When Life Deals You a Hard Blow

I'm so glad you are here! I hope during your visit you get a glimpse of God's heart for we become what we are gazing at. I pray that God refreshes you and gives you readiness to persevere in what He has for you today.  My desire is to be a blessing to you in helping you know God more and make Him known so I've made these Resources available to you and have the Missional Living blog tab for practical ideas of how to live on mission right where you are. 

And if you are a blogger come link up a post that glorifies God (gives us a glimpse of His character-which could be a whole lot of things since everything good thing and every gift and ability is from Him) for Brag on God Friday.   

Don't you just love stories! Story helps me feel like I'm there, like I can understand and feel what the people might be going through. That's why I love Judges so much. Story after story of God intersecting lives. So, in bite size pieces I've been writing my way through Judges sharing glimpses of God's heart and character. To check out the entire series so far head on over the the Judges Devotional. 

When Life Deals You a Hard Blow

"Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior. His father was Gilead; his mother was a prostitute. Gilead's wife also bore him sons, and when they were grown up, they drove Jephthah away. "You are not going to get any inheritance in our family," they said, "because you are the son of another woman." So Jephthah fled from his brothers and settled in the land of Tob, where a group of adventurers gathered around him and followed him."Judges 11:1-3  

So you know how there are those people who are really good with faces? Or those people who are really good with names? Or those people who are really good with remembering every detail about everything? Well, I'm not any of those. Usually when I think I may recognize someone, I have learned that it is because I have had an in-depth conversation with them. It's embarrassing. Or with movies, I can watch an entire movie twice (sometimes three times) without realizing I have seen it, until someone tells me they saw it with me. Or when I have to ask other people to remind me about events in my life. Yikes! 

Seriously, how can my memory be so bad!? I have some theories. I think the most likely theory is the time I was given laughing gas to have my tooth pulled as a kid and they didn't give me enough oxygen. They put the mask on and it felt like someone was putting their hand over my mouth and nose, I couldn't breathe. After that time I had 3 episodes (months later) where I honestly couldn't tell if I was in a dream or reality. But whatever happened to make my ability of recognizing people/movies/names/events disappear (or never appear in the first place) is a hard blow.

Jephthah was dealt a hard blow. His parents sin up until verse 4 defined his life. (Though it would be funny if he said the same thing, "Ya know, my whole life was shaped by my mom being a prostitute until verse 4."  But I bet he thinks it's pretty cool as he is having a blast in heaven seeing all of us read about his life and talking about his life in terms of verses.) Though his brothers and society defined him by his parents sin, God didn't. He led the writer of Judges to define him as a "Mighty Warrior". Wow! God sure doesn't see as the world sees.

But just like Joseph and David and Esther and many others, God used the hard blow to show Himself to be great. It's just like 2 Cor. 12:9, "But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me."  

My awful memory is the very thing God turned into something to show what He is capable of. He took  me, a girl who lacks memory ability and enabled me to memorize James, Philippians and half of  1 Thessalonians and hundreds of other verses. THAT is how capable God is! 

We serve a God who takes the broken things of this world, the broken parts of us and our history and families and uses them to show Himself to be great. 

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