Tag: chuck swindoll

On God’s Grand Scheme of Things

Rhiza5 Comments

It’s my husband’s birthday today/yesterday (today in New York, yesterday in Manila). I intend to post a longer blog with lots of photos as soon as I find time, but for now, a quick post before I retreat to bed.

As his birthday was about to end, my husband and I reflected upon the past year and how much has happened in such a short period of time. It wasn’t long ago when we would celebrate birthdays and monthsaries in front of Skype, opening our Fedex-ed gifts and finding creative ways to bridge the distance. Don’t get me wrong, we treasure those good ol’ days, we learned so much from them. But we cannot deny the fact that deep within our hearts we incessantly prayed for the day we would get to spend these special occasions together.

And now we’re here.

We had quite a lengthy prayer to cap the night, thanking God for blessing my husband 28 awesome years, most especially for the past year which was exceptionally beautiful. You bet there were tears of joy all over the place.

Chuck Swindoll wrote something that pretty much describes how it feels like, being in the center of God’s grand scheme of things:

Life is not based on blind fate or random chance. Everything that happens, including the things you cannot explain or justify, is being woven together like an enormous, beautiful piece of tapestry. From this earthly side it seems blurred and knotted, strange and twisted. But from heaven’s perspective it forms an incredible picture. Best of all, it is for His greater glory. Right now, it seems so confusing, but someday the details will come together and make good sense.

There it is—part of God’s perfect plan unfolding.

Those years spent apart were difficult, and there were a gazillion things we couldn’t understand (even until now). But as we witness God’s master plan unfold, it becomes clearer each day why God allows things to happen the way they do.

It’s not my birthday today, but it’s like I’m the one who was given such a beautiful gift.

Day 28: God is good

Rhiza5 Comments

Day 28/30: Black & White. Behold, the Sanchez ladies, busy applying make-up on my back. LOL. Sooo serious! I was wearing a backless gown, people, this is serious business!

I’m having some sort of writer’s block right now, staring at this blank space for the past hour without any progress. I feel like I’ve said so much the past days, there’s nothing much for me to say now. So while I try to put my thoughts in one place, allow me to copy-paste Chuck Swindoll‘s words..

God is God, and He will have His way when He pleases and for His glory. What could be better than that? In all the mystery of His waiting and working, and in the wrong of our doing and undoing, He can still be trusted. The main thing is that you and I remain sensitive to those moments when He finally breaks the silence and suddenly intervenes on our behalf. At least to us it seems sudden. To Him, it happened exactly as He had planned it all along.

just ’cause I thought, perhaps, you need it too. (:

Last 2.

It’s God’s love for us that causes Him to bring us to an end of our strength

Rhiza9 Comments

 

Sometimes, all you need is encouragement like this on a bad day week and you start to believe, without a doubt, that everything will be okay.

I don’t know what your intimidating giant is today. It may relate to your job, your roommate, or your school. Maybe it is a person, a lawsuit, unemployment, a disaster . . . maybe even your own partner in life. Perhaps it is some fear that is lurking around the corner, sucking your energy and draining your faith. God is saying to you right now, “All I ask of you is five smooth stones and a sling of faith. I’ll take it from there. You don’t have to wear somebody else’s armor. You just trust Me. And I’ll strip you down to nothing but faith, and then I’ll accomplish a victory where I’ll get the glory. But as for you . . . you trust Me.”

Perhaps you don’t know what lies across the valley. Maybe you can’t get a handle on what that giant is; but it’s there, haunting you. That uncertainty alone is a giant. But look at that worry in comparison to the Lord God Himself, and say, by faith, “The battle is Yours, Lord. It is Your battle. I lean on You. I give You all my weapons, all my skills, and I stand before You, trusting You.”

It is God’s love for us that causes Him to bring us to an end of our own strength. He sees our need to trust Him, and His love is so great that He will not let us live another day without surrendering our arms to Him, giving Him our fears, our worries, even our confusion, so that nothing becomes more significant to us than our Father.

Never, ever forget it: the battle is the Lord’s!

~Chuck Swindoll

God’s wisdom can sometimes be frustratingly incomprehensible! Frustrating, in a beautiful kind of way. Truly it’s in those hardest of days that He manifests Himself even more, because there you know that His grace is sufficient and your strength is not your own.