I had a wonderful revelation this morning….God “gets” me.

He understands why I think the way I do. He understands why I struggle with the fears and anxieties that I do.  He understands why I have outbursts in my fleshly nature instead of yielding to the Spirit within me. That is pretty incredible. It makes sense to Him…even when things I do don’t make sense to myself.

Why do I say that? Because of what I read in Psalm 139. “O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thoughts afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, but behold, O Lord, You know it altogether” (verses 1-4 NKJV).

Do you see what I saw? He gets me. He understands my thoughts. He isn’t shocked by my words or actions. He knew what I was going to say before I did. He knows me inside and out.

Those of us who have children know at times why our children are behaving the way they are.

“You need a nap!”

“You had too much sugar this afternoon at that birthday party!”

“He is teething.”

“She gets really excited when her dad comes home from work.”

“I know you are cranky because you need something to eat. Sorry I couldn’t make supper earlier.”

“Stop making excuses and get to bed!”

“Put your phone down and start your homework.”

Guess what? God doesn’t understand us just some of the time; He understands us all the time. He understands you. He understands the tears. He understands the strange thoughts. He gets why you did what you did (even if it was out of your frustration and anger). He understands the busyness that keeps your mind off of something difficult. He understands  and knows why you (and I) overeat.

He “gets” it. All of it. Because He created you, He lives inside of you, and He knows you better than you know yourself.

That doesn’t mean that if what we are thinking about or we doing is sinful that it’s okay, and we can just continue on.

What it does mean is that He doesn’t condemn us. (He convicts us through the Holy Spirit, which is different.) There is a reason we think, say, and act the way we do, and He sees and knows what those reasons are (even when we don’t).

I don’t know about you, but that is a huge relief to me. He sees and knows the deepest thoughts and motives of my heart, and loves me anyway. He loves me so much that He patiently and lovingly exposes those things to me so that I can be free of them.

And that’s what I want, too. I want to be free of the things that I allow to be excuses in my life; the things that are keeping me from living in the fullness of joy God says I can have on this earth. How about you?

God “gets” me, and He “gets” you! He sees, He knows, He understands, He loves, and He sets free!

Gems from the Crown is a weekly blog to strengthen and encourage believers in Christ in their walk with God. If you would like to receive Gems from the Crown delivered directly to you, please click here.

When a woman is pregnant, she is given a “due date.” How often is that baby born on that exact date? When the baby doesn’t come, does she decide that means she no longer wants it? Does she give up on it ever coming? No, of course not.

And yet, that is what we do to God, when He gives us a promise. It puts us in a place of expecting, but for some reason we think that promise should be delivered in our timing instead of His.

And we are so good at getting upset with Him for taking too long, to the point of either giving up on it, or trying to make it happen our way.

There are all kinds of examples of people in the Bible who were given promises by God, and it took a lot longer for those promises to take effect than what the person thought it would. Some people waited patiently, and some people tried to do things their own way, making a mess of things.

• The Israelites, who were led out of Egypt by Moses, ended up wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. They themselves did not go in and receive the promise of a new land. It was their children who went in to inherit God’s promise and become the nation of Israel.
• The example that seems to be the most common is Abraham and Sarah. In waiting for God to give them the promise of an heir, Abraham had sexual relations with Sarah’s maid. She conceived, had Ishmael, who was not the heir of God’s promise to Abraham, and we are still dealing with the consequences today.
• What about Noah? He was building an ark at a time where water had never fallen out of the sky. It took 100 years for him to build that ark, and to have the promised rain to fall and flood the earth.
• Even though David was anointed as King of Israel, for many years he was running for his life from Saul, before he actually sat on the throne as the king, fulfilling God’s promise to him.

Have you ever noticed when it is God’s time to make good on His promises, He often moves in  “suddenlies”? Well, it is sudden to us. He has been busy behind the scenes the whole time, doing whatever needs to be done to keep His promises on track to give to us.

Remember the disciples in the upper room? They were told to wait until the promise came to them (Acts 1:4). And when it came, it was definitely a “suddenly.”

There are people all around you who have experienced God’s “suddenly”; people who have faced a disease or infirmity such as back pain for 5, 10, or 20 years who suddenly get healed. Couples who have been infertile for many years suddenly find themselves expecting a child. People who have needed a job or been in financial hardships suddenly get the job they need.

