Category Archives: Faith

Larger than the Cloud

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Two years ago this week, I found myself in a craft store in Northern California waiting on some friends. As waiting is what I do best when others are shopping (no, I’m not much of a shopper), I searched for entertainment—anything to help pass time.

My eyes landed on an old book used as a display prop. I brushed aside whatever the book had been displaying and picked up the book. Its title was taken from a line of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem “Aurora Leigh.” I didn’t get to read much of the book, but I will forever remember the line of the poem: “The blue of heaven is larger than the cloud.”

God knew that at that very moment I had a large cloud hovering over my sky, blocking sunshine and, to a degree, concealing His presence. He also knew that another black cloud, heavy with painful news, was rolling in and would be further covering my sky in less than forty-eight hours. Continue reading →

Is Everything against You?

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Have you ever felt like you were in a tug of war game with life…and you were losing? Like everything and everyone was against you?

You are not alone in your struggle; Jacob expressed that exact feeling in the middle of an extreme situation. His favorite son had been killed (he believed), there was a terrible famine, now another son was lost—this time to prison in Egypt. But the straw that broke the camel’s back was that for all he could see, he was about to lose another son.

As life conspires against Jacob and his troubles mount, he cries out to his sons, “Me have ye bereaved of my children: Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away: all these things are against me” (Genesis 42:36—emphasis mine).

Sometimes I’ve been able to relate to (and even speak for myself) Jacob’s words. Perhaps you can, too. Sometimes it just seems that everything possible is against us. Continue reading →

Miraculous Problems

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Are you facing a miraculous problem?

Yes, I know, that sounds like an oxy-moron. After all, everyone has problems—often plenty of them, but the last thing we call them is miraculous. Miracles solve problems; they don’t make problems, right?

God’s Word tells of many miracles. We love to read of how God delivered the children of Israel from the bondage of Egypt. We love to tell children the stories of Daniel in the lions’ den and Gideon’s victory over the Midianites. We wish we could have been there when Jesus fed over five thousand people with five loaves and two fish or when Esther was used by God to save her people. We may even wish we could have been the one to kill Goliath or to lead the Israelites as God leveled the walls of Jericho.

But we tend to forget that in every one of these examples of miraculous deliverance there was first a miraculous problem—a problem that God allowed and maybe even placed in that person’s life so He could show His power. Continue reading →

Reward Offered

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“There is a reward for whoever finds Dad’s keys first.” These words, occasionally spoken by my mom when I was growing up, were like music to my ears! You might think that I would have looked just as diligently for the keys before the reward was offered—when I first heard they were missing. And, truthfully, I did look. But there was something about the promise of a reward that added zeal to my search.

In Hebrews 11:6, God promises a reward for those who diligently seek Him: “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him” (Hebrews 11:6) Faith is believing that God is who He has declared Himself to be and that He rewards those who will seek to know Him personally.

But it goes a step further—faith is actually reaching for the reward. In other words, if we truly believe that God rewards those who seek Him, and if we count that reward worthy of the effort, it will affect our actions. We will make seeking Him a priority. Continue reading →