God is Good
I am excited to be back! There has been an abundance of God just pouring over me and I have been eager to share with all of you. I just finished a 21 day technology fast from all social media, web browsing, online shopping, reading (yes, I read so much that I had to give it up to keep from being distracted during a much needed time to pray and deny myself of temporary pleasures), pinning, and you guessed it; posting blogs. But now I'm refreshed, renewed, and ready to share what God has been doing in my life.
Wow! As I am reflecting on the past three weeks I do not know where to begin. First, God is good! Is not he just mind blowing, breath taking, amazement at its purest. So I am just going to testify for a hot second.
These last three weeks have been a roller coaster ride. My husband and I joined a group of our church family in the 21 day Daniel Fast. The first week went smoothly as far as the diet we were restricted to and the prayer was deep. But by the weekend, neither of us felt as if we fasted. My husband argued that eating what we could eat was just a replacement for our normal diet. That if we really wanted to sacrifice then we should give up what was more important to us: social media, YouTube, amazon, e-reading. To fast literally means to shut your mouth. A woman at our bible study correlated how fasting could be applied to social media because you aren't speaking words but there is a level of communication that is transpiring. I agreed. So, my husband and I then gave up our technology for the final two weeks of the 21 day fast.
Those two weeks were by far the hardest two weeks of my year. There was a level of disappointment and shame in the realization of how controlled my mind was by theses habits of scrolling through Facebook and Pinterest and Amazon and Wish. The second week of the fast was powerful and I received many blessings during that week. However, I experienced anxiety and depression during the third week. The last week. I felt uninformed, left out, and a little isolated. So when I found my hand reaching for my phone, I had to retrain my brain into opening up my Bible app instead of Facebook. I told a friend of mine that throughout the week I was reading five to seven different Bible plans just to keep myself focused on the purpose.
It was worth it. And there is more to come.
My position at the place I am working now is temporary. During the second week, a woman stopped in and offered me a secretarial position at the very time my temporary position would end. She complimented me on my friendly demeanor and said that she wanted me to come talk to her in April.
During the same week, a client came in and gave me ten dollars for my hard work. My boss also gave me two chocolate bars and a gift card to my favorite restaurant in town on Valentine's day. That gift was inspiring because my husband and i did not make plans to celebrate Valentine's day because money was tight and we just weren't really feeling the love. And then in that same week I received a check in the mail for my birthday the following week. That came as a complete surprise to me. So in week two of our fast, God blessed me over the amount of my tithe I gave out of obedience the prior week. So I put it in the offering plate just because that was how good He was to me in week two.
Week three came, again the hardest week of the three weeks and God still blessed me. Thursday, my boss, coworker, and I had just started the day. We were about thirty minutes into work and a client came in and said he smelled gas. None of the three of us smelled anything but my boss called it in. Someone came and found two leaks. Some guys came to fix it and found another two leaks. It took them two days to fix the problem but anyone who knows anything about gas knows it can be dangerous when there are leaks. Like I said, none of us smelled anything. We switched the lights on, used the phones, the computers, everything as normal and I am thankful that God had his hand on us that they caught the problem quickly and nothing bad happened. I was sitting at my desk when a message came up. Another birthday gift. On Friday, I received two other birthday gifts and an extra gift that my grandmother and grandfather gave as a blessing to both my husband and me. I want to be clear that the gifts were financial but I won't state the amounts. Friday was my birthday and I spent it in the company of my grandparents. My mom's dad and my dad's parents. That was a huge blessing to be surrounded by the foundation of who I am. Without their obedience and endurance then my parents would not have come into the world as they had which all in all means I would not be here and there would be no day to celebrate. Those were my personal testimonies.
My church also received a financial blessing of $16,000 from a non member. That was a faith builder in my eyes. God is good. He is faithful. He keeps his promises. Even through the hardship of denying myself the pleasures of temporary things, God was good. Even through the division that was trying to separate my husband and me during the fast, God was good. He was making us aware of the enemies schemes so we knew how to strategize. God is good.
