God is Doing a New Thing~

Dear DEVO Readers,

 

Yesterday I had an AHA! moment. We learned in Isaiah 43:35 that God keeps no record of wrongs. And just a few DEVOs ago we learned that one of the definitions of love in 1 Corinthians 13 is that it keeps no record of wrongs. God loves us, and He practices what He preaches! Amen! If He isn't keeping tabs then we shouldn't either.

 

Several of you wrote back expressing how hard it has been to forget some things in your past--the regrets are overwhelming.

 

How do we let it go?

 

I hope this verse will inspire us all.

 

Isaiah 43:19

"For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland."

 

Is there something in your past that could be described as a wasteland? Something that has left you empty, heartbroken, feeling crushed under a weight of guilt, or bitter?

 

Then thank God that He has started something new in you, and it began the day you turned to Him. He makes a way through all the brokenness and brings a torrent of relief.

 

Consider the story of my friend whom I will call Z.

 

As a teenager she gave her heart and her body to a young man and became pregnant. He supported her--all the way to the abortion clinic. Why he even paid for it. Nice guy. For years and years and years she lived with the unbearable pain that she had taken an innocent life. All of this surfaced when she got married and tried to have a baby. She could not get pregnant, and it was later determined that her fallopian tubes were blocked. (I'll spare you the details.)

 

Of course she blamed herself and even told her husband that she wouldn't blame him if he left her. It was one big boulder after another that she threw at herself, and this left her feeling bruised and battered. And all this on top of the already profound sadness she felt at not being able to get pregnant.

 

One day I had a really strong and really loud one-sided conversation with her--something I rarely do. But sometimes we just need to help others snap out of it.

 

"STOP IT!" I yelled. "Your refusal to let this go is like telling God that His love is not enough. That His forgiveness is limited. That He lied in the Bible when He said His mercies were new every morning."

 

Slowly but surely she worked it out. Every time a negative thought popped into her head, she would replace it with a truth from God's Word.

 

"Look at what you did!"

 

"That was the old me. God says I am a new person."

 

"You'll never have a baby, and it's your fault."

 

"Nothing is impossible with the Lord."

 

"You are worthless and don't deserve a baby."

 

"I am, actually, so valuable that Jesus was willing to die to save me and to answer my prayers."

 

On and on this internal struggle went, but sure enough, the day came when her focus completely shifted from the old stuff and onto the new thing God was doing. That new thing was, in fact, a baby through in-vitro fertilization that has long since been born and is currently providing this woman and her husband with rivers of joy.

 

Glory glory glory!!!

 

PRAYER:
Dear Lord, Thank You that You are doing a new thing. Some of us need this in our marriages, families, emotions, other relationships, finances, employment, health etc...If anyone can make a way, it is You--the Great Waymaker. If anyone can create rivers in the middle of a dry dead existence, You, the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth can. So do Your thing! The verse above asks us if we see it. Sometimes we're too focused on the past to see the good right now. Open our eyes, in Jesus' name. AMEN~