Often our reality does not match God’s promises. I think of Abraham. God promised him a son. But as Abraham got older and older and the same with Sarah, it just didn’t look like that was going to happen. I mean, how could it? Abraham was old, but more importantly, Sarah was in her nineties. That just doesn’t bode well for having a kid. They waited and waited. Now faith is believing in things unseen. God promised them a son. Where was this promised child? Sarah couldn’t wait any longer. She took matters into her own hands and told Abraham to father a son with her handmaiden. There. Now Abraham get’s a son. But that’s not how God works. He promised Abraham a son, which would be with his wife, Sarah. Not an illegitimate son with Hagar. So often our reality does not seem to match God’s promises. But we need to wait. We need to have faith, because God ALWAYS keeps His promises. ALWAYS. No exceptions.

My sister’s son graduates this year, from high school. He’s a football player, and they wanted him to play football in college. Well colleges did want him to play for their teams, they came calling. In my sister’s mind, she thought of Azusa Pacific University. It’s a Christian college with a football team. She really wanted him to go to a Christian college. Well they contacted the University. They didn’t hear anything right away.

Right around this time, my husband is going to a Bible study at our church. This is a men’s study of about 250 men. The men are broken into groups of about 15 men for each group. The groups started in September. Right around December this big strapping dude shows up to my husband’s Bible study. He’d been signed up for the group, but hadn’t showed up yet because he was…wait for it…coaching football for…wait for it…Azusa Pacific University…wait for it…the offensive line team. The same team that my nephew plays. My nephew is a 6’5″, 285 pound offensive lineman. Now this coach just so happens to be in my husband’s group, and just so happens to plop right next to my husband, and just so happens to talk to my husband about what he does for a living. My husband hears “Azusa,” and his ears perk up. My husband brings up our nephew who is interested in playing football for Azusa. The coach has heard of my nephew. The coach is excited about my nephew. The coach, unfortunately, does not make the decision to have him play or not. But he really hopes they grab my nephew. The coach gives my husband his phone number and email address and says to my husband to have my nephew call him. They need to get in contact with each other.

Now in God’s economy there are no coincidences. God is always working behind the scenes. It wasn’t a coincidence that the linemen coach for Azusa just happened to be in my husband’s Bible study group. It wasn’t a coincidence, that this big guy plopped next to my husband so they could chat. There are 250 men grouped into at least 16 different groups and by coincidence my husband lands in the same group as the linemen coach for Azusa? Nope. That’s not a coincidence, that’s God working.

But here’s where our reality often does not match God’s promises in our life. Time goes trudging ahead, like it always does, without checking with us first. Now it’s February, time for signing up for football for college teams. My nephew hasn’t heard from Azusa. Despite all those “coincidences,” he’s heard zip from them. Other schools have declared their love for my nephew. A Christian school in Chicago really wants him. My nephew doesn’t know anyone there. He isn’t feeling it. But they have said they wanted him and been in contact with him. The day comes, and my nephew is going to sign with this team from Chicago. It’s a big event, newspapers are there. My nephew is handed a pen, he stretches out his arm and puts the pen to paper, when his cell phone goes off in his pocket. Whoever is calling wants to talk to my nephew badly. They keep calling him. Once my nephew signs the paper, he answers the phone and sees that Azusa has been calling him non stop. They decided on him. They want him badly. Please come to our school they say. My nephew wants to go, but they have already said yes to this other school. My sister calls them and reminds them, that Azusa never called them. They never acted interested. They apologize. They are very sorry they acted cold and indifferent. They really want the boy. Now my sister is in a pickle. She doesn’t know what to do. So she decides to call me. But this is Wednesday morning. I’m never home on Wednesday morning, I am at Bible study. I never miss. I’ve served there for eight years and been sick only one time. So this is a bad time for my sister to call me. I shouldn’t be home.

But I am home this morning. Because for only the second time in eight years I got sick, just before I headed out the door. I couldn’t leave the bathroom. So I texted my senior leader from the bathroom, that I wasn’t going to make it. And just as quickly as it came, an hour or so later, I felt much better. An hour after that, my sister called me. She wanted to know what to do. I reminded her, that whole incident of my husband meeting the Azusa coach wasn’t a coincidence. God was telling her where he should go. She just needed to believe it wasn’t a coincidence and trust God. But that’s where our realities often don’t match God’s promises. Like Abraham, she almost signed my nephew up with the wrong team, EVEN though God had told her it was going to be Azusa. She needed me to remind her. God made me stay home, which I never do, to tell her that. When I reminded her that none of this was a coincidence, she was convinced. She kept saying, but Azusa didn’t say anything. But I reminded her that God did at the very beginning. He told her awhile back. She couldn’t trust her reality, she had to trust in God. Just like Abraham, she almost went with another school. But she didn’t. And why did I have to stay home from Bible study that morning? Well she needed to make a decision and she had to call the other school by 11am. (She lives in Hawaii, so there’s a huge time difference between there and everywhere else). She would have gone with the OTHER school, if she didn’t talk to me.

