****UPDATE: Hey Siestas! Our blog maintenance has been moved and will actually happen tomorrow, Friday, March 25 at 8:30AM. Thank you for your patience!
****QUICK HEADS UP: Thursday AM, March 24 (tomorrow) at 8:30, our LPM blog will be shut down for what we anticipate being only a couple of hours. (Hopefully at most.) We are remaining right here on WordPress and right here at exactly this same address but we are switching servers to better accommodate our high volume of activity and comments. SO, if you try to get on after 8:30 AM Thursday morning and can’t connect to the page, you’ll know why. Sometimes the transition can take even a day or two but they are not anticipating that length of time. One thing is for sure, we’ll be back the moment we’re up. Until then and after then, go right ahead with your rich comments to this post!
OK, Siestas! It’s time for a pop quiz! We haven’t had one in a while. This quiz is for those of you who read many of the comments from our previous post about the moment or season of your life when you had your biggest “HE IS REAL” revelation. (The post is named “For Real” just so you can be sure you’re reading the comments to the right one.) The question conveyed on the post was about the time when you moved from believing God exists (Hebrews 11:6) to knowing (2 Timothy 1:12).
Here are the instructions for the comments to this post for those who want to participate in our pop quiz: (No other comments besides these please on this one post. This is a test. Grin.)
Write 2 observations you find yourself making based on all the testimonies you read under the post called “For Real.” There is no right or wrong answer. No pass or fail. You’re just simply saying, after reading so many of those comments, these two things seem clear to me. I’m asking for 2 observations. Not 1. Not 3. But 2. (Can you hear the classroom teacher in me coming out to play?) Testimonies are powerful things. We’re meant to be effected by what we read. So, how were you effected?
NOW, here is the very important catch: YOU MAY NOT READ ANYBODY ELSE’S OBSERVATIONS BEFORE YOU WRITE YOURS. In other words, don’t look at the comments to this post until after you’ve written your own answers. These are meant to be your observations and no one else’s. Your reflections. Your take on those testimonies. Not another Siesta’s. You are all great thinkers. Think for yourself.
I absolutely love this community. Go at it, Girls! Students, come forth!
Observation #1:
That even though I remain in a rough ‘season’ and initially felt like ‘although I know He’s real, I haven’t had some big life changing, direction-turning moment that let me know ‘ABsoLUTely!’… as I read these, I am reminded that God has provided in BIG ways for me. I share so many of these stories with my Siestas. Money provided, things silently prayed for, then given sweetly… Observation #1 is that He shows up when we seek Him with all our hearts, especially in our brokenness.
Observation #2
Almost always, brokenness is the common thread. Interesting… blessed are those who mourn,those who are poor in spirit, those who are persecuted… (matt.5:3-10) Ladies, as much as our hearts break over these heartaches, tragedies, pains and regrets and evil that affect us, look at what it does! It gives our God the opportunity to sweep in and show up in big ways.
Thanks Mama Beth! I’m glad you had us do this….!!! xoxo!
AHAHAHAHAHAHHAAAAA! Ok, I’m laughing so hard I’m crying! I just went back and read what others wrote, and oh sweet joy, it’s so FUNNY how much of it is the same observations. God is sooooo good! Oh, gosh, that’s great stuff, girls. Great stuff indeed!
Yes I know! It freaked me out! 🙂
But also is cool to know that Jesus is truly the same, yesterday, and today…just by how constant He is, and how He is…:)
Me too! I got the goosebumps just reading through it all! But you know that’s why Beth told us not to look. So that we could be astounded at the irrefutable fact of what common threads run throughout all of those times! Smart cookie that she is….
1. God meets us in all seasons when we cry out – whether we are on fire for Him at the time or feeling distant, lost, rebellious and cold.
2. Life’s trials and challenges bring us closer to Him – if we rely, trust, believe and obey through the process.
I’m writing this in word and am going to cut and paste into the comments just so I don’t feel tempted to peek!
Observation #1:
Not all of them, but a good number of our siestas had their most profound encounters with God at some of the darkest moments of their lives… I didn’t comment on that particular post, I had started to but for some reason after several tries was unable to find the right words. It seems to me that when we are at our lowest lows, or highest highs is when God seems to be the most prevalent to us.
Observation #2:
Just because God seems most prevalent to us when we are at our lowest lows or highest highs does not make it fact. While reading the testimonies you could see that God was always there, we just didn’t have the eyes to see Him. He is with us every second of every day from before we were even conceived, if we would only have the eyes to see and the ears to hear He will show himself… Even on a regular non eventful Thursday afternoon!
