WHAT IF GOD SAYS NO?

If you have walked with the Lord any time, you know that God DOES answer prayer.  Unequivocally, mercifully and often.  But, there are those times, when things do not work out the way we hoped or prayed that they would.  Then what?  Do we give up on God?  Do we turn our backs on Him, decide we were wrong about Him, or let our hearts grow cold?  That IS Satan's hope and his intent.

This song, EVEN IF, by Mercy Me speaks to all of those feelings.  The first time I heard it I was in a season of fervent prayer over something.  I felt like this song had been written just for me.   God uses songs to really speak to me, to minister to me and to encourage me.  This was one of those songs!

Bart Millard, lead singer for Mercy Me, shares his own personal testimony regarding this song EVEN IF in the video above.   The words "I know you're able and I know you can, save through the fire with Your mighty hand, but EVEN IF YOU DON'T....."  became MY testimony and I pray will be my testimony til my last breath.

Let's face it, we all wish things would always go just as planned, or should I say, just as WE plan!  But God's ways are higher than our ways.  He sees the big picture while we are just looking through the straw.  Huh?  OK....stop and take a picture of something, a picture from a magazine or the newspaper, a flyer from the mail, doesn't really matter.  Then take a straw and look through the straw.  Can you tell what you are looking at? Probably not.  Now remove the straw and look at the WHOLE picture.  Hence "looking through the straw".  God sees the whole story...HIS story and our life is just a tiny piece of that bigger story.  Yet our life is significant to Him and we do have a part in the grand scheme of things.  But we tend to get focused on this one little second rather than trying to see things from God's perspective.

Not only that, but it is not about US.  It's all about Him.  We are so caught up in me, myself and I that we can't see that what is going on with us has a bigger dimension than even we can comprehend and God is working ALL things for our good!

A friend gave me a wonderful little book for Christmas called 31 Days of Praise by Ruth Myers.  It is designed so that every day of the month you will have something scriptural based to praise God for.  One that I have highlighted quite a bit says this "Thank you that You have me in the place You want me just now...that even if I got here through wrong choices or indifference or even rebellion, yet You knew my mistakes and sins before I ever existed and You worked them into Your plan to draw me to Yourself, to mold  and bless me, and to bless others through me.  Thank you that, even if I'm here through ill-will or poor judgment of other people, all is well; for in Your sovereign wisdom You are at work to bring about good results from all those past decisions, those past events beyond my control...good results both for me and for others."

So I am reminded through this song EVEN IF, that God is still on the throne, He is still in control and He can still be trusted EVEN IF He doesn't intervene in the way I hope.  I will cling to Him no matter what because He is faithful and He can be trusted and He does ALL things well!

I hope that you will listen to this song and it will bless you and encourage you today as much as it has blessed me, and if so, that you will pass it along to someone else.