Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Testimonial Tuesday #1

Welcome to the very first Testimonial Tuesday, where I'm encouraging writers to share what God has done for them. Your stories are important; and,


big or small, 
I want to hear them all.

Make that, we NEED to hear them all.





Back in the day, you could count on testimony services being held at church.  In my experience, this usually happened on Sunday nights. Pastor would ask if anyone had a testimony of something God had done for them. This is the the time a lot of dear old saints would share how God worked in their lives.  I loved hearing their stories - how they had a problem and prayed and lo, and behold, an answer came. These kind of stories are faith building, my friends. Because God is no respecter of persons - He loves us all alike. What He does for one, He will do for all.  

Now that doesn't mean He gives the exact same answer to each one because each situation is different with all kinds of different variables.  He has not promised to make our lives perfect, but He HAS promised He will work everything out for the good of the believer, according to His purpose. His purpose always include making you more like Jesus! (See Romans 8:28-29)

But, to get back to my main point, we need to hear those testimonies. Nowadays, it seems churches don't have testimony services that often.  Either our congregations are too big and letting people testify might take up too much time - we're only supposed to be here an hour, you know! (I'm saying this in jest) - OR our small congregations don't have testimony service because the people are so unused to speaking they don't participate.  

God has done so many things for me and over the coming weeks it would be my pleasure to share them with you.

Today, I wanted to share a small thing He did for me.  You see, even though I love talking about big miracles when they come my way, I love even more to share the small stuff. Because, it thrills me no end when the God of the Universe takes the time to see even my picayune little problems!

The eyes of the Lord search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him. (2 Chronicles 16:9a NLT)

He is willing to help!

A few weeks ago, I had a problem at work.  I had a problem with our accounting software that I didn't know how to solve. I spent a whole afternoon fixing it the way I thought best but it wasn't working. So, I put it off a few days, mulling it over. I knew if I could not figure it out, I could call our accountants office and they would gladly fix it for me and then charge the church for their time. It was only the first few days of the new budget year. I did not want to use up the budget set aside for accountants already!

I had a fast approaching deadline requiring info I wouldn't have if my problem was not resolved. I prayed asking for help as I prepared to work on it one last time before calling the accountants. The "Amen" had barely left my lips before the thought came to me, "You are looking at this the wrong way." In an instant I realized why my efforts were not working and what I should do to fix the problem. I had everything up and running in less than 15 minutes.

Why did it not occur to me to just pray the first time I tried to fix the problem? I would have saved myself a whole afternoon and a bunch of frustration.

My advice to anyone reading this:  Pray first the next time you can't figure something out. He does care about even the small details of your day.

Now, what about you? Do you have a story of answered prayer to share? Feel free to link up below.



(Please paste in the URL to your Testimonial Tuesday post only, NOT the URL to your blog. Feel free to copy the TT button.  Most important of all, visit the links before and after yours to build community!)



(Subscribers, you will need to click through to my blog to see the link-up.) 


6 comments:

  1. That is so true why we don't often think of praying first about something. It is so true that God wants to be in every detail of our lives, large, small, them all like you said!

    betty

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  2. I wonder how many heartaches we would have saved ourselves if we had just seek The Lord first.
    Love your new link-up, looking forward to joining next week!

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  3. yup...I tend to forget to go to God in prayer FIRST!!! WHY do we not do this?? thanks for sharing about the problem you faced....I love how God works...even in those little things!! I'm about to write mine now. I'm so sorry I don't have time in the mornings to blog before leaving for the school. I will be back to link up! :)

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  4. Sometimes we think we shouldn't bother the Lord with the little frustrations but He wants us to cast all our cares on Him. Didn't get to this this week but planning on joining in next week!

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  5. UGh! Ok, so I didn't get my testimony ready to share! I PROMISE I will have it ready to share next week.

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  6. It is such an encouragement to hear of God providing for someone. My husband's business struggles with cash flow problems. God is so good to help that darn slow poke mail service and have the checks come in when my husband really needs them too.

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