What about those who don’t get healed, or don’t get pregnant, or don’t get that dream job? I have been hit smack in the face with that question several times.

One time was when our 3 year old daughter had bone cancer, going through nine months of chemo and had her leg amputated. The most recent was when that same daughter died, due to heart damage caused by those chemo drugs that saved her life 26 years earlier.

Believe me, I know the line, “She is healed. She received the ultimate healing and is in heaven now.” Let me just say, that is not usually a comfort to most people who are in the freshest part of deep grief, especially a parent who has so wrongly buried their child (regardless of the age of the child).

When I found myself in that horrible place, I had to ask God once again about this issue of faith and expectation. My daughter had lived through multiple life threatening health issues in the last year and a half of her life that should have killed her. It was only by God’s miraculous hand she survived several of the things she did. The goal of her medical team was to get her healthy enough to be able to receive a heart transplant, should a heart become available for her. I believed with every fiber of my being that God was going to either miraculously heal her heart, or she would get that transplant. I had seen miracle after miracle of things she lived through that should have already killed her multiple times.

As sick as she was, I felt very blindsided the night my daughter’s heart just gave out and she left this earth and transferred to her eternal home.

One day in my deep sorrow and anguish, I asked God about this. He reminded me of Hebrews chapter eleven verse six, that “without faith it is impossible to please Him.” In other words, faith brings Him pleasure. He let me know that my faith had brought Him a great amount of pleasure. I realized at that point, that faith is more than just saying what you want and getting it because of making a demand on God and His power. Faith is based on my relationship with God.

Up until that point, I had always seen faith as something I had to somehow reach out and get a hold of. I had to grow that and get more faith by reading my Bible enough, hearing enough messages, finding ways to be around God’s Word to make my faith grow. And it felt like I could just never have as much of it as I needed. And yet at the same time, I knew how much faith I had in God to heal my daughter.

God began to change my perspective on faith. In the Complete Jewish Bible version, you will never see the word faith. It is always translated as “trust”. So Hebrews 11: 6 reads, “And without trusting, it is impossible to be well pleasing to God, because whoever approaches him must trust that he does exist and that he becomes a Rewarder to those who seek him out.”

For me personally, I find it much easier to trust, then to have faith, if that makes sense. I’ve always felt like faith is something I have to conjure up. But trust is something I can just surrender to, and release myself into it. And that is where the relationship comes in. My faith in God is based on my trust in God’s Word, His faithfulness and His goodness. That means, even though my faith did not receive what I was believing for, my trust in God was rooted in my relationship with Him, so my faith was not shaken.

I am in good company. Hebrews chapter eleven is pretty much a list of many people who did not see their faith in the promises of God manifested on this side of eternity.

I have continued to expect God to keep His promises to me. And God has continued to remind me of His goodness, His faithfulness, and how much I can trust Him, with things like the birth of my next granddaughter almost one year exactly after losing my daughter from this earth. He used my sons, who would do things like surprise me with flowers, or send me incredibly encouraging text messages. Since that time, God has also birthed a ministry in me, flowing through me in such a way that I wrote my first book, followed by three more books in the same year!

God truly is good all the time. If He has given you a promise, keep expecting! Keep walking in faith that pleases Him. Trust Him! The answer to your promise can happen any day! Or it might not happen at all this side of eternity. But it WILL happen.

Gems from the Crown is a weekly blog to strengthen and encourage believers in Christ in their walk with God. If you would like to receive Gems from the Crown delivered directly to you, please click here.

In my walk this morning, I was praying for God to increase the joy in my life and the joy in my family. I started asking the Lord what some of the things are that will release joy in our lives. (After all, joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit already living inside of us.)

God showed me four things. I am sure there are more, but these are the ones He showed me during my time with Him on my walk.

1. Thankfulness
2. Child-like faith
3. Relationship
4. Obedience

Let’s start with obedience. When you know you are guilty of doing something wrong, you cannot have joy. That includes not doing something you know God has told you to do. Disobedience brings guilt. Guilt brings condemnation. The Holy Spirit does not bring condemnation (He brings conviction) but guilt does. When we are feeling guilty, joy is going to be missing from our lives. This seems pretty obvious here in black-and-white, but not so much in our day-to-day living. When we repent and receive forgiveness, that guilt is washed away. When we are in obedience, there is a fullness of joy that comes with it. Our conscious is clean before God, and that lightness in our hearts has a natural result of joy.