He loves us so much it makes me ache! :o)
A Great Need + Expectant Prayer = God Showing Himself Real
1. Life is difficult for us humans…
2. God knows the difficulty and meets us right where we are in our deepest, darkest time of need…
1. God is always, always there, loving us, even when we don’t “feel” Him.
2. Even believers (especially believers?) struggle with doubt, fear and faith. It doesn’t make us un-saved, and sometimes He uses those valleys to teach us new things about His love and His care for us.
omigoodness, it has NEVER been so hard to scroll down speedily! I so want to read all the insights!
I believe the testimonies almost universally taught me this about coming to KNOW that God is real:
1) The Lord may have to send a CRISIS or DECISION that brings a person to the place of knowing she cannot handle this by her own power or the way she is currently dealing with it.
2) The Lord answers – loves to show He is GOD – to those who humbly cry out prayerfully to Him and Him alone.
Amen!
He does love to show He’s God doesn’t he!!!
He is faithful!
May sound silly with with the name of this site we are talking about but…I keep hear how our God is REAL!!
Hope it’s okay – I wanted to pop back on again because altho I commented on the testimonies – I didn’t actually share my own the first time. One of the siestas responding said she saw mostly record of experiences and not as many people recounting how God made Himself real to them through the Word. I saw instances of the latter and my own falls in that category. Many years ago I was told by my doctor I had a tumor on my uterus the size of an orange. I’d had no bleeding, no pain no symptoms of any kind and doctors were pretty sure it was benign but needless to say I wasn’t crazy about leaving it in there and opted to have the hysterectomy they’d recommended. While waiting for the surgery and undergoing the presurgical testing I remember telling God one morning as I woke up – “Lord I know your Word says you sympathize with us and understand all we’re going through but after all this is a female problem and you were a man here on earth so I’m having a hard time realizing You’re in this experience with me…” Started working on my Bible study for the morning and it just happened to be the passage in the Gospels about the woman with an “issue of blood”. As you know she believed He had power to heal her if she could just touch the hem of His garment. Sure enough she was healed but Jesus also went out of His way to acknowledge her need and commend her faith and called her Daughter. That was just what I needed to realize His involvement and love and God used His word to speak comfort to me.
This made me remember how God spoke to my precious mother when she was diagnosed with colorectal cancer a year and a half ago. A faithful servant of God (overseas missionary for over 30 yrs) she trusted God, but she was certainly worried about the surgery and other indelicate matters concerning the location of the tumor. Imagine her surprise to read “and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard” (Isaiah 58:8)that Sunday morning in church–she laughed with her God and rejoiced that, yes, he was in control.
So sweet – and funny! God is so good and even helps us laugh in our difficulties. I’m so thankful for His comfort AND sense of humor!
1. It seems that when we are in the chaos during the moments of crisis; when we make the conscious decision to just be STILL, it is then that we feel His presence fully and completely. That is not to say, that He is not always present…He is…Its just that sometimes we are so focused on the crisis at hand, we are not fully seeking Him…or not compeletely surrendering to Him….
2. Out of the ashes, beauty has risen!
He is EVERYTHING,
Missy
Stillwater,OK
So cool Missy that you are from STILLwater… especially since you have come to know the great truth of being STILL. So few ever come to the precious still waters….Be still and know…
Truly the inward is manifesting in the outward. Yes indeed my sister, beauty has risen… For a meek and quiet spirit is beautiful in His sight.
His continued peace & quiet to you.
God is faithful.
His word is truth and life.
We are a pained lot, are we not? I laugh as I type that, but that’s one commonality. The other is the God was the source of our rescue/recovery from it. I thank Him for it on our collective behalves.
aint it great that WE GREW out of our britches, and needed a bigger server, cool. huh?
1. God goes out of His way to show us compassion.
2. He is so unbelievably creative in the ways He reveals Himself to each one of us knowing just what we need to KNOW Him.
#1 – God may allow a time of darkness to be the thing that draws us to Him, knowing we cannot handle it alone.
#2 – God reveals Himself in very real and personal ways when we earnestly seek him.
1. The Scriptures came alive. Formerly I knew I should be in the Word but it just did not make sense.
2.I had a very reals sense of the Lord’s presence. Would converse with Him continually and He with me.
