Signs

At the suggestion of Pastor Mark this is my attempt to keep a journal of all the things that have been happening in my life lately.  These are things that I can only attribute to being signs- evidence of God's hand at work in my life.

I have not been good at documenting these and will have to start with today and work my way backward.

I am still having trouble with feelings of guilt and today has been especially bad.  Last week I signed up for daily emails from Joel Osteen Ministries as we have been reading many of his books and have watched/listened to several of his services and it has helped me greatly in dealing with how I feel about myself and in maintaining my faith.  For the uninitiated, the emails start with a bible verse and then have a message from Joel and Victoria that expand on what is in the verse.  Today the verse was Psalm 23:4 NKJV "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me..."  And in the message that followed he talks about how easy it is to get discouraged when you are going through something difficult and how it may feel like you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death.  He then says something that really made sense and that I had never considered; that the verse says that you are only walking through - you don't have to stop and stay in these difficult times and that this means that they are only temporary.  And the most important part of this is that God is with you, his is walking with us through the difficult times we are not walking through this alone.  For I had always thought of this as a funeral verse and I had trouble finding comfort in it.  But looking at the way Joel described it made me look at it in a different way entirely and I think in the way it was ment to be read.  This was a welcome read with the burden of what we were going through and in the state of mind I found myself when I sought it out.  Several hours later I was catching up on some of the planned reading, in my Bible app, that I was behind in and the reading that came up was Psalm 23:1-6.  That I would receive the same message twice in one day, from two separate resources, is nothing less than remarkable and that I would receive it today when I needed to hear or see it the most is nothing short of a message from God- I am with you, everything is going to ok.  In one of his messages that we listened to Joel said the God does not send the storm, but he is in control of it and if we stay in faith he will take what was ment for our harm and use it for our good.  I can say today that I know this to be the truth, I have seen it come to pass in our lives.