How about child-like faith? Well, fear is the opposite of faith. And yet they both come from the same root emotion – how we feel about the unknown. It is a choice in our perspective. We choose whether we are going to have fear or faith in what we cannot see. Fear brings torment. If we are walking in fear and playing out all the scenarios in our minds about what might, or can, or probably will go wrong, then obviously we do not have joy in our hearts. Fear, anxiety, and worry not only brings mental anguish, but also brings health issues into our lives. We need to remind ourselves that perfect love casts out all fear (1 John 4:18).

As believers in the Risen Christ, we are to walk by faith, and not by sight. When we choose fear, we cannot have the fruit of joy operating in our lives. If we are walking in faith, child-like faith that our Daddy is taking care of us and taking care of what we can’t see, no matter how bad the situation is, we will be in freedom and joy. I am handing it all over to Him, and releasing it to Him, which means it is no longer my burden, and it is up to Him to take care of and fix. Child-like faith doesn’t mean I am going to get my way. It means Hs is going to do what is right in the big picture, and believe me when I say I know first-hand how extremely painful that can be at times. But God has never entered a battle and come out the loser. He is always victorious, so I know that in Him, I will be victorious also, which gives me joy! It releases in me a child-like awe and wonderment. I am free to go about my life, believing things are going to be okay, which brings joy.

Let’s move on to number three, relationship. Relationships involve emotions. Yes, I know joy is not an emotion like happiness, and yet joy definitely affects our emotions. When you have a great relationship with someone, it brings joy to your very soul. Guess what? When you have a great relationship with God, it brings joy to your very soul. We all know great relationships take work. It takes a purposeful effort to spend time together, whether it is a person, or your Father in heaven, because life gets busy. So spending time in His Word to hear from Him, spending time in prayer talking to Him, and spending time in worship, which brings His very presence into our personal world, are all ways to grow in your relationship with God. And the better our relationship with God, the deeper the joy it releases in our lives.

Then there is the issue of thankfulness. We know thankfulness lifts our hearts. Many of us get so stuck in the rut of living, that we forget how blessed we are. Taking time to sit and list out the things we have to be thankful for, both in our minds and on paper, brings joy to our hears because it opens our eyes and gives us a renewed revelation of the good things God has brought into our lives. Focusing on the negative brings darkness. Focusing on the positive brings light. Light shatters the darkness and heaviness, allowing joy to break through.

I would like to share something taken from my book When Tragedy Strikes: Rebuilding Your Life With Hope and Healing After the Death of Your Child.

It is no secret the enemy works overtime to keep us from walking in joy. Why would he be so determined to steal my joy? Because God’s joy is my strength. And I don’t mean my joy in Him, I mean His joy in me. Most of us are familiar with Nehemiah 8:10, “…the joy of the Lord is your strength.” In the English language (hang in here with me, now) the word “of” is a preposition. If I were to say, “This view of the ocean is our favorite,” I would be referring to the ocean’s view, right? If I were to say, “The book of Kevin’s is lost,” I would be referring to Kevin’s book, right? Well, if the joy of the Lord is my strength, I see it referring to the Lord’s joy, not mine!

When the Holy Spirit first showed me this, it was a huge relief! I don’t have to manufacture or make sure I have joy (based on my love or my happiness in God) to have strength. My strength comes from knowing He is crazy in love with me! Wow! (Remember Zephaniah 3:17, how He is rejoicing over us with gladness and singing?) His joy over me is what makes me strong. His joy about me creates joy in me. Now there is a seed of hope to plant in your life for sure!

Literally right in the middle of writing this blog, there was a situation I became overwhelmed with a heaviness that brought me to tears. I had to stop and take a dose of my own medicine, and force myself to do these four things myself. I can say they really truly work!

Gems from the Crown is a weekly blog to strengthen and encourage believers in Christ in their walk with God. If you would like to receive Gems from the Crown delivered directly to you, please click here.

One day I got to thinking about “finding God’s good, better, and perfect will” for my life. I realized that if God created someone specifically for me to marry, I probably missed it.