Dolly Victoria from California wrote:
No matter how hard the storm hits, God will show himself in all good and bad times:
God is good all the time!!
sorry, I cheated I’m a visual learner and thats ok because he made me!
Observations:
1)all those I read had seasons of doubt
2)God showed Himself “real” in ways that were personal and meaningful for that individual
Diana, Surrey, BC Canada
1) God is Faithful!
2) God reveals Himself clearly!
1. God is proven “real” many times by how He answers our prayers and meets our needs.
2. But He is still God, no matter what He does or does not do.
God always meets us right where we are. No matter what season of life we are in. He is there and He always has the answer if we just trust Him and Seek His Face.
Just as the word says in James 1, trials and storms come to us to draw us closer to Jesus and by pressing through we mature and grow in our likeness to Him.
I loved this pop-test.
I didn’t read a ton of the comments from that post, but in the ones I did read I thought:
1) God often uses struggles on earth to bring us closer to Him
2) He is faithful – always there when we turn to Him, like the Father embracing the prodigal son. HE LOVES US!
1. God is trustworthy. We can give EVERYTHING to Him. If _________(no matter what), then GOD.
2. God loves to show up big for His children– not to solve our human problems– but to bring Him glory.
1) Every single one of us has had, or is having JUNK… and its by going THROUGH this junk that so many of us get to really KNOW God and His goodness.
2) No matter what my circumstances… I can always find another dear soul going through an even harder one, and doing it well when her eyes are on the LORD. Tremendous encouragement…
I guess I’m late to this topic… My computer has been down… But I love reading the responses to Beth and Melissa’s posts. Very encouraging and fun at time! 🙂
I have observed from reading these stories that God shows Himself when there is a need and that He doesn’t come in anger and disgust, only in love.
1. Reasons why people believe in God are very close and personal to them and their situation, which makes a powerful witness to me of God’s special love for every individual on earth!
2. God rewards SEEKING of Him with FINDING Him. Even if we are skeptical but still wanting to know Him and really searching, God reveals Himself to us eventually. Super cool!!!
Observation #1: God never does things the way us humans would do them. He accomplishes His purposes in ways that defy human logic and understanding. Not to mention His absolute kindness and goodness that is sometimes so astounding we’re left utterly speechless.
Observation #2: Reading through many of the posts in the “For Real” thread, one of the most common things that I saw was that we typically notice, or seek, God more when things are very dark in our lives. Based on what I know of God, that doesn’t mean His presence wasn’t there BEFORE those circumstances, more that maybe WE don’t notice as much until things go all dark and we begin to earnestly seek and depend upon His light and guidance. I’m prone to think that God was/is there all along, but that we had/do become so out of touch with HIS will in our lives that we didn’t notice how far away we had drifted until we found ourselves either in pits of our own making or pits that are just part of this life that we humans simply cannot get out of successfully without His love, kindness, righteousness, goodness and direction.
Oh, that I would seek Him and adore Him with single minded purpose no matter my circumstances! That is my prayer!
Kristi
God is faithful
God is always present, when we call to Him He hears
Psalm18:6 In my distress I called to the LORD,I cried to my God for help.From his temple he heard my voice;my cry came before him,into his ears. (Jonah 2:2 and 2 Sam.22:7 speak the same)
First, I observed:
Authentic faith is related to supernatural miracles and I found my faith lifted to “with God all things are possible” as I read of so many God “showing up and showing off” miracles.
Secondly, I observed:
Even when God’s answer is “No” to prevailing and travailing prayer, or impossible circumstances, situations and losses, a true believer knows God loves and does all things well, regardless of feelings, the fact is He causes it all to work together for good to those who are the called according to His purpose. Thus, my two observations summed up: “Faith is – God is…”
1. the responses were open and honest about experiencing the peace that passes all our understanding even in the most difficult of circumstances, and
2. it is comforting to read the testimonies of others, realizing once again, that God comforts us in our difficult times so that we can be a comfort to others
Had to exercise some serious self-control to scroll down without reading other answers, but these were my two observations after reading countless accounts of God being real.
1. God (and usually only God) can handle ANYTHING.
2. When we call out to Him, He seeks to meet us in the most INTIMATE ways that really mean something specific to each of us invidually. I was floored to read account after account of how He stepped in and healed, fixed, loved, ministered, and changed lives with a very PERSONAL TOUCH to each woman who needed it.
What an incredible God we have! Love Him so much! Thank you all for sharing!