This is just what has been happening in the last few weeks. And it makes me excited for 2017 and what God is going to do. Where he has already begun to work. He is good!
Wow! As I am reflecting on the past three weeks I do not know where to begin. First, God is good! Is not he just mind blowing, breath taking, amazement at its purest. So I am just going to testify for a hot second.
These last three weeks have been a roller coaster ride. My husband and I joined a group of our church family in the 21 day Daniel Fast. The first week went smoothly as far as the diet we were restricted to and the prayer was deep. But by the weekend, neither of us felt as if we fasted. My husband argued that eating what we could eat was just a replacement for our normal diet. That if we really wanted to sacrifice then we should give up what was more important to us: social media, YouTube, amazon, e-reading. To fast literally means to shut your mouth. A woman at our bible study correlated how fasting could be applied to social media because you aren't speaking words but there is a level of communication that is transpiring. I agreed. So, my husband and I then gave up our technology for the final two weeks of the 21 day fast.
Those two weeks were by far the hardest two weeks of my year. There was a level of disappointment and shame in the realization of how controlled my mind was by theses habits of scrolling through Facebook and Pinterest and Amazon and Wish. The second week of the fast was powerful and I received many blessings during that week. However, I experienced anxiety and depression during the third week. The last week. I felt uninformed, left out, and a little isolated. So when I found my hand reaching for my phone, I had to retrain my brain into opening up my Bible app instead of Facebook. I told a friend of mine that throughout the week I was reading five to seven different Bible plans just to keep myself focused on the purpose.
It was worth it. And there is more to come.
My position at the place I am working now is temporary. During the second week, a woman stopped in and offered me a secretarial position at the very time my temporary position would end. She complimented me on my friendly demeanor and said that she wanted me to come talk to her in April.
During the same week, a client came in and gave me ten dollars for my hard work. My boss also gave me two chocolate bars and a gift card to my favorite restaurant in town on Valentine's day. That gift was inspiring because my husband and i did not make plans to celebrate Valentine's day because money was tight and we just weren't really feeling the love. And then in that same week I received a check in the mail for my birthday the following week. That came as a complete surprise to me. So in week two of our fast, God blessed me over the amount of my tithe I gave out of obedience the prior week. So I put it in the offering plate just because that was how good He was to me in week two.
Week three came, again the hardest week of the three weeks and God still blessed me. Thursday, my boss, coworker, and I had just started the day. We were about thirty minutes into work and a client came in and said he smelled gas. None of the three of us smelled anything but my boss called it in. Someone came and found two leaks. Some guys came to fix it and found another two leaks. It took them two days to fix the problem but anyone who knows anything about gas knows it can be dangerous when there are leaks. Like I said, none of us smelled anything. We switched the lights on, used the phones, the computers, everything as normal and I am thankful that God had his hand on us that they caught the problem quickly and nothing bad happened. I was sitting at my desk when a message came up. Another birthday gift. On Friday, I received two other birthday gifts and an extra gift that my grandmother and grandfather gave as a blessing to both my husband and me. I want to be clear that the gifts were financial but I won't state the amounts. Friday was my birthday and I spent it in the company of my grandparents. My mom's dad and my dad's parents. That was a huge blessing to be surrounded by the foundation of who I am. Without their obedience and endurance then my parents would not have come into the world as they had which all in all means I would not be here and there would be no day to celebrate. Those were my personal testimonies.
My church also received a financial blessing of $16,000 from a non member. That was a faith builder in my eyes. God is good. He is faithful. He keeps his promises. Even through the hardship of denying myself the pleasures of temporary things, God was good. Even through the division that was trying to separate my husband and me during the fast, God was good. He was making us aware of the enemies schemes so we knew how to strategize. God is good.
This is just what has been happening in the last few weeks. And it makes me excited for 2017 and what God is going to do. Where he has already begun to work. He is good!
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