You see, I was enrolled to go to Northwestern Christian College, which is where I would have/should have met my husband, right? I ended up getting pregnant my summer out of high school, and didn’t go to college. I met my husband Dave shortly after that, and we got married when my little one was 2 years old. He adopted her, and we eventually had 4 more children.

OK… so… was Dave the man God made specifically for me, or not? Did God cause (or allow) the pregnancy to make sure I stayed home to meet him? If I hadn’t stayed home because of being pregnant and gone on to college, how would God have kept me from falling in love with and marrying the “wrong” person, and gotten me to come back home to meet Dave?

Maybe God’s original “perfect” plan was that I was supposed to go off to college, come back after 4 years, meet Dave, and get married a year or two later (but my getting pregnant and staying home just sped up the process). Although in actuality, Dave would not have been around by then because he was offered a job to work for the Pentagon after college, which he didn’t take because we were dating and he decided he wanted to stay put and ask me to marry him. So, if he had not met me and taken the job, would God have brought him back here somehow for us to meet?

OR does that mean my sin and getting pregnant caused me to not go to the college where I should have met the man God made just for me, and Dave was actually God’s Plan B for my life? So that caused Dave to miss the woman created for him to marry by not going out to DC, which means I was also God’s Plan B for him?

And now there is a woman who was created for Dave that is living out God’s Plan B for her life, and the man I was supposed to marry is also living out God’s Plan B for his life, since I never went to college to meet him. That also means the woman my “perfect Plan A” husband eventually married, is also living out God’s Plan B because she married a man who was created for me to marry, but I missed it. Do you see how crazy this can get?

If that were the case, it would mean my entire adult life has been lived outside of God’s perfect will for me because I missed marrying the man He created for me whom I probably should have met at Northwestern Christian College! It would mean my children and grandchildren are alive on this earth because I missed God’s perfect plan for my life.

I have come to learn from our teacher, the Holy Spirit, that so often we put too much pressure on ourselves to find God’s “perfect” will for our lives, forgetting the blessing He gave us of free will to choose!

The person you marry is your choice, with the only requirement not to be unequally yoked spiritually. If you are in love with God and walking out your relationship with Him, He will direct you in a choice that will be a wonderful life-long partner, best friend, lover, and soul mate for you. (I am quite happy to say that is the blessing I have!) If you don’t bring Him in on your choice, there will probably be things in your marriage that will be much rougher than it would have been with God’s guidance, but once you are married, God can still work in your life within the choice you made!

In so many circumstances we pressure ourselves to figure out the exact choice of God’s absolute perfect will, like which job to take? I believe most of the time He is saying, “I gave you a free will for a reason! Pick the one you want, and I will work in your life within that choice!” Does He already know what we will choose? Yes, of course, but He gives us free will to make those choices.

Are there times He has something specific for us? Yes, I fully believe so, and if we are seeking Him, He will guide us in the necessary direction.

But to say God has created one specific person for each of us to marry is not scriptural, and it adds tons of pressure to find him or her. It also puts false expectations into a marriage of how wonderful and easy it is going to be, and when things get rough, we can start to question whether or not we married that Plan A person created just for us.   (And what if something horrible happens, like our spouse has an affair? God knew that was going to happen, and yet that is the person He created specifically for me to marry?)

What about the unsaved? Does God create a specific mate only for Christians, and the unsaved are left in the dark to marry whomever they want? Or are they forced to use luck to find that one person, since they don’t have God directing them?

I can’t imagine anyone more perfect for me than Dave. God has so wonderfully given us the desires of our hearts in each other! But I don’t believe God is honoring that because He created Dave with the specific purpose of being my husband, or vice versa. It is because we allowed God to help us choose each other over 30 years ago, and we continue to choose each other throughout this life, staying committed to God and to each other in our marriage.

If you are struggling with a choice, and have been waiting for God to reveal His perfect will, I encourage you to use the blessing of choice, and choose a direction based on what you prefer. Then take a step in that direction, continuing to seek Him for guidance. If it is something He does not want for you, He will be faithful to let you know in some way. At that point, you can stop and take a different direction. If it truly is a matter of God saying, “Pick what you want, and I will work in you through that choice” then taking that step means you will be on your way with His blessing.

How about you? Is there a time you can look back and see where God allowed you to choose?