We have to remember that our reality, like Abraham, often doesn’t match God’s promises. And we have to remember, God ALWAYS keeps His promises. ALWAYS, no exceptions. AND in God’s economy there are no coincidences.

I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior when I was 9 years old. I was only 9 years old. It wasn’t a dramatic conversion. I didn’t need to repent from a life of prostitution and drugs. It was a quiet conversion. I simply went to my room and accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior.

I had just seen a movie called, “The Thief in the Night.” It was this cheesy movie from the 70’s about the rapture. This woman wakes up one day to find her husband’s electric shaver bouncing around in the sink. He has vanished. She has no idea where he has gone. As the movie progresses, you learn that the rapture has taken place and this husband was taken up. She is left behind and has to fend for herself. She is terrified.

I was terrified. I think that might have been the first time I had heard of the rapture. All Christians are taken up into heaven or “caught up” with Jesus in the air. It was wild! But I freaked out. I didn’t want to be left behind. So I went immediately to my bedroom when I got home from church and accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior, right then and there.

Things changed immediately. All of a sudden I cared about the kids in my fourth grade class and where they would go after they died. They were all going to hell unless someone told them. This urgency, this compulsion filled my mind and heart. These classmates of mine needed to get saved, like right now!

So I devised a plan. I had recess, where I could preach to these lost children and tell them they were going to hell unless they accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior. I was going to convert the girls first. I lined them up at the back of the fence in the school yard. I told them they were all going to die and they would all go to hell unless they accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior! It was very important! (And it was!) Every recess, I would gather as many girls as I could and line them up at the back fence and preach hell to them.

Somebody must have complained. A few days later, my fourth grade teacher grabbed me as I was headed out for recess. She said, “Wendy, I need to talk to you.” I was a good girl, so I wasn’t worried. She explained to me that I could have my own religion, but it wasn’t good to try and force it upon other people. Now me, the normally shy, quiet, obedient girl wasn’t having this! Something burned inside of me. I wasn’t afraid of the teacher and she wasn’t going to take me down! I looked at her right in the eye and said that I was going to continue preaching to the girls and you can’t stop me. And I marched right out of that classroom and out to the playground and lined the girls back up against the fence. I had the Holy Spirit inside of me now. I was a changed kid.

My new life wasn’t perfect, but it certainly was different. I wasn’t secure in my relationship with the Lord as I wrote about here. But I have never looked back. I have never questioned my salvation. I have never walked away. As I grew up, at the same time, I grew up in the Lord. It’s been a long time. God has proved Himself over and over again to me. I have been a Christian for forty years now. And to quote Robert Frost, “that has made all the difference.”

If you are reading this, maybe you have never accepted Christ as your Savior. Being a Christian isn’t doing anything. Becoming a Christian is accepting Jesus Christ as your Savior. He died in our place. He took the punishment for our sins upon Himself. He died and rose again from the dead, three days later. And He’s coming again! A rapture will take place first, and catch up all of His children to meet Him in the air. And then a terrible time will come to this planet. At the end of that terrible time, Jesus Christ will come back to the earth as a judge. If you want to accept Jesus Christ as your Savior, say this prayer:

Dear Jesus: I know I’m a sinner. And I know you are a Savior. Please forgive me for my sins. I accept you as my Savior. Thank you Lord.

If you have done that for the first time, let me know. I really want to hear from you. I promise, I won’t line you up against a fence!

I have been thinking of God’s love lately. The very fact that God loves me. God loves me! The very Creator of this universe. The One who holds the world in His hands. How can that be?

I’m a sinner. I’m not perfect. I’m often needy, looking for a Savior. I don’t do many things very well…and yet…God loves me.

Years ago, when I was a newlywed, I heard God’s voice. My husband and I had been married for about a year. We were both fresh out of college and working at jobs for a few short years. I had just started work at a school and didn’t count on not having work in the summer. We were low men on the totem poles at our jobs, so even though we had two jobs, we weren’t paid well. Well the summer came and my job ended at the school in June. It wasn’t a permanent end, it was just for the summer. My husband’s cousin got me a temporary job to work for her while she went back east for the summer. That was for the month of July. So that was good, I had a job for July. Well that ended and I needed employment for August and part of September. Where would I find a job for a month and a half? I started to panic. WE NEEDED MONEY! We can’t live on one income! I laugh at that now, because we have been living on one income for over 18 years now. But at the time, we were lowly grunts, not making a whole lot of money. We had rent to pay and a car payment. Ack.

