!
In the precious name of Jesus ❤️ Amen
WHERE WE ARE TODAY…
Dec 2021
God is so good to His children, He is patient, kind and slow to anger… not wanted any to be lost without Him. God also doesn’t waste a single tear or experience, He uses those things to change us from the inside out.
As hard as it is to look back and “re-live” those emotions and feelings, I am so thankful that I recorded them, because this action has allowed me the opportunity to not only see Gods faithfulness, but to share it as well that He might be glorified.
When that floor dropped out from beneath us, we literally had no other option but to place our entire focus on God. We had no options, no way to see a way through, yet God in His mercy continued to light our path one step at a time as we put out trust in Him and what He was doing in us.
I never stopped being a Chaplain during all of these struggles, it was my belief that God would use those difficult times in my life to better hear someone else in despair. I am incredibly thankful for those opportunities as they helped to strengthen me in my journey as well.
We constantly prayed that God would allow us to serve Him together, we always thought that it would be through the Chaplaincy and in some ways it was, particularly one deployment. We were called to serve in a Northern community after a major flood in the region affected the vast majority of residential homes in the area.
I have written about the time between this deployment and where we currently are so I won’t go there again, you can find these stories in some of my other blog posts. So let me just say that 21 months later we remain serving in this community. God called us both into a role with ‘post Flood Recovery’, this was a new role for us with a huge learning curve, yet in time we could begin to see how perfectly fitted through our life experiences and skills we were for it.
During these same 21 months, our world has changed dramatically with Covid, endless lockdowns and mandates governing what and how we can do things… yet God has been incredibly faithful to us. We are so thankful that He brought us into THIS community were we could not only serve, but experience a type of fellowship with other believers that we had always craved, but aside from being on deployments, had never fully experienced.
We feel blessed beyond measure, and humbly walk in the path that the Lord gives us each day. Not only has our financial needs been met, we have learned to live on considerably less that we ever thought possible. God has provided friendships in short periods of time that would normally take years to cultivate and we feel truly blessed.
No, life is not perfect and definitely not always easy, as the world around us continues to change faster than we can humanly keep up. Yet we are confident in our Lord, that His plans are being fulfilled even when we cannot understand. We are continually reminded that “His ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts”.
We are very aware that this world has an expiration date as does every person who lives upon it, we know that Jesus will return for His children and place things into the proper order that He originally designed. We do not know the hour or the day, but we continue to Look Up, we watch, we pray and we wait for His return.
My friends, if you are living in fear of the changing world around you, I would encourage you to Look Up, to seek Jesus face, ask for his peace and His Strength to bring you through each day… I can promise you this, He is Faithful, His Love for you knows no bounds. What may feel impossible today can and will be possible with God.
Wishing you all Gods richest Blessings in 2022
❤️ Janet
Do you know Jesus? He’s waiting to meet you…
Journey4Jesus 