God

I am a planner – always have been and most probably always will be. I believe this is a godly attribute as God himself is a planner 🙂

I do life happily by having something to aim towards – some of my goals are little and some are ridiculously huge.

As a couple this was how Mark and I worked as well. We got married with the plan to do missions. When we were out on the mission field we were always planning the next tour, the next gig, the next adventure.

When Mark got sick and we were told it was cancer and he was going to die I continued with my planning. This time it was not happy planning but planning for a future that involved Mark getting sicker, dying, a funeral and then life after as a young widow with four small girls. It might seem morbid – but I had a plan.

As most of you know life doesn’t often go to our plan and of course life didn’t with Marks illness taking a very unexpected turn with the diagnosis of brain damage caused by the radiation treatment. When this happened we found ourselves in no man’s land. There was no plan! And what was worse there could be no plan! The neurologist, the oncologist and we ourselves had no idea how this illness could evolve.

I was lost! This among other things caused me to cope very badly with Marks illness (I won’t elaborate because it is in my book). I had to let go of my natural instinct to plan and have a goal and instead blindly trust that God, my heavenly Father, had a plan and he had it all under control despite the fact I didn’t.

Yes I learnt a lot of things through that, and yes I did learn to trust in God.

So why am I bringing this up? Well I had a plan – yep I had a plan for how I was going to do the next few years of life while I still had one daughter left at school. I thought my plan was in line with what I felt God was leading me into and so thought it was all sorted.

But last Sunday after some time spent alone with God asking him about some issues that needed to be sorted out to keep my plan working, God said, “Drop it, this is not my will for you to continue to pursue this. It is useless to me and therefore useless to you. Let it go.”

If there is one thing I have learnt to be good at it’s obedience to God’s voice. I knew he had said it and it actually confirmed what I had started to figure out because what I was pursuing was simply not working out.

So here I am with no plan. I have no idea what I am supposed to do next. I am trying to learn about marketing my book because God told me to write it so I figure I better work at selling it. But other than that – there is nothing!

All I want to do with my life and my days is tell others about Jesus. I want God to use me to encourage people to know God or know him better. That was the vision statement behind the book.

I am very blessed in my job to work at a Christian Medical Centre and I get to talk to people about Jesus, pray for them and try as much as I can to show God’s love in between the very busy phone and the administration required to run a doctors clinic.

But I know God is getting me ready for a change but I have no clue what that is.

God says in the well-known verse in Jeremiah 29:11

So even though I don’t have a plan – I can trust that my Saviour does, but there is a condition to me knowing that plan and it is found in the following verses in Jeremiah 29 Verses 12-14

So at present this is what I am doing. I am calling on God, I am praying to God and I am seeking God, both to draw closer to him but also to discover his plan for my future and what he wants me to do next. I am trying not to get frustrated (which is my natural tendency) and I am trying not to force anything. And I am waiting.

God has a wonderful plan for EVERY single person’s life. A plan that you can’t possibly imagine, and it will fulfil all the desires that are in your heart. But the condition to finding this plan and living it is like the scripture said, it’s calling on God, praying to him and seeking for him. When you discover God, which he has promised you will if you ask, then you will also discover the plan and the steps to that plan. Sometimes you will have to wait and trust for the next step, like I am at the moment, but it will come if you just keep following Jesus.

And so I wait in eager anticipation for the plans and the next steps he has for me. I’ll keep you posted!

The first month of this New Year has been filled with a series of unfortunate events.

Christmas morning our oven door exploded – yes exploded, into a million pieces all over the kitchen floor. My oldest daughter was standing right in front of it and thankfully was not hurt at all but as you can imagine in complete shock at what had just taken place right in front of her. Our Christmas dinner was of course very interesting with no longer having an oven but a chicken in the crock pot and roast veges cooked or rather burnt on the bbq and some very hot yummy gravy made by my dad to cover the disaster and Christmas dinner was rescued.

Not many days after that I managed to prang the entire side of my beautiful car along the neighbours garage. We have lived in this house for 9 ½ years and that is the first time I have done that. I was extremely upset at myself but thank goodness for insurance and my car now looks as good as new.

Within days Misha managed to get her car wedged against the same garage corner – we stood there in disbelief. Had the garage grown bigger we wondered? Some clever manoeuvring on her part with the car and we unstuck it with no damage.

During my 12 days of holiday I got sick. For those of you who don’t know me I am the worst sick person. I get very frustrated with myself and do my very best to ignore it by living off painkillers by the truck load. What frustrated me more was this was my Christmas holidays – I was not supposed to be sick!

Then halfway through January Bonnie was at summer school doing a sports paper and whilst playing rugby collided with a fellow player and broke one of her toes. The break is very impressive even if only a toe, and the pain that it caused was as extreme as if it had been a major bone. So now Bonnie was in pain, in a moonboot and on crutches, and of course unable to drive.

But wait there’s more: I ran over our very old cat. Learnt a lot of things late that night. 1. Did you know cats can scream? Yep it’s true and yep it’s heart-breaking! 2. Did you know that there are Accident & Emergency clinic for animals? Of course you knew that – but I didn’t. 3. Did you know they are very expensive? Guessing you had figured that out too! So a very sad night as we said goodbye to Pepper.

And the final minor calamity was the newest member of our family – Nelly, (a beautiful grey and white kitten) played with a bumble bee and got stung on the eye. Her eye swelled up to nearly the size of her little head and so off to the vets we go…

And yes all these things added together made for one very expensive January!

So what have I learnt through all of this… well these things started happening within two days of my book being made available on Amazon. And what God reminded me was – I have an enemy!

We all do – satan hates us, he wants to tear us down, to steal, kill and destroy us (John 10:10). He wants to give us reason to give up and to not keep pursuing God’s will for us.

But what I know is my God is Greater!!!!! My God has already defeated satan! And satan has no authority!!

In Luke 10:19 Jesus says to his disciples which includes us now, “Look, I have given you authority over all the power of the enemy, and you can walk among snakes and scorpions, and crush them. Nothing will injure you.”

So yes, he can try and make my life uncomfortable, but these things will not change my mind or my course. Jesus reminds me I have authority over satan because of what Jesus did on the cross, and so I choose to stand in that authority and praise God through it all!!!!

And guess what – GOD HAS BEEN GREATER!!!!!!

Remember :

I cannot tell you how many messages and emails I have had from people who have been touched by God through reading my book. God is using it to remind people He is there, He is real and He loves us all so very very much even in our darkest times when we aren’t sure how we feel about Him.

So do not fear when the enemy comes against you. If you have given your life to Jesus then satan has no power over you or your circumstance. Lift your eyes to Jesus, keep them focussed on him and leave God to deal with the rest and any mess