1. God is always faithful!
2. God’s presence is often felt the most when we are going through extreme trials.
1) Everyone has a story, if they are willing to tell it.
2) God is in constant pursuit of his children-even when they are unaware or don’t want to acknowledge that fact.
Hope I passed the quiz 😉
Blessings from Kansas,
Angie
I have noticed that people know God is real during tough times. It can only be during the hard times that our faith is put to the test. This gives God the opportunity to so himself real. The other thing I noticed was that God became real as people studied his word. I know this is true for me, but as I read, I noticed many others cited this as a way God communicated his realness with them. My pastor recently posed the question, “How can you say you know the God of the Bible when you don’t know the Bible of God?” I agree and have found this to be true in my own life.
1. Observation # 1
OUR GOD is so good, He knows what we need in evert season of our lives. I cried and cried over so many of the posts, an sent out prayers.
2. Observation # w
How a few really hit home, like I have been there and done that.
God will do ANYTHING to get our attention.
Once He’s got it He blesses us for our obedience.
Suzette Vidor,Tx
What became clear to me is
1.We serve a very loving and compassionate God.
2.He still does miracles.
Two observations: One, so many of us have struggled with doubting. I used to think I was the only one. It is a comfort to see others who have fought with this as well. Two, so many of us fear has held us back. Fear that we will be disappointed, fear of failure, and just plain old fear! But, person after person testifies to his greatness and no one was disappointed in the end.
Thanks for this series of converstaions. It’s so encouraging to hear others’ stories!
1) God is intimately personal with each of us.
2) God reveals himself with LOVE. Not fear, not punishment but LOVE.
1. God made Himself known in each circumstance.
2. God, with his infinite and unwavering love, offered His heart freely so that each woman could walk away from ___ (fill in the blank) toward true freedom (whatever that looked like).
1. Seeing the realness of God seems to occur most often on the mountaintops of life and even more so in the dark valley seasons.
2. After seeing God’s realness, people seemed to be unanimous in that they were never the same – can’t help but be forever changed! You can hear their excitement jump off the page. Most felt like telling a shortened version of their story was difficult or that it somehow didn’t do justice to the magnitude of the encounter. I loved that about their stories 😉
Zechariah 4:6b: (NIV)
Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord Almighty.
1. God is ALWAYS there when we need Him…right there in the middle of our broken heart…He is the Light:)
2. Jesus is the only way.
“direction determines destination”
I accepted Christ when I was 6 years old. I believed with all my heart and I know I was saved at that moment. A few years later we had a man come speak to our church, he said he didn’t think children could really be saved. I spent the next 5 nights praying for Jesus to come into my heart. After all, if I wasn’t saved then, maybe it “didn’t take” this time either. Then on that last night the Holy Spirit brought to my mind scripture I hadn’t ever memorized but I guess I had heard…I will never leave you or forsake you…and ..no-one can pluck you our of my hand. I knew then that He was real, He spoke to me. He assured me I belong to Him. ( I don’t remember that guy ever being asked back)
Ok, I have to share this cause its fresh in my mind. I just found some stories I had written about my son when he was 4 and that reminds me of his “moment”. We were going to a very large church in Mobile Al. My daughters were in the church Christmas play which was a huge event.It started with Christ’s birth and went through His resurrection. I would take them to practices and Hunter and I would sit and watch. On the way home he would ask TONS of questions!! Then the night of the performance He and I sat up in the balcony on the back row so that he could wiggle and stand up . As the stone was rolled in front of the grave everything went quite. Then just as Christ arose my son jumps up in his seat spreads his arms wide and SHOUTS “NOW I GET IT !!!!!!!!!” Everyone laughed, but I was moved to tears. He asked Jesus in his heart a couple days later.
1) So many described how Jesus clearly has conveyed his deep love for us and how we just knew it! Even described it as a passionate love, like the Bride of Christ, chosen ones. How wonderful that he can love us all and make us *all* feel so special!
2) God is a God of second chances! ENough said!
3) I know. I fail the test for a 3rd one. Sorry, Beth. But I had to add that there are certainly a lot of siestas named “Kelly”!
Kelly
Houston,Tx
1. It often took a difficult and/or painful situation, sometimes physical or even a season of sinfulness. There was a need that drew them to God and God drew near to them.
2. Change occurred – real change in feelings, in lifestyles, in their perception of God.
1. God comes to meet us where we are, in the way we need.
2. We need to testify more. It sets people free and builds faith in others.