Sample Articles

Extra from Volume 14#4

by Alexandria D.

Dear Sisters,

I had my Algebra open in front of me. I was nauseous and had a horrible headache. I had not slept well the night before and the day had been tough. Yes, I had someone on my mind, someone that always seemed to creep into my default thoughts. And then to top it all off, my sister had just told me we needed to make dinner at 4:30. I needed to get my math and science done for the day, and it was already nearing 4:00. Just getting math done was going to be a struggle.

Every emotion that I had been stuffing down for the whole day seemed to burst out. “Lord, why?” I cried out to Him. “Lord, why didn’t she tell me earlier so I could have started sooner? Lord, why is it so hard to wait for my future husband and Your timing?” The questions ran through my mind. My eyes filled with tears. I felt His gentle voice prompting me to pick up the Word. I turned to Lamentations 3 and read. “The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in Him” (Lamentations 3:24).

Therefore will I hope in Him. I repeated the words to myself. Therefore will I hope in Him. Surrendering it to the Lord and trying to trust Him in it all, I returned to my math. To my surprise, our schedule for the evening changed, making it possible to start dinner an hour later. I completed both my math and science. I was in awe at God’s fingerprints on my life. My heart filled with thankfulness, yet I had to think of how I could have trusted God so much more in those moments only a little while ago.

Sisters, this may seem like a small example of God’s faithfulness and love. Yet it blew me away to see His hand work in my little situation. God cares even for these little things and He cares that we trust Him through them! God is faithful; He will never give up on us. NEVER! “Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). Praise God! I want to share what God has been teaching me about trusting in Him, in the little things and in the life-changers.

To be able to trust God in our lives we have to first put our trust in God as Savior and Lord. He died to redeem us from our sin and bring us home to live with Him eternally. I pray that is true of each one of you. The secret behind growing your faith is found in 2 Timothy 2:13, “If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful: He cannot deny Himself.” Our faith is not dependent on our own faith but on resting in His faithfulness.

We must realize that our God is big. He is beyond our understanding. His power is infinite, His wisdom great, His love boundless, His grace immeasurable. Can we trust a God like this, dear sisters? Who else in the world would you rather trust than Him? He is trustworthy! He is faithful! He will never change!

I love how my pastor put it; he was preaching from the verse in John 14, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27). He made the point that courage is acting in spite of our fears, but God doesn’t even want us to be afraid! He said it is as if God was speaking to us, “I made the universe and I love you. Do you have any questions?” Why would we fear or question this all-powerful God Who loves us more than we can ever imagine? Why would we not trust our God Whose glory and our best good are so connected that if the one happens the other must as well?

God knows what is best for us. We must fully trust that He will work all things out for our good. It may look like what is the worst for us at the moment, and we may never see the good come out of it in our lifetime, but we must trust Him. Tyndale did not see how God used his translation of the Bible in his lifetime. The martyrs of the early church did not see that their blood was “the seed of the church,” as Tertullian, the second century theologian, put it. But now we get to look back and marvel at the hand of God in history. I wonder what all those martyrs would say now, seeing the fruit that grew from the seed of their blood. I wonder what we would say if we could look back a hundred years from now. One thing I know is that we would see the fingerprints of God everywhere!

So, my dear friends, let us press on to know the Lord (Hosea 6:3). Let us run with patience the race that is set before us. Let us look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Let us keep pressing on.

Alexandria is blessed to live with her parents and three older siblings. She enjoys playing music, photography, graphic design, and spending time with her siblings.

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