DIVINE ENCOUNTERS
MERRY MONDAY BY PARRIS BAILEY-
“By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” (Hebrews 11:9, 10 KJV)
I have mentioned before that at a young age of 14 I found myself pregnant. I spent the next few months at a maternity home in New Orleans before returning home to finish my 9th grade. It wasn’t what you call a pleasant experience by any stretch but it was what God used to bring me to Christ. For years, I have often thought about how God would use that pain for His glory. 42 years later I have seen God fulfill that. This week one our Marysong girls will give birth to Nathan Nicholas; mother and child will stay at the center. The Interpreter’s Bible has said, “The wanderings of the patriarchs is not a mere restless roaming, or an aimless change of dwelling places, but under divine guidance is a discipline of obedience, a proving of faith, and a type and example for those who seek the abiding home and for this reason they do not turn their eyes backward to the perishable world, and what they possess gain and lose therein, but forward to the promised land and enduring good, whose attainment is certain, because God has already prepared it for them, and is no mere transitory good, but has come into a permanent relation to them, so that God is not ashamed to be called their God.”
God has a way of drawing us out to bring us in-He leads us into divine encounters. What the devil does to destroy, God steps in and changes the situation all around; we have to step out by faith and believe that He can turn it around.
Another commentary said, “We dwell in our fair land, amid things that our hands have fashioned, among surroundings that our minds understand, where our plans have laid out the future, and where our enterprises are flourishing. From this comfortable land of our own security we called to go-we know not whither.”
Have you decided to push away from the shore? Sometimes you just have to flip the coin to see the other side. I often shudder at the consequences if I held on to the hurts of the past. Even though some 42 years later I have not found my precious baby girl that I gave up for adoption, I know He leads me out into something deeper and better. He wants to take the very things that have tried to destroy us and use them for His glory. It is when we are done with feeling ashamed and glued down to this world’s system that we can really experience freedom. The promises of God are all around us, echoing through the trees, hearing them in the singing river and in the ocean roaring. It all speaks yeah and amen!