It’s finally spring in St. Louis! This winter seemed like the longest winter ever!!! But spring in St. Louis is just about as unpredictable as the winter.
Sunday afternoon my kids were outside playing, and I called them in because of a random thunderstorm. They came in to draw and color at the kitchen table.
Suddenly my oldest looks up seeing a bright light shinning in from the window. “Mom! Mom! The sun is out, and it’s still raining. There’s a rainbow. I know it.”
“Well, go find it,” I responded.
Quick as a flash, he sprinted out the front door and within seconds he was shouting, “I found it! I knew it! There’s the rainbow!”
Before I knew it, we were all outside in the rain looking at a beautiful “ark-ed” rainbow! (That’s how my kids put it- yes, it’s a pun off of Noah’s Ark.)
As I put my kids to bed that night, the girls’ prayer included the line, “And thank you God for the rainbow you sent.”
How blessed am I to witness my kids recognizing God’s blessings! I mean, even before they saw the rainbow, they saw the signs that there could be a rainbow, they looked for it, and they praised God for it!
They were looking for the blessing, and they saw it!
The entire earth is filled with God’s blessings! We are blessed abundantly.
However, sometimes we get to caught up in our daily lives… our routines… our agendas to recognize it.
I’ll be honest. I never would have went looking for that rainbow had my son not pointed out the facts and went looking for himself. I would have completely missed it.
I’m currently doing a small group Bible study called Experiencing God. (It’s a very good study so far!) One of the questions that was brought up at the very beginning was- Is God always at work?
Yes!
John 5:17, “But Jesus answered them, `My Father is working until now, and I am working.”
God is always at work. The Holy Spirit is at work in the lives of all believers. He is leading, convicting, inspiring, and directing them.
The problem is, some people just say Jesus is the King of my heart which is on paying lip service to the statement. The reality is that the throne of their life belongs to his/herself. When your thoughts are selfish and turned inward, you miss the blessings around you.
The whole earth sings praises to God! All creation glorifies Him! Jesus says in Luke 19:40, “He answered, ‘I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” Jesus said that because His disciples were praising Him as He road into the city on a colt, and the Pharisees were ticked off about it.
God is always at work, yet somehow me miss it… Somehow our sin nature sways us to glorify ourselves. We overlook the obvious blessing right in front of our eyes.
A few years ago, I was at a wedding, and we needed a way to get a huge group of people up the mountain for a wedding. Someone just happens to accidently get a 14-passenger van instead of the SUV they requested. That was God blessing us with transportation! How amazing!! God had a better plan for our transportation needs, because we hadn’t thought that far in advance.
Your kids want to learn to play Chess. The library is giving free lessons. And their teacher sends your kids home with a free board. That’s a blessing from God! Yes, he used other people to accomplish that blessing!
You can’t find your car keys… End up running late for that appointment… But as you get in the car and head that way, you hear a traffic report of a car accident backing up traffic in the direction you would normally go. Yes, maybe an inconvenience, but definitely God’s protection and provision.
Your child sees flowers, picks them up, and gives them to a random worker at Walmart. Now, you and this random person get to have a conversation about God with your kids!
Guys, if I didn’t know God, His character, or anything about His ways, I could chalk all these things up to luck. But luck is chance. This is not luck. God does not deal in luck; He deals in well thought out blessings that we clearly could have never thought of.
On another note, isn’t it funny how we blame God when things go bad? Yet, He is right there providing blessings while we try to give the credit to luck or something other than God… like ourselves.
He is always at work. To this very day.
Our job is to see where God is at work and join Him! When you get the silent tug at your heart to talk to the person behind in you while standing in line, do it. Don’t worry about what your plans were, go do what the Spirit is leading you to do! When you get that urge to help a young mom with several kids unload her groceries, do it. Don’t be afraid to show Jesus through you! When you see an older person, smile and make small talk. Engage them in that talk! It might be a game changer for their day. I get it, these things will require you to stop being self-centered, but that’s the point. Let me say this with as much force as I can in text, JESUS DIDN’T DIE FOR YOU TO BE SELF-CENTERED; HE DID IT SO YOU COULD BE GOD CENTERED!!
You have no idea how God is using you to bless others. But I can 100% guarantee this: once you start allowing God to use you to bless others, your eyes will begin to open to all the ways He is already blessing you.
Just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. I promise- Look and you will see.