Well I was in sheer panic. But not to be deterred, I drove down this main street that had all these hotels. I figured I could work as a desk clerk for any hotel. How hard could that be? I got nothing. Nobody would take me on. I decided to try restaurants. I’d worked 4 summers at a restaurant-I had some waitressing skills. I got nothing. Frustrated and feeling a bit down from all those rejections, I plopped on the couch and started crying. And I cried, and cried, and cried. Sobbing would be more like it. I thought of us living on the mean streets of California. They would take our car away because we couldn’t make the payments. We would starve to death. We would be two college educated kids homeless, with a huge debt to pay for student loans. How could we look our friends in the eye, when we would be flat broke? What would we do? Where could we go? My husband still had his job, where would he shower in the mornings to clean up for work? What could we do? I kept crying. I was all by myself at home, sobbing on my couch with the yellow pages open on my lap.

In the midst of my sobbing I heard a voice. I was by myself. It was a male voice. The voice said, “Wendy, I love you.” That immediately stopped my crying. I looked around me, nobody was there. The voice said it only once. The voice called me by my name. “Wendy, I love you.” I knew Who it was that said He loved me. I stopped crying. Like a little kid who is being consoled by a parent, I just sat on the couch in awe of the One who said He loved me. That’s all He said. He just reminded me that He loved me. And if He loved me, why would He leave me on the streets to die? He wouldn’t. He loved me. I had gone off the rails and He simply reminded me that He loved me.

He didn’t promise me a job. Money didn’t suddenly appear in the middle of the living room. The yellow pages didn’t start flipping over to the one job I should call. A giant finger didn’t start writing on the wall, telling me what would happen next. My God simply told me that He loved me. And He used my name when He did.

Well a few days later I got a job as a waitress at the Bob’s Big Boy down the street. They had no trouble hiring me for those short weeks. I think I made more money there, than I did at my main job for the school. It was fun bringing home all that cash from tips. But I was a changed person. I heard God’s voice tell me He loved me. I’ve never had a feeling of panic like that again. I’ve always trusted God would care for us. No exceptions.

My daughter did something naughty the other day. It was not terrible, but she did disobey us. She wasn’t supposed to go on any app or social media without asking for permission first. The internet is a dangerous place out there, and we don’t want either of our kids to get hurt, bullied, or see things they aren’t supposed to see. Well she went on a website in which you can role play. She did not ask for permission and kept it secret…until. Well until the inevitable was going to happen-people on the site bullied her. They ganged up on her, went in other chat rooms she wasn’t invited to, and called her names. The worst was when one of them called her, “a little piece of s**t.” I think that’s what got to her. It’s what got to me. I found her, when her sin had caught up to her, standing in front of her room with a horrible look on her face. I asked her what was wrong and she hesitated to tell me. I pried, so she burst out into tears and told me the whole sordid story. She said she was sorry for disobeying us and she learned her lesson. I gave her a hug and reminded her why we didn’t want her going on anything on the internet without asking first. We don’t do it because we are mean parents that want her to suffer in the dark ages. It’s because we know what’s out there and we want to protect her.

When my daughter told me the story, I became so angry at those bullies who hide behind the internet. They don’t know her, they don’t love her. They could care less about her. She is nothing to them. But she is everything to me. My heart broke when I saw the pain in her eyes. When I watched the tears run down her face, I wanted to hurt those bullies so badly.

In the midst of this I can’t stop thinking of God as our parent. He says He loves us more than we can love our own children. How can that be? How could God have more anger towards people who would harm His children? As much as I had for the bullies who hurt my daughter? He says Yes. He loves us so much, He doesn’t want us to get hurt. All the rules God gives us are for our benefit. If we go outside those rules, we’ll get hurt.

Take adultery for instance. It’s a really bad idea. God doesn’t want us to commit adultery because it will always end badly. It will hurt everybody involved…deeply. It’s not because God doesn’t want us to have any fun. He says have all the fun you want, just stay in the confines of your own marriage. That way, nobody get’s hurt.

Or, God tells us not to get drunk with anything, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. I’ve talked about my experience with drunkenness, growing up in Alaska. Getting drunk is a really bad idea. First of all, you wake up feeling terrible. Secondly, as a relative of mine said, after a night of drinking you have to try and remember who you need to apologize to the next morning. It’s bad for your body and your brain. It’s really hard on your liver. And it especially likes to kill all the relationships you have in your life. I wonder how many children have started life because of a mother’s drunken state the night before?

In contrast, to be filled with the Holy Spirit is amazing because there are no side effects. There are no headaches. Being filled with the Holy Spirit does not marinate your liver. You don’t have to apologize to anyone. People like you because they see God in you-the Holy Spirit! Only good things come from being filled with the Holy Spirit.

As I walk this journey in life as a Christian and as a mother, I see so much and understand more and more of God’s love in our lives. His love for us is unfathomable. I see my love for my children as deep and endearing. Yet, God loves His children (me) deeper than my love for my children. How can that be? I know how I feel towards my kids. And God loves me more than that? Deeper than that? I can’t wrap my head around it.

When I talked to my daughter more about the internet scandal she told me something interesting. She said, “I thought I knew better than you. I didn’t think you knew what you were talking about. I didn’t think this app would be bad.” Whoa! Isn’t that what we say before we commit some sin before God.

“Sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay and cost you more than you want to pay.”