Doodle 101 / God’s Provision / for Trina:)

Processing grief and trials of all kinds, requires an open heart…one that is willing to allow God entrance, at the very time we often want to deny Him…because of the fire we are in.

I love yesterday’s (June 25) journal entry from

Oswald Chamber’s “My Utmost for His Highest.”

“As a saint of God, my attitude toward sorrow and difficulty should not be to ask that they be prevented, but to ask that God protect me so that I may remain what He created me to be, in spite of all my fires of sorrow. Our Lord received Himself, accepting His position and realizing His purpose, in the midst of the fire of sorrow. He was saved not from the hour, but out of the hour.

We say that there ought to be no sorrow, but there is sorrow, and we have to accept and receive ourselves in its fires. If we try to evade sorrow, refusing to deal with it, we are foolish. Sorrow is one of the biggest facts in life, and there is no use in saying it should not be. Sin, sorrow, and suffering are, and it is not for us to say that God has made a mistake in allowing them.

Sorrow removes a great deal of a person’s shallowness, but it does not always make that person better. Suffering either gives me to myself or it destroys me. You cannot find or receive yourself through success, because you lose your head over pride. And you cannot receive yourself through the monotony of your daily life, because you give in to complaining. The only way to find yourself is in the fires of sorrow. Why it should be this way is immaterial. The fact is that it is true in the Scriptures and in human experience. You can always recognize who has been through the fires of sorrow and received himself, and you know that you can go to him in your moment of trouble and find that he has plenty of time for you. But if a person has not been through the fires of sorrow, he is apt to be contemptuous, having no respect or time for you, only turning you away. If you will receive yourself in the fires of sorrow, God will make you nourishment for other people.”

Yes, we will have sorrow…and the Lord doesn’t ask that we deny those feelings.  But, what are we to do with them?  I want to choose to allow my Father to  “use them as nourishment for others”  It is then that they will not be in vain.

“Cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain you; He will never permit the righteous to be moved.” – Psalm 55:22

But not only will He sustain you, He will be GLORIFIED through you as you “pay that blessing forward.”  Be someone’s nourishment today:)